Pleasing the Gods

“Religion. Together we can find a cure.” So read the T-shirt that had me nodding my head in agreement and asking “Where can I sign up? “ The etymology of religion is the Latin “religio” which means to yoke, to bind. And in the big organized religions, this usually means yoking us to an all-powerful Deity who demands obedience, to a dogma that conveniently suits a ruling class of priests and often has given permission to loot, to plunder, to dominate, to rape, to murder in the name of God. That portrays each innocent and beautiful baby born as a miserable sinner who must blindly believe to be redeemed. 

 

This is particularly true of the three monotheistic religions— Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The multiple gods of Hinduism and a Buddha who is “not a god, not a saint, not a deity, but simply awake” has always held more appeal for me and while not exempt from the pitfalls of mass organized religion, both have created less havoc in terms of justifying conquest, forced conversion, slavery, genocide and other atrocities in the name of spiritual duty.

 

But these “Big Five” are far from the only show in town. In addition to others like Shintoism, Taoism, Zorasterianism, Sikhism, Bahai and the various mystic traditions within the big five— the Jesuits, the Sufis, the Kabbalah mystics, the Yogis, the Zen monks— there are indigenous religions throughout the world of extraordinarily diverse (though constantly threatened) indigenous populations, from the various North American native American populations to the South American ones to the Australian Aboriginals, the Lapps, the Candomble practictioners in Brazil, Santeria in Cuba, Voudon in Haiti, and countless groups throughout Southeast Asia and the continent of Africa.  There are literally thousands of paths to Spirit and most of them offer a more connected and experiential way to awaken Spirit in us, with a more beautiful and less world-wrecking story about what the Gods want from us and what we are here to offer them. 

 

In his introduction to a second book by Martin Prechtel titled  Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, the poet Robert Bly writes:

 

 Mayan tradition does not teach that the Gods want people to be sinless or perfect, but they believe the Gods love beauty, eloquence, fine clothes, great music, good poems, bravery, high animal spirits and gratitude. These human qualities taste like honey to the Gods and the Gods are like bears who have to come into the village whenever they smell that honey. Thus, the Mayan people’s main and ancient job is to be beautiful and grateful.”

 

Imagine a speed-dating situation where everyone is shopping for religion. In one booth, you’re told that someone had to die because you’re a miserable sinner and if you don’t obey, you’ll be roasting in hellfire for eternity, while in another, that the Gods want you to dance and make great music and dress well and savor life with gratitude. Which would you choose? And what kind of culture would flower out of large groups making the same choice? Bly goes on:

 

 From these metaphors of honey, of Gods crazy about smoke and dancing, we get a scent of the “original, flowering earth,” the fantastic fragrance that can come into human life when old women and men help the young ones to embody beauty and eloquence and eight-hundred-old rituals of gratitude get a chance to play themselves out…That people are taught that it’s good for each person in the village to be in debt, economically and spiritually, to every other person in the village, that it’s wise to give payback to the spirits and to Mother Earth constantly, that it’s good to weep generously when a human being dies so he or she can make it all the way across to the other side…”

 

 Can you feel what a different culture this is and how it leans towards the community connections, ecological sustainability, artistic expressions we all so desperately crave? What a beautiful alternative this is to God’s alleged permission to dominate the Earth, subdue the people who live closest to it and love it the most, plunder it with some fantasy of a better afterlife, assault us with threats of punishment and torture if we dare to question or disobey dogmas created by fallible human beings who benefitted by keeping us afraid and subservient? A bit more:

 

It's enlivening also to understand that the Gods are charmed and fascinated with us as human beings, because we have thumbs— which spirits do not—and so can carve masks, weave cloth, invent musical instruments and play them, whittle sticks and make paintings. It’s good to know that what is needed most in the world, more even than food or warmth, is eloquence: it’s good to know that most of life is maintenance, to keep in constant conversation with the spirits rather than imagine that we can be saved once and for all.

 

This is not a tract designed to convert you to a Mayan theology, an attempt to substitute one dogma for another. Rather let’s think about what new story the world desperately needs and consider how this old story serves much better than the ones we keep repeating. 

Naturally, as a writer and a music teacher and a musician, I love the notion of gods that celebrate eloquence, children, music and dance. Returning to yesterday’s idea of the needed conversation between the worlds of the living and the departed, each one necessary to the other, the idea that thumbs and tongues can make the difference and we can use them to please the gods and they in turn, can bless us with their unseen presence in gratitude for our creations. It is something to consider.

 

But if it’s not to your taste, let’s put all theology and cosmology aside and simply ask:

 

What are we doing with your tongue? Using it to lash out at others and insult, demean, put down for no other reason to try to raise ourself a little higher? Are we letting it lie in our mouth unused when it’s most needed to speak out? Or are we shaping it to a poetic eloquence that sings out beauty. That speaks needed truths. That praises the young when we see a bit of their gift revealed.

 

And what of our thumbs? Are we using them to pull triggers, to send hateful texts, to post lies and conspiracy theories on social media? Or do we train them on the piano keyboard to usher forth splendiferous sounds. To have them grip a pen to capture an exquisite moment through eloquent language shared with others. To use them to hitchhike across a magnificent landscape and get picked up by a benevolent god disguised as a person.

 

I’m told that Jesus will love me if I will but blindly believe, but I prefer the notion that I need to do something worthy to attract the Gods, something that brings forth a flowering fragrance in words or music, that praises children, animals, plants and all the glory of Creation, that serves life and that sometimes gets a little crazy and dances ecstatically with the gods happily dancing invisibly by my side. 

 

That’s the kind of "old-time" (very old!) religion that moves me. And you?