“Nobody expects the Inquisition”….. Monty Python
But what is it we do expect with the Inquisition?
When I speak of the Inquisition, I am not speaking of the rack, torture (sort of….) or autos de fe (originally “articles of faith” but that meaning fell by the wayside, and autos de fe became the burning of ‘heretics’.) I am thinking of intolerance and some other nasty stuff that goes along with the behavior of fundamentalists, or maybe their world view.
I have an extreme dislike of fundamentalism, be it Christian, Jew or Muslim. Actually, I fear them. Perhaps because I have had dealings (too many years) with a political cult that allowed no room for deviation from the ‘plan and politics.’ Perhaps because there was a definite stratification of peons and princes. I was not a prince. This cult functioned in the real world much like fundamentalists: there was no room to breathe.
Lock step applied.
Recently I have been reading Matthew Fox, the former Dominican priest who became an Episcopalian priest. Funny, to think he stepped into this pile of manure rotating through the Episcopal Church over the issue of ordination of gay priests. But as a gay Episcopal priest told me very recently when I asked about the exodus of Episcopalian members: “If it wasn’t about gays, it would be about the ordination of women.” And it probably was, too.
Matthew Fox is an interesting theologian. He is very much involved in Creation Spirituality, a broad ecumenical movement that starts with Original Blessing, rather than Original Sin. Original Blessing regains the understanding that our original and true nature, the original and true nature of all things, is “very good.” That’s encouraging. Although stuff happens, we do bad and sometimes terrible things in life– it is still our authentic self. It’s very much the opposite of the fall/redemption thing. With that we are born rotten.
Creation Spirituality is nothing if not ancient: it harkens back to the great mystical traditions of Hasidic Judaism, Sufism, Buddhism, Taoism, mystics like Hildegarde of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, etc.
There is much out there about Creation Spirituality, and I’m not going into a blow by blow here. I’m learning myself. People can read where they are interested and intrigued. I know I was and it was a theological/spiritual answer to many decades of dismay as to what I saw in the Christian theology of the fundamentalists.
But for some reason, and probably a good one, I will forever think of the Inquisition when I think of fundamentalists: the same issues of power and control, the same patriarchal behavior, the lock down on expanded theological thoughts and ideas, ‘evolutionary’ ones, because for fundamentalists, if it ain’t in the Bible, it doesn’t belong in your head.
Let the rest of us get on with building a less mean humanity.
Lady Nyo
(Some readers have asked me to write about our Christmas: Perhaps it is best to relate our Christmas dinner, something that was a ‘first’ for us, and now I realize how really extraordinary. Seven guests around the table: a Hindu, a lasped Catholic, ex-Jevohah’s Witness, a Mormon, a child raised (ours) in the Quaker faith and then the Episcopal Church, and two going towards Creation Spirituality. Two guests gay. An unexpected blending of religions that made our Christmas dinner a joyful one.)
The Rites of Spain
Canto 1
Sharp azure skies
Rusty brown earth,
Black women’s shawls,
Goat dung flung by boys
At passing soldiers,
The Inquisition churns onward
Like the great mandala
Crushing bodies under wheels
Burning witches in great pyres
Ignited by ignorance
Of blessed padres.
.
Time of terror,
overtime superstition.
Of hidden manuscripts
under floor boards,
and investigations
Seeded by the envy of neighbors.
.
Goya colors flung in
the black of night,
Red of Blood
White of Death
Green of decay
Duller grays of corruption
Shiny blues of greed
Exchanging favors,
Cardinal to Cardinal–
Madrid to Rome,
And back again.
.
These are the colors
Of the Inquisition.
Holy-Terror-of- God in
Man’s hands
where nothing is safe,
Humanity defiled.
.
Soldiers force Rabbis
to spit on the Torah,
A diversion,
for the net holds much room,
All ‘thought’ is open to this furor,
For terror reigns.
The banality of evil,
Which words belie the results
Fashions such existence.
.
Dark shawls drawn
Over frightened faces,
only the
Whites of eyes
gleam outward like hooded lanterns,
faces cast downward
when the Cardinals pass.
No one wants to be noticed,
There is Death in the
Very air,
A pox of hopelessness.
.
Gossip is gone
From the full rose lips
Of women.
They huddle
Together,
Though no safety
In numbers.
Wearing an early shroud
To cover their
Beauties,
A slight sway of
Curvaceous hips
Could draw the Holy Terror
Upon their innocence
Condemned by black lipped priests-
Whores worthy of fire.
.
Cruelty and censure is the mantra of the day.
.
Breathe in the
Moisture of the drowned
Catch the blood
Flayed from bodies
Hear the sharp screams from
Those tortured,
And the
Sharper silence to follow.
.
Hope is gone
From the heart
Of Spain.
.
Now fear is the mantra of the day.
.
The disdainful eye
Of the Church
Informers,
Circling the
Spanish masses,
Like herding goats
From a horse,
Whip held easy
In the hand,
Ready to strike,
And strikes when not.
.
How many died
Who could give
Birth
To Enlightment?
Fear replacing
The Intellectual future of Spain.
How many aborted
By this
Scourge of Mankind?
Compassion forgotten
Humility distorted.
Lies the particular coin of the day.
.
The Inquisition
Rolls onward,
Tearing up
Soil watered by
Clotted blood.
Black tentacles
Of Power
Ripping
The heart
Of Spain
Asunder.
.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2012, revised
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