{ she sees God in the turning of the tides }

[delga]

I've just written up my lecture notes for Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty which is the wonderful novel on which I am writing my Narrative and Culture essay. The computer has just been turned on because I need to print off my extra LTC assignment, and I'm online because I'm trying to find two of Frank O'Hara's poems that aren't in the edition the University told us to buy (which, yeah, useful). But I've been musing about this since yesterday and I feel midday (or circa) is an appropriate time to take a break and think about Catholicism.

MacLaverty's protagonist is a lapsed Catholic who is a composer of music. She finds spirituality and balance in the process of composition. MacLaverty draws these fantastic parallels between the art of music and the art of writing, and talks (through his protagonist) about the experience of creation in art; for Catherine McKenna (the protagonist) the composition becomes about resolving the turbulence within herself. Part of that emotional turmoil comes from her Irish roots. This is where we segue into the Catholicism, but there is also an appreciation of her music (and, by extension, art) being a religious process.

I'm getting sidetracked.

One of the things the lecturer brought up was the patriarchal nature of the Catholic church and it set me off thinking about why it is that I write so many Catholic characters. I'm not Catholic, Christian, or even religious (I am phasingly spiritual but that keys into other elements of the lecture that aren't relevant right now). For Mei Lin, Catholicism is what the soldiers brought to her: it's how she learned to read, and the means by which she was able to escape the oppression of her restrictive traditions. It was the point of departure from her father and, less notably, her husband. It's a positive thing for her. ("...her fingers reach out and brush across a rough texture, unexpected yet familiar. She searches it apprehensively, and then more eagerly, recognition bursting through her senses. She grips it, ignores the dust covering her skin and pulls back her hand to reveal the old book, battered and worn, the covers loose, the pages torn...") She uses it to propel her forward, and when she finally stops running, she opens herself up to God. The irony to me now is that the Catholic church isn't necessarily a place for women. It certainly wasn't a place that could reconcile Catherine McKenna.

(I should probably interject here and talk a little about Déa Curtís, otherwise Denzina will slaughter me. Her Catholicism is also positive and survives in spite of her mother’s atheism. Déa always states that her mother gave her life, and her father gave her God; this is the balance that she lives by. The fact that her mother is an atheist troubles her but the Catholicism itself isn’t so pivotal, I think. It’s a big part of her, and she goes to church and she lives by her bible. But because of that freedom of choice that her mother gave her, there’s also a willingness to believe in a world beyond her God. [“So, mom dies and goes to hell? Is that what you’re telling me? Do you really think that’s what will happen?” Tyler’s disbelief cuts her, and she sighs, tired and upset that he doesn’t understand her. “No. I don’t think that at all. I think she’ll go where she needs to go. Just like you.”] Déa is very comfortable with her faith. It’s as natural to her as breathing which is not necessarily the case with the other characters I’ve written).

In Tja I wrote a rather shameful stereotype of the conflicted Catholic. I always say that it's not that Tja doesn't believe in God, it's more that "God doesn't believe in Tja". God is Tja's adversary but God is also her only link back to her mother. The shame for Tja is that her mother's death is a cruel re-enactment of the crucifixion, completely devoid of religious sentiment but a marked definition of why she was killed. So what Tja is actually confounded by is how the deliverance doesn't come through for her; her mother isn't resurrected and Tja proceeds to be delivered to a life of hardship with which she cannot reconcile herself. Tja hasn't adopted the religion at all, and she misunderstands it, using it as an excuse for all her misdeeds; instead, the words she remembers are memories, tangible connections to the one thing that brings her comfort: the memory of her mother.

That's not to say that she hasn't constructed a spirituality of her own. She has a personal creed, boundaries and rules. She recognises that some things are sacred, that some things should be fought for. She believes in balance - an eye for an eye. She feels burdened by the weight of sin, but she believes in it. I think Tja is probably afraid. When I put her to "rest", I let her fall back into the aether from whence she came; that is, I let her go back East, to a place which is mysterious to her but is also a place that makes more sense to her, I think. It's a place where - or so I'd like to think - she comes to terms with herself as a person and she feeds into the intuitive balance of the spirituality there. When justifying her decision to return to Beijing, she lets Max in on that self-constructed ideal: "When there is nothing left, we go back to the beginning and start once more." Going to Beijing is rebirth. (Ironically, she quotes the bible here: Je suis la résurrection et la vie. Celui qui croit en moi vivra, même s'il meurt; et quiconque vit et croit en moi ne mourra jamais. But she isn't there yet, so she's still holding onto these fragments). Maybe by returning to China, Tja can adopt the country as her mother, and leave the confusion of her non-Catholicism behind. Religion for Tja isn't Catholicism at all. Religion is the search for herself, and the reconciliation of who she is with the person she thinks she should be. I get confused trying to explain it but all in all, as mystical as Tja is, I find her very sad.

Lastly, there’s Lise and I haven’t quite got to the point where I can point out her Catholicism so very explicitly. Lise is something of a zealot. She’s on a crusade(There's a short ficlet that I want to post soon where Lise is dealing with her dislike of wet feet and reveals how humble and shameless she is. "She wears them [the crucifixes] like dog tags, low between her breasts." I wanted to emphasise how much more this is to her than simple vengeance - is a divine task). There’s some controversy both in my mind and the fic itself as to whether or not she receives ‘visions’, if she’s directed by the hand of God. The original idea was that being of the Tsiganes/Gitans/gypsies, Marielle (her mother) would definitely have been religious, and that would be something adopted by Lise par course. So I suppose I’m really making poor Joan of Arc parallels. But the mytharc is simple enough to follow, if you take into account the SPN canon. The Winchester brothers’ mother was killed by a demon of some variety; that same demon was responsible for Marielle Jacobs’ death. The added skew is that Lilith Jacobs, the adopted daughter, was demonic and probably the reason Marielle died in the first place. Lise’s visions (if that’s what they are) lead her from one place to the next, lead her to the next hunt. She believes, fervently. But she’s also conflicted: she knows killing is wrong, she knows she has no life beyond the avenging of her mother’s death and she knows that she’ll most likely go to hell when she dies. She knows this. But she’s being directed by God (or so she thinks) and she has made an agreement to hunt. It’s still sketchy. Here the Catholicism is complete dogma, and yet it’s been sort of relinquished.

I can’t expand more on Lise yet, she’s still blooming. But what I was really drawn to questioning was my own fascination with the religion and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s two-fold. First, I’m fascinated by that question of the afterlife, and the role that sin plays in it. Secondly, this is a religion that forms the opposite of what I understand in my own religious and spiritual background. I’ve said this before – I believe in balance. (This is why I think the East will suit Tja: it will make sense to her way of living). If you do something bad, you get punished for it. If you suffer greatly, you will be recompensed with contentment. Admittedly, my beliefs have a lot to do with my upbringing (a lot of this is in agreement with basic Hindu philosophy, although my ideas on a god are incomplete these days) but it also has a lot to do with the way in which my life moves. I have my good days, but I know that you ride the wheel and bad days will come too. I know that when I’m having a bad stretch of time, when it’s difficult, that I just have to hold on a little bit more because the elation, and the good days will be just around the corner. And that’s why Catholicism and Christianity are so fascinating to me because to my mind, they don’t have that balance. Repent and you shall be forgiven. Believe and God will give you love. It doesn’t equate to me but it still interests me.

I’ll leave you with one last thought before I go back to lecture notes. Both Bartleby in Dogma and Gabriel in Constantine fall; they both state only humans are given the choice to be welcomed into the love of God, that angels were created loving. Both see humans as unworthy. And both see hell as a PHYSICAL PLACE when it’s been defined as the absence of God. So, by definition, both Gabriel and Bartleby are in hell even though they are on Earth. Hell isn’t a place. Hell is the absence of God. "Why did You leave me?" Bartleby asks, and for a film that’s fairly funny, for a moment you suddenly have to come to stop and think what these stories are actually telling us.

ETA: Onto notes on Frank O'Hara next - a man who loved New York City. Don't be surprised if that sparks a diatribe, too.

Comments

[tigertrapped.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Dogma all the way through (the usual problem - Matt Damon) but Gabriel in Constantine has an in-built contempt of humans for another reason apart from the fact we're unworthy of God's love. Only mortals can repent and be forgiven by God. For angels, there is no purgatory, no second chance. Once you fall, that is it. I guess the only option is whether you accept your fall with good grace or go all-out evil, like Lucifer. Isn't theology fascinating? Did you know, for instance, that the Catholic Church issued a new mandate on demon exorcisms as recently as 1993? How and in what way was it decided that the 16th century rite of exorcism was no longer effective?

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Only mortals can repent and be forgiven by God.
Yes, Bartleby points out the same thing. (I have a harder time with Affleck than Damon). What they both point out is that human's are unworthy of that second-chance; that's what I meant. I should have phrased it better.

Yes, and yes. These things confound and intrigue. In the novel (Grace Notes) I think my preoccupation is more with MacLaverty's ability to verbalise the sensation of getting it right, than with the Catholicism but the lecture made me think about why, if I prefer my anti-heroes, I put my female protagonists in a religion that is male-dominated. (And I also had a whole diatribe on Judaism but I need to do a little more research and fact-checking first).