The Tale Of A Spiritual Harlot Who Sold Herself To God

Margot James had been born and raised in an observant Catholic family, the kind that said the rosary, went to high mass, prayed the stations of the cross, went to confession and communion, and to the best of their ability led a moral, Christian life. 

 

Margot made her First Communion, was confirmed, went to Catholic schools and was on her way to being the good spiritual child her parents had always intended. She was so devout in fact, that the nuns of St. Maurice had singled her out for a vocation, and even Father Murphy, the senior priest of the church had spoken to her about it. 

As devout and sincere as she was, Margot felt there was something missing in her spiritual life.  She felt talked to, instructed, warned, and counseled by prescription and canon rather than with the intimacy indispensable to epiphany and spiritual satisfaction. 

'Come with me', said Althea Robbins, her classmate who belonged to the New Light Of Canaan Baptist church on the other side of town, the sketchy part far from her leafy West End neighborhood.  Arch Street was sincere, said her parents, just not adequate; but a trip or two down there wouldn't hurt, especially if it was in God's plan. 

The New Light was not a mainstream church, but a storefront charismatic evangelical one, so Margot was surprised when she got off the bus and saw what had been a Jewish tailor's shop - the faded letters of 'Rabinowitz' Clothing Emporium' could still be seen over the doorway.  

She was greeted warmly by a group of congregants, hugged, and shown to her seat, not in a proper pew but on a folding chair.  In a few minutes the pastor took to the podium, asked the congregation to rise and sing A Mighty Fortress Is My God.  Before the hymn was over, the old tailor's shop rang with voices loud and in unison. She had experienced nothing like this at St. Maurice's. 

 

It was quite a show - women rising from their seats, shouting 'Hallelujah', and walking down the aisle towards the pastor, arms raised high, tears streaming down their cheeks, trembling with emotion.  

Pastor Brown hugged them in turn, positioned them on the small platform behind him, extended his arm towards them and shouted, 'Praise the Lord'.  He turned to the congregation and in a sobbing, virtuous voice, told them that Jesus had come to this very place, had resided here, and had taken to his sacred heart the spirits of the women standing here before them. 

 

It was a lot of fol-de-rol, more energetic and satisfying that the up, down, kneel, 'Let us pray' ritual of the Catholic mass but still more circus than divine.  She thanked Althea for her invitation, promised to go with her again, but returned to the West End wondering where her next spiritual step might be. 

She had been in the temple Beth Israel a number of times for the bar mitzvahs and bas mitzvahs of her friends but never had attended a full ceremony.  She was impressed by the temple, its complete lack of statues, paintings, or religious icons.  

The service at the temple was sedate and somber compared to the New Light church on Arch Street.  A lot of rocking and recitation, long readings from the Torah by the rabbi, and little the Sturm und Drang she needed to rouse her soul. 

She prayed before the Wailing Wall beseeching Hashem's forgiveness, asking him to take her in his all-powerful embrace; but all that cant, obedience, and virtue was a thing of the past. 

love. 

St. Maurice's was a virtual flea market of religious do-dads and grottoes, and while she understood their metaphorical meaning, she always thought them more the palm buzzers, flies-in-ice-cubes, and whoopee cushions sold at Jimmy's Smoke Shop than symbols of divinity.

The rest of her religious scouring in New Brighton was predictable and unsatisfying.  She went mainstream Protestant and heard windy sermons about the black man, the environment, the rights of gay men and the depredations of the current President, but nothing with staying spiritual power. 

She poked into the Church of Scientology, allowed herself to be hooked up to the G-meter and learned of the sorry state of her soul, dabbled here and there at other fringe orders of spiritual respite, and finally gave up.  Epiphany would have to wait. 

The 18th century metaphysician David Hume observed that belief is emotional in nature. Belief contains an element of feeling of compulsion or constraint.

“The difference between fiction and belief lies in some feeling which is annexed to the latter and not to the former, and must arise from the particular situation in which the mind is placed at any particular juncture. Belief is something felt by the mind”

It is not surprising that true believers group together.  While association for social, political, and economic reasons is fundamentally human, such association becomes spiritual when true belief in progress, Utopia, a better world replaces a belief in God. 

Michael Shermer in The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies — How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths, details the psychological mechanisms by which individuals use beliefs to create separate realities:

As a 'belief engine', the brain is always seeking to find meaning in the information that pours into it. Once it has constructed a belief, it rationalizes it with explanations, almost always after the event. The brain thus becomes invested in the beliefs, and reinforces them by looking for supporting evidence while blinding itself to anything contrary. Shermer describes this process as “belief-dependent realism” — what we believe determines our reality, not the other way around.

If, Shermer suggests, such beliefs are internal rather than externally- based; that is if they have been created by us and become part of our personality and being, the individual has every reason to defend them at all costs.  It is not much of jump to ironic defenses, the hope for Armageddon as a justification of personalized beliefs.

Social reformers as a group are no different than a religious sect with canon, hymn book, liturgy, commandments, salvation, redemption, and epiphany. Those who insist that the incineration of the planet due to global warming is at hand say that they are protesting to stop it; to prevent the destruction of the world caused by ignorance, indifference, and greed.  

Yet the more temperatures climb, polar ice caps melt, and deserts expand, the happier these true believers are.  Such fulfilled prophecy is a far better reward than an unfulfilled one.  Each degree Celsius is a Station of the Cross – a secular Via Dolorosa leading to crucifixion.

 

So it was no surprise that Margot was tempted by social activism, particularly environmentalism which had a very spiritual, existential cast to it. The intensity, the fervor, the commitment, and the absolute righteousness struck a chord and resonated deeply within her. Environmentalism was where religion and secular belief joined.  

There was no difference between the evangelical ecstasy she witnessed at the New Life church and the climate jamboree on the National Mall.  Protestors for climate action were like Old Testament prophets, voices crying out in the wilderness, willing martyrs to the cause of environmental justice. 

Yet the constant drumroll of doom and gloom, the ecstatic hysteria of her colleagues, and the savoring misery of everyone was nothing like the spiritual solace she sought.  If this was true belief and one which was no different than a spiritual one, then she wanted no part of either. 

She dabbled in the black man, the gay, the transgender, and the impoverished, but came away dreary with the whole pedestrian nature of it all.  There was no mystery, no glory, no host of angels and no trumpets of Gabriel.  

All of which signaled the end to her search. Gone were the talismans, the chasubles, the prayerbooks, and the cant of doing good.  She chucked it all.  She became an apostate, said her former colleagues, worse than Judas, turning her back on and betraying the movement; but Margot was her own woman, tough as nails.  She ripped off her burqa, veil, abaya, and headscarf and walked away.

For years she had been God's harlot, there whenever he wanted her, calling her to the communion rail, filling her with his body and blood until she couldn't help but turn tricks for him.  And then she joined her charismatic sisters and begged him to come down and visit them, take them, ravish them with his

She was her own harlot now, a streetwalker, a tart for her own purposes.  A woman finally of consequence, in no one's harem, gussied and painted, but her own woman.