While explaining Communion and the wafers to my girlfriend |12:05 PM|
Me: Anyhow, the priest has this much larger wafer that he holds up during the blessing.
Portal: That doesn't seem fair. He gets the larger one?
Me: Well, it's so that everyone can see it inside the church. He breaks it up and gives it to the people helping him hand out the communion wafers and wine.
Portal: What's the largest bone in the body? The leg bone?
Me: The femur?
Portal: So that wafer is like the femur of Christ?
-----------------Also on that note:
Me: That's kind of like that old anti-Mcdonalds ad, with the picture of the chicken and the question "What part of the chicken is the nugget?"
I've forgotten the name of the people that help the priest hand out the wafers and wine, I used to get such good grades in religon class.
We were Catholic once, and young. |12:48 PM|
When I was in gradeschool, I was very Catholic, as I may have already mentioned. At least once a month we were in church for a special Mass of one kind or another. (This is of course in addition to the times I went to church during the week with family members or for other reasons). This meant that I was taking communion quite a bit.
For those of you not familiar with this little bit of the Catholic faith, I'll try to sum it up. In the Bible, during the Passover meal that Jesus has with His pals before being nailed to a tree (Which is called The Last Supper), he declares that the bread he is sharing with them is his body, that the wine is his blood, and that they should repeat this ritual in remembrance of Him. In the Catholic church (but not unique to it), Communion is the most important sacrament, and (bunch of boring details) ...what it comes down to is that when the priest guy blesses the bread wafers and wine, it undergoes transubstantiation and is now the BODY and the BLOOD of the big Christ guy.
And then we eat it. Pretty heady stuff for a 4th grader.
The unleavened bread wafers are disc shaped, about the size of one of those Kennedy 50 cent pieces. This size becomes important in a few sentences. Now I was the contemplative type, so it began to bug me how I should eat this wafer thing. I mean, biting into it seemed kind of...disrepectful, perhaps even sinful. Well, what if I just let it dissolve?
The complex starches that were in the wafers are broken down by your saliva into more simple, sweeter sugars. I found that if left in my mouth, the papery bread stopped being so bland and actually became kind of sweet. This whole "not biting Christ" thing looked like a better and better idea.
Unfortunately, at some point, the wafer got stuck to the top of my mouth. It was a near perfect fit to the roof of my mouth, the softened paste of bread becoming a glue affixing it there. While standing, kneeling, or sitting, I was trying desperately to scrape the savior off the roof of my mouth.
Working with my tongue, trying to be as discreet as possible, I was still haunted by the thought "Is this a sin?"
This ended up happening more than once, but I was less full of the Fear of God. At least the body of Christ stopped tasting so papery.
Now, there were plenty of fellation jokes I could have made, but I showed strength and resisted.
Violent conversations |3:54 PM|
Remarkable. There's a new editor. Hope it doesn't screw up anything up.
Anyhow, while I'm typing here, (I guess this is liveblogging?) I'm stuck in a religous conversation. Well, not me, I deliberately stay the fuck out of such things. It's messy, and I'll try to illustrate why. I should mention that I'm agnostic, so it's going to color my statements.
One participant is a believer in a God. The other is a staunch atheist. The atheist does not have "belief", he does not believe there is no God, but for the simplification of this, I'll refer to his motivations as beliefs as well.
The believer thinks that it is ignorance on the non-believer's part that motivates his questions, that if the non believer is taught enough, he will believe. He thinks that the questions being posed to him are arising from a lack of some realization that he is motivated to help bring about in the atheist.
The atheist feels that religon is evil. Semantic arguments aside, definitions of evil and belief, the atheist cannot stand by and allow the existence of religon. Because of this attitude, he will not back down until the religous person cracks or leaves, or ceases to exist.
They are working in different directions. They are not two sides of a balance or debate, they might as well be two trains on different tracks.
Until an impasse is agreed upon, which is looking less and less likely, then this is merely a waste of oxygen.
Oh shit, he just brought up evolution.
This going to get messy.
I may ask to go home early.
Anyhow, the reason I am not joining in this debate, that I am trying to avoid its very existence, is that any interaction on my part is a losing move. That my co-worker is religous does not affect my ability to work, and so far it has not affected his productivity. Engaging him in a debate can only lead to anger, and lawsuits. While I do not share his beliefs, I do not think myself capable of changing them. If I was asked, then I would tell him what my motivations are, and I would defend it, but I will not debate its merits when compared to their own...UNLESS I thought they were actually seeking information and not attempting to "show me the light". There is a distinct difference, one leads to impasse, the other leads to an exchange of ideas.