Glittery shit

Lots of people struggle with the concept of religion these days. What with all the news stories of terrorist attacks happening in places of worship, coupled with revelations of sexual abuse from those who are most entrusted to further our species’ spiritual mission in life, the prevailing question has come down to this: Does religion truly alleviate — or contribute to — the amount of suffering in the world?

Personally, I find religions stifling. Whenever we try to take in and understand with our limited minds the unimaginable splendor and beauty of our universe, we always fall short of being able to really comprehend it, because we’re marveling at a power greater than ourselves. In fact, maybe that power is just the culmination of our true selves, projected from a much better space and time.

Perhaps God is just a singularity, a solid point of consciousness which comprises all of us, plus everything else, in every iteration of itself that has ever been expressed. That sounds pretty cool.

The problems start to happen when we try to capture that concept in a finite, static world with solid beliefs and rules. Then we become like kids putting a lightning bug in a jar because we’re thrilled at its phosphorescence.

We don’t mean to come off as cruel, but we wish we had the ability to glow like the creature we’ve captured. However, that bug just wants to be set free. Likewise, every thread of religious dogma seems to limit God and ourselves along with him, her or them, depending on how you prefer to look at it.

Perhaps by dropping religion, we will become less cruel. Then maybe we can truly free ourselves, while letting God out of that glass jar to which s/he’s been confined.

I tried being ultra-religious when I was a kid, because I went to a Catholic school where I and the rest of the kids went to mass about four times a week. But most of the sermons seemed to be given by a hyperactive priest with a short temper who couldn’t wait to go chain-smoke in the parking lot.

He thought nothing of scolding the teenagers who bothered to show up during the ceremony. Then he’d pass the collection tray around. So I dropped religion pretty early in life. It was then that I realized how much suffering the church in my hometown was contributing to.

The problems that my neighbors and I had with poverty, with spousal abuse, teen pregnancy, harassment, assault and addiction were impossible to approach the church members for help with, because the general response would be that we were deserving of our suffering.

That’s how I came to believe that religion only brought out the devil in people. So it was really weird when I found myself once again in a church, this time working in it, almost three decades later.

But it was a different flavor of religion — Greek Orthodox rather than Roman Catholic — a religion whose members threw local parties and always seemed to have fun while enjoying each others’ company. Plus, I really needed the money.

Working for that church gave me a strange, new perspective. I hadn’t been prepared for the shock of finding out just how many other people in the world had also become disillusioned by religion. And not all of them were taking it very well.

In fact, that a lot of them had begun taking out their feelings of betrayal from these dogmatic systems by passive-aggressively wrecking church property. And suddenly it was my job to deal with the fallout, by cleaning up all of their messes.

For instance, there are a lot of homeless people who congregate around a church. That’s because most of the church members I worked for were actually good-hearted people who couldn’t turn away the needy. They were constantly having potlucks to raise money for charity, and would donate supplies to the local homeless shelter.

But some of the folks who enjoyed the parishioners’ generosity would pass out drunk in the church’s parking lot instead of sending thank-you notes.

One homeless guy in particular, who benefitted from many of the church’s good graces and charity, decided to jump out of the bushes and menace me while I was walking home one afternoon. He taught me that the local cops would do nothing if he kept on harassing me and my coworkers all day, and threatening us with assault.

I also learned where he slept right out in the open, like nobody had a score to settle with him. I felt pretty pious whenever I walked by him and refrained from enacting revenge, but smiled knowing that I could totally do it.

This was the same guy who used to like to piss and shit all over church property, and it became my job to find the little treasures he left me on an almost-daily basis. Sometimes there’d be a discarded lighter, or some trash from a fast food restaurant.

At other times, he’d find a marker and draw symbols and messages — stuff like Think or Jesus — on the walkway, which I’m sure he meant facetiously, due to the silk panties thrown on top of the words for good measure.

Sometimes it made me chuckle to find his crazy-person messages to me, like when there was a very large, realistic-looking toy gun shoved into the bushes that I had to call the cops to retrieve and check out. I also found an empty package that belonged to a vibrating dildo on the stairway.

Still, I wasn’t about to handle his turds. But I wasn’t going to let him have the last say, either. That’s why I took to sprinkling his poop with glitter.

That way, when he came to lie down in the stairwell the next night, his own poop would still be in his way so that he could deal with it himself. But the sparkling coat of glitter would let him know that his message was received and returned, along with a crazy smile and a cackle.

He may have pissed me off, but he certainly wasn’t winning this thing. I eventually quit my job because of this guy, but I still know where he sleeps.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, a local woman started making regular trips outside the office, and insisted upon having her dogs shit in the middle of the church’s lawn, right at the top of a hilly section. Of course, I was supposed to clean that up every time she came by.

So one day, after she left, I tried hucking a bunch of glitter at the dog shit and ran off cackling. But there were three errors with this tactic. First, there was a church service in session and the parishioners, if they were glancing at me through the stained-glass windows, would know for sure that I was crazy. Second, this woman didn’t notice anything except her cell phone. Third, I slipped while trying to run away and almost landed face-first in the dog shit.

For a while after that day, I just hid from her whenever she and her dogs appeared, because I didn’t want to deal with the overwhelming desire to smack her upside the head and send the gum that she was snapping flying out of her mouth. But then those useless cops would probably arrest me.

However, the more she did it with impunity, the more I realized that I must answer with the same devil-may-care attitude. How could I pull that off? I wondered. Then I asked myself: What do I really want out of this situation?

I want to pet her dogs! was my mind’s happy response. So the next time I saw her, I excitedly trotted over to meet her. I introduced myself to her and asked about her dogs. They were happy to see me and came over, tails wagging. I crouched down and pet them, sweet-talking them and chatting her up.

I realized that the last thing she wanted was a conversation, but I didn’t care in the least. Her dogs ended up shitting by the curb that day. And funny enough, she waves at me now whenever she sees me.

So perhaps religion really does bring out the worst in us. However, there’s still some good in us left. How do we stop the dogmatic institutions we’ve created from taking the rest of it away? We reach into ourselves to see what we’re truly made of.

We bravely look around and notice what’s wrong and what needs fixing, and then we get to the task of making things right with each other again. And whenever we encounter someone’s else’s shit, perhaps the best response is to just happily sprinkle a little glitter on it.