DEAR FILL IN THE BLANK;RELIGION

Dear (FILL IN THE BLANK...NOT YET PUBLISHED)
 
 Thank you for inviting me to consider these words. Instead of choosing one word, I have chosen them all and here is my response to your invitation:

Ceremony: My first ceremonies were Catholic Church inspired. There I got a taste of the patriarchy at it's best......incense, pomp, packaged ecstasy, males processing in vestments meant for kings and queens and nuns relegated to the sidelines of humble-tasked teaching and herding of feraled-upstate-NY-children.
 
Communion: What all of us want is to belong, to be nurtured in community and communion with each other as co-conspirators, co-warriors, co-workers, co-belongers. This is a Neanderthaled response to weather, stampeding musk ox, the need for 3 meals a day and the desire to be connected to other sentient beings going through the exact old age, sickness and death saga called life. In Catholicism, COMMUNION becomes the highest sacrament and the best of everything. When the nuns had convinced me that when I received COMMUNION, that I would be receiving Jesus's real BODY, BLOOD, SOUL and DIVINITY, I would faint in Church after receiving the HOST, and remember doing so when I was actually in my late 50's. And yes, I was post-menopausal then and it wasn't because of that! And at 7, it wasn't because I had been fasting since 6pm the night before and fainted from physical hunger. And believe me when I say that I've seen BLEEDING HOSTS in my travels so I guess fainting was not such an inappropriate response after all!

Ecumenical: This is the best way, the tolerant way, the understanding way to live with, endure, put up with the belief's, practices and acting out of all practitioners of the sacred but our tolerant good behavior only lasts until we stumble on a "religion" that does things we think abominable!

Holy: Holy is right brain ecstasy that is "produced" when the thinking mind is out of commission. See Jill Bolte Taylor's STROKE OF GOOD LUCK on You Tube.

Redemption: What is right is right until it is re-seen from an accepted authority as  lacking in wisdom or compassion. My therapist just last night re-deemed me from a family of origin belief about love that is no longer tenable for me. REDEMPTION lasts when the new belief is repeated until imbedded in one's blood.

Religion: A complex theory that keeps and gives. It keeps the believer from having to create a way. It gives a free ride to anyone buying the ticket it sells. Artists sometimes think they can start their own and often do because keeping and giving are understood differently by these zealots of the Sensitive.

Revelation: By cooling the left brain with considerable finesse, it is possible to hear, see, smell and taste the unseen, unheard, the untaste-able and stinky.
 
With all due respect and apologies for any heresies,
 
Linda Mary Montano
Performance Artist
June 2014"