Theology 101

essay

If praying mantises kneel and pray for real then who is their deity?

I don’t believe in God but I believe in many people who do believe in God.

Science is the theory. Religion is the metaphor.

My maternal grandmother was a holy woman. Hundreds of Indians came to visit her during the last weeks of her life. There was a time when I could introduce myself as “Etta Adams’ grandson” and Indians would know who I was. That time is gone.

White people always want me to be more religious than I am. Indians also want me to be more religious than I am.

More than anything, it’s the insects that make me want to believe in God. There are ants who raise herds of aphids like we humans raise milk cows. The ants drink the honeydew secreted by the aphids like we consume dairy. That symbiotic relationship amazes me.

There’s a spider that shares its nest with frogs. The spider protects the frogs from larger predators and the frogs eat the smaller insects that hunt the spider’s eggs. I can’t even begin to understand how that relationship began.

Faith is symbiotic. No prayer is solitary even when we’re praying in solitude.

I smile when people describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” It means they probably believe in some goofy stuff that is yet another form of religion. It’s like drinking Diet Coke instead of Coke. Your body still believes that artificial sweetener is sugar.

On my father’s side, an ancestor named Circling Raven foresaw the arrival of the first Jesuit priests. In his visions, the Jesuits were black birds with white feathers at their necks. He wasn’t wrong. But I’m fully aware that my ancestor could’ve been a charlatan using his fictions to gain power within the tribe. And, if my ancestor was a liar, I smile to think of how surprised he must’ve been when his falsehoods became true.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever attended a spiritual retreat only because you had a crush on a true believer. In my teen years, I courted a Baptist white girl who was briefly infatuated with me. I think that I represented something heathen, brown-skinned, and dangerous for her. And I think that she was greatly disappointed when I turned out to be a pleasant Indian boy who played basketball and read a lot of books. Aside from being Indian, I was the kind of polite overachiever who almost any father would like…except for, you know, the racists.

Nobody looks more fundamentalist than the sweaty, exhausted, and endorphin-drunk people emerging from a hot yoga session.

I suspect that I’m more religious than I think I am.

There is a place named Circling Raven Golf Club. It’s owned and operated by my father’s tribe, the Coeur d’Alene Indians.

Once, during college, bored out of my mind, I accepted the proselytizing of a sidewalk Scientologist and accompanied him to his office. He administered a test that was clearly designed to find my autobiographical weak spots so I pretended to be a lost soul looking for a savior as I answered the questions. Afterward, the Scientologist drilled at my fictional weak spots and tried to get me to walk across the street and withdraw my $200 life savings and pay for my entry into a beginner’s course in redemption. I kept acting like a desperate soul and promising to get the money until the Scientologist realized that I was manipulating him and kicked me out. But I’ll tell you this. Even as I was playacting, it took a surprising amount of willpower for me to resist that Scientologist’s call to worship because I’ve always been a lost Indian.

When I tell you that Circling Raven’s daughter has long been a candidate for official Catholic sainthood, then how does that make you feel?

When I was courting my future wife, I caught a butterfly with my bare hands. When I opened my hands, that butterfly perched on my palm for a full minute before it flew away. When I told an Indian elder about that butterfly, she gasped and said, “That means your woman is pregnant.” Five years later, my wife gave birth to our first child.

Gestation is patient, I guess.

Once, while shopping for new spectacles at One Hour Optical in Albuquerque, I told my wife that I’d never been able to get stylish glasses because my eyes were too bad and that made my prescription lenses too thick. I sighed and meant to say “my darn astigmatism” but mistakenly said “my darn stigmata” instead.

I distrust any religious person who doesn’t laugh about God and God’s work upon the Earth.

Amendment: I’m scared of serious theologians, be they professional or amateur.

In 1966, at six months of age and critically ill, I was baptized by a Jesuit who survived a grizzly attack in the 1950s. So what kind of Catholic does that make me?