I'm a Yankee born and bred. I've fallen in love with the South through repeated exposure, but it's all an affectation. When I was chosen as chief cook for the retreat, I went with an all-Southern menu, at least for the three meals where you can express some creativity. On Saturday night, the music team went all in on my bayou theme and had a skit and a whole bunch of songs for my "Mardi Gras" night. They're an exceptional group of musicians and they just lit it up.
They did it for me, out of love. They didn't do it for some evolutionary advantage reason. I'd have been their friend without it. They did it out of the infectious love that comes from hanging out with a bunch of wacky Catholics for as long as we have been doing these things, which predate me by decades.
The music-love was born of faith and the joy of Christ. That's all there is to it. I've been involved in other events as large as this, but I never felt transported like I was on the weekend. Each weekend is like this. You can't capture it, you can't measure it, you can't specify it in equations, be they numerical, physical or chemical. It's spiritual.
I wondered what the skeptical academics like Jonah Goldberg or Sam Harris would have thought had they been there to observe it. Would it have come off as mutual hypnosis, perhaps? Maybe they would have thought that it was the self-reinforcing behavior of a cult.
The poor things.
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| Table decorations for our Mardi Gras festivities. |
Seriously, I am very happy for you that your community of the faithful provides you with a rich spiritual experience that is clearly very important to you. I applaud that, and wish you all the best.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would also like to point out that what is great for you might not be so great for others. The retreat that you describe is clearly a wonderful experience for you, but for me (and people with personalities similar to mine, like my wife and daughters), it would be a close approximation of Hell. I can take hanging out with a group of people like that for a while, and even enjoy it for a bit, but it is seriously draining and after a couple of hours I need out. Out. OUT! NOW! LET ME OUT OF HERE!
The focus of organized religion on group activities like this is completely counterproductive for me. Their insistence that I must do it in order to be part of a church makes me completely uninterested in having anything to do with them.