Absurd Faith

What makes Ted Cruz sad, Jesus flipping tables, and Supermoons.

Two days ago, a friend and I were texting about her work writing horror-comedy screenplays. I sent her this quote from Ted Cruz that astonished me when I saw it in the New York Times because I knew she’d appreciate the absurdity of it. You know that Mary Oliver line about how her work was mostly “learning to be astonished?” I think she was referring to astonishment in her observations of nature and beauty, like the particular cadence of owl calls or the movement of a snowflake. There is no nature or beauty I can find here, but astonished I was, so I’m going with it.

“We’ve all seen the sad statistics of how many kids are losing faith in capitalism. Well, 10 years from now, a little boy is going to pull out his phone, and he is going to look at his app and he’s going to see his Trump account. And instead of thinking of big, bad, scary corporations, that little boy is going to say, ‘I own 50 bucks of Apple. I own 100 bucks of Dell. I own 70 bucks of McDonald’s.’”

The Alex P. Keaton of Ted Cruz’s imagined future youth, whose eyes light up in the wonder and glow of their corporate stock apps, is so far from any real, human child I know, I kept looking for the punchline. The contrast to the ideal future world of my imagination is so opposite, there’s almost humor in it. Keyword: almost. There are so many sad statistics about our kids that concern me that their faith in capitalism doesn’t make the cut.

Plovers Flying Across a River above Snow-Laden Reeds (Fuyu no Kawa), from the series “Worlds of Things (Momoyogusa)”

I do worry about what my children have faith in. I’m well-versed in Christianity from my background, so I’m using what I’ve got and have been leaning into the Advent ritual this year. We light a candle, and then I read these little passages at dinner time to my kids that the pastor at my church prepared for us. They’re only a sentence or two long, so I figured my kids would be able to handle it without revolting. Last night, the sentence was about how Mary left behind the set rules of her religion and just about everything she relied on when the angel Gabriel gave her the “opportunity” to be a virgin mother of God’s child.

Besides my daughter’s very good question about how Mary’s newly betrothed Joseph felt about that plot twist in his marriage, we talked about what we’d need to hear from that angel in order to leave our favorite stuff and the safety of home. For the record, my youngest was pretty ready to get on board that angel train without much convincing, which made me second-guess whether or not I have made things as delightful as I thought around here. We also talked about Buddhist non-attachment that Christian mystics termed “purgation,” (because I guess they weren’t trying to sell anyone on the idea).

By “we talked about,” I mean mostly me. I haven’t raised my kids on any particular religion. Church is really my thing and a pretty recent development since we moved to a neighborhood a few years ago that came with a sweet, inclusive, and easy-going church a few blocks away that does a lot of good for people in the neighborhood and beyond with the added bonus of making me feel more part of a community than all my previous secular attempts at joining things. I leave it optional for the kids, but I worry whether or not that has been a mistake.

My daughter’s friends recently introduced her to some platform called GoWish, which is like a wedding registry but for Christmas gifts. I allowed her to spend hours curating her gift list on my computer on Sunday with a knot in my stomach I tried to avoid reckoning with by listening to classical choir music (and maybe this is the reason my youngest is ready to jump ship at the first angel who tells her to head out into the wilderness) and stringing twinkly lights in the living room. I think I overtalked during the Advent discussion because I was trying to balance the scales. I feel this urgency to make sure my kids have faith in something bigger than being conventionally attractive, getting good grades, and having nice things for lasting happiness and wholeness.

When I moved on to read the second passage (we got a day behind and needed to catch up), my daughter said, “Mom, just read this one. Don’t add to it.” She was right. I talked for too long already and the advent candle was burning low.

The morning after my friend and I texted about that Cruz quote, I was taking notes from a book about Christian mystics and read this passage in a chapter about “purgation.”

“In the temple Jesus found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my father’s house a marketplace!’”

—John 2:14-16

God, I love a table-flipping Jesus. I need to hear the other stories, too, that inspire compassion, forgiveness, and crafty non-violent protest, but right now this scene of Jesus wrecking the place (with whips!) satisfied some soul-sick place in me that needed validation. No human with a soul they’re aware of can actually feel true lament that kids these days have lost faith in...capitalism, right? RIGHT?

I’m stumbling through those Advent passages each night with my kids because I’m worried about their faith in love, in kindness, in community’s ability to care for each other. On the weekends, I worry about their faith in imaginative play, time in nature, and silliness with friends as valuable, fulfilling ways to spend free time.

My own laments over my children’s faith in true goodness, truth, and beauty woke me this morning at 4am. That, and the fact that our bedroom is high up in the trees with windows that line the walls around the bed. It is as lovely as it sounds. But it also means that in the winter, when the leaves have fallen off the trees and the moon is full and bright, it shines like a cold, stark spotlight at 4am full in the face. Shocking, but also so, so clear and a little thrilling. Too thrilling and too clear to go back to sleep.

The wonder of it lasted for about 90 seconds, and then I felt desperate to get my kids’ eyes in front of whatever next big moon “event” was coming up this winter. Apparently, the supermoon tomorrow night promises to be particularly impressive, but if we miss it, we get another chance at a supermoon on January 3rd. In the types of plans I make at 4am, I imagine taking them out of the city to witness it. I will be resolved to be spare in my words and quiet in my nature this time. A Christmas miracle! I hope that in the quiet of night, some deeper wonder about the mystery of the creation we’re part of will light in their eyes and be reflected back in the pure, crisp glow of the supermoon. I imagine that the experience will sink into their bones and will later make the synthetic flashing scroll of lights from screens less compelling in comparison.

How many bright moons do I need to get their eyes in front of so that the promise of ownership in McDonald’s stock will lose its shine for them? How many moons after that before they want to flip some tables of their own when some authority drops deep concepts like faith in their shallow propaganda, forgetting that the definition of faith is believing in what we can’t see? Losing faith is not the same thing as losing belief in the goodness of things that keep failing us in front of our faces.

The chances are low that I’ll actually drag my tween and teen out to the countryside to witness a supermoon. And if I did, the chances are high that they’d still look at their phone or ipad on the way home. But we can probably see enough of what we need to through the trees in our backyard. I’ll at least make them come with me to the church pageant because the little kids dressed as farm animals are always astonishing (in the Mary Oliver sense of the word) and the candlelit sanctuary filled with kind neighbors feels like a love we can’t quite wrap our arms around, but we can feel its warmth just the same.

with love,

Tricia

P.S. Hi everyone! Many of you know I’ve had a wild year of dealing with stupid cancer. I wasn’t sure if ideas for writing on this platform would come back, and I began entertaining the possibility that once I was feeling better, I might get into bird watching or astrology instead. While I’m bummed that I won’t have more time for developing my expertise in birds and stars, I’m excited that I’m done with treatment, all is well and my motivation to connect on here again is back. I hope you enjoy the new direction this takes. More on that soon!

This is definitely longer than I anticipate my future posts to be, so if you’re still reading, I’m grateful, and for all of our sakes, will try to cut the length down in the future!