Italy trip tips #3: Souvenirs!!!

And I thought Lourdes was great for souvenirs -- with their unending supply of Catholic kitsch!!!

The thing about Lourdes, though, is that there's really no reason to go there unless you're Catholic (and/or happen to be visiting an aunt who's a nun, like we did). But with Rome? There are so many reasons to visit, many of which have nothing to do with Catholicism! (Catholicism and Christianity became important largely because of Rome, not the reverse...)



The hilarious result is that the souvenir stands have all of the Catholic devotional made-in-China souvenirs, with the secular-questionable-taste items displayed right beside them! One very popular item was boxer shorts with the genitals of Michelangelo's David printed onto them. And the souvenir shop across the street from our hotel had a whole selection of rosaries on one shelf, while the shelf just below it was cartoon figurines of gladiators and of the emperor giving the "thumbs down."

Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera handy when I was at that shop. But maybe you can make out the pope plates in this one, featuring the current pope putting on his best trying-not-to-look-like-the-evil-emperor smile:

One last thing about Lourdes

and then I promise to shut up about Lourdes. Until next time I visit Lourdes. ;^)

One positive thing I saw at the convent was that they specifically listed bringing a message of peace to Muslims and to Protestants (on a huge poster illustrating the goals of their religious order). I'm not up on all of the latest world religion news, but I get the impression that the current pope isn't as big on cross-faith friendship and understanding as the previous one was. But fortunately it looks like at least some sub-organizations of the Catholic church have put interfaith peace on their priority list.

When I saw this poster, I felt a little left-out at first. Why just make peace with Muslims and Protestants? Why not atheists too? Then it hit me that they've probably decided to focus their message on groups the Catholics tend to go to war against.

The closest thing I saw to a mention of atheism during my whole visit was one book in the convent bookstore: Dieu Versus Darwin [God vs. Darwin]. With a title like that, I could easily guess who wins according to the book (even if I hadn't seen it in a religious bookshop). After all, Darwin set out to explain a natural process, not to pick fights with people or supernatural beings. The title kind of reminds me of the Jehovah's Witness anti-evolution book: Life -- How Did it Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?. That book occupies a place of honor in the religion section of my bookshelf -- it's cover-to-cover one of the most hilarious books ever written. It's also a great resource to have on hand in case you're discussing creationism with religious friends and they try to make claims like "real creationists' arguments aren't that stupid..."

Anyway, back to Dieu Versus Darwin: sheesh, that's not a fair fight at all. If we suppose that God is omnipotent, what's He doing challenging a mere mortal? Can't He pick on somebody His own size?

On the other hand if we suppose that God doesn't exist, it's still not a fair fight (since Darwin actually existed). Now that Darwin is dead I guess that evens out the odds a little. the smart money's still on Darwin, though...

Why I'm a bad mom, part 2

Recall from part 1 that I was teaching my kids some naughty words. Well, along those same lines, I've started teaching them about Jesus. The system I've been using is very similar to the one used by the Exterminator as he explained in his atheist confessions ("I say 'oh, Christ!' and 'oh, shit! about an equal number of times each day, even though I believe in only one of them").

Despite my efforts, though, during my recent visit to Lourdes, I discovered that my kids don't know who Jesus is apart from his role as an expletive.

We were staying in a convent, so of course every room had a crucifix in it. We got a room with a really gory one -- where you could see the blood dripping down His dead, drooping head -- hanging right over the bed. (Sweet dreams!) Honestly, it blows my mind that anyone could find such a gruesome image uplifting. Anyway, my little four-year-old Leo was sweetly playing on the bed when he noticed the thing and asked "Mommy, who's that?"

My husband and I looked at one another for a second and I said "It's a picture of someone being executed." Leo doesn't know that that means, but it was sufficient to get him to go back to playing.

On the other hand, I found that my kids can recognize Buddha. We were walking past a Chinese restaurant one day, and Leo said "Look, Mommy! It's Buddha!" I looked where he was pointing and, sure enough, there was a big golden statue of Buddha.

I taught my kids about Buddha kind of unintentionally. One time a colleague went on a business trip to China and brought back tiny Buddha statues for everyone, as souvenirs. I gave mine to my kids to use as a toy. All I told them about him was that his name is Buddha, so naturally they put him with their Spiderman, Batman, and Superman figurines (and dubbed him "Buddha-man").

Since then I figured I should try to make an effort to teach my kids about religion at home since they're bound to hear about it from other kids at school and get all sorts of wrong information. So I bought them an excellent book Les Religions du Monde, and put it on the shelf next to that other in-case-they-have-questions book I bought them (It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health).

I like the book on religions because it's quite even handed -- it covers all known major religions including extinct religions and some fairly obscure religions (although Mormonism didn't make the cut, unfortunately). The bigger the religion, the more extensive the description, but they don't favor one over another (in terms of presenting it as better or more reasonable) nor is there a subtext of "of course this is obviously all a bunch of hooey..." All we've learned from the book so far,though, is that Buddha is really huge. There's a Buddhist monk on the cover sitting next to a statue of Buddha, and the monk is no bigger than Buddha's hand! Now that's big!! (I know you're all waiting for me to add a comment about my earlier post here, but I would never stoop to that level... ;^) )

I can't seem to find a way to explain religion to my kids though. I feel like they're still a little too young to understand the difference between live people, historical figures, legendary characters loosely based on historical figures (eg. Santa Claus / Saint Nicholas), legendary characters that may be based on historical figures (eg. Jesus), fictional characters, etc. And how do you explain to a kid that many people think that there are invisible beings with supernatural powers? And that people think these beings really exist -- they don't see it as just imagination or playing pretend. And how do you explain that some people think they can communicate with mystical beings through lighting candles or saying particular phrases??? So for the moment we're at the point where "Buddha is huge" and the kids can see he's a statue and draw their own conclusions.

I'm happy we've had the opportunity to take the kids to Lourdes so they can see their Catholic heritage in its true context (something they wouldn't normally get from us). I made a point to take them to the basilica and get a picture in front of the giant golden crown.


"Big enough that Buddha could wear it!": the kids were duly impressed.

When we got back to our room, Nico looked out the window at the basilica and asked "Is that a castle, Mommy? Does the king live there?"



As usual, I was at a bit of a loss to explain.

The little angel on my one shoulder was saying "Tell him the truth! Tell him that some people believe there's a super-powerful magic being who likes people to worship him, so people build these elaborate buildings..." And the little devil on my other shoulder was saying "Ick! He's only six -- does he really need to hear about such things? Can't he stay innocent a little longer?"

So I just said "No, the king doesn't live there. We don't have a king anymore."

Nico was a little disappointed with that answer, so he invented a fanciful story about how every country (including France and the US) has lots of kings, and they live in castles with huge gold crowns on top.

Well, why not? He'll hear the standard myths in time, but for the moment he can have the fun of inventing his own. :D

All about Lourdes!!!

A couple hundred years ago, a fourteen-year-old went to a secluded grotto to pray, and saw a divine personage appear. (This story seems weirdly familiar, doesn't it?) The divine personage was of course the Virgin Mary, and the fourteen-year-old was later canonized as Saint Bernadette.



Lourdes is one of the most popular religious pilgrimage sites in the world. According to Wikipedia, it has more hotels than any city in France besides Paris. The Catholic church has officially declared that the waters of Lourdes have the power to miraculously heal people, so Lourdes is the prime destination for every Catholic whose health requires a miracle.

Lourdes is a popular spot for healthy Catholics as well. I mentioned to a colleague that I was going to Lourdes, and he told me his story of visiting Lourdes when he was a kid, in Catechism. The healthy push the sick (in special wheelchairs of Lourdes) to the healing waters to bathe. An endless procession of the dreadfully ill marinate in the miraculous pool from morning until night. Then it's your turn to get in. "That you don't get sick from it -- that's the miracle!" he said.

I haven't participated in any of the religious aspects, but I've learned a lot about Lourdes by observation. One popular custom I've noticed is to buy candles and place them in one of these candle-boxes:


Those are just the little ones. If you need a heavy-duty prayer candle to help your miracle along, you can buy a 20 kilogram candle for only 150 euros!


If you look closely at the photos above, you can see the candle box says (in several languages) "This flame continues my prayer." So apparently you start praying, and lighting a candle holds the line open with God while you go off and do something else. I thought it was pretty hilarious when Mr. Deity called dinner blessings "spam", but the Catholics have gone one step farther -- they actually call up God and put Him on hold!!!

(The things God has to put up with -- it's a wonder Mormons aspire to take that job...)

I was a little taken aback when I saw there was a medical station (open 365 days a year) right on the plaza of the Basilica! But... what do you need doctors for when you have the miracle of Our Lady of Lourdes right there? Never mind, don't answer that...

The best thing about Lourdes however is the souvenirs!!! Downtown Lourdes is an endless collection of block after block of the kitschiest holy souvenirs you've ever laid eyes on!!! The Wikipedia article warns that some may be shocked by the crass commercialism, but shocking is really the wrong word here. I think the word they're looking for is "hilarious"!!! I don't care whether you're one of those grumpy atheists who's always lamenting the popularity of magical thinking or one of those prudish Christians who thinks that religious items should be respectful and dignified -- when you actually get here and see this stuff, you can't be shocked because you're too busy rolling around on the ground laughing!!!

Seriously, for this alone Lourdes is worth the trip.

Some of my Catholic friends have told me about playing games like competing over who can find the tackiest souvenir in all of Lourdes. I keep wanting to play that game (or the variant where you count how many different household items can be made in the shape of the Virgin Mary), but we almost never have any time for souvenir shopping since we go there to visit our aunt who is too old to walk all the way to town. I know I shouldn't be disappointed -- I should be thinking about aunty and not about my own selfish desire to take a million outrageously wacky photos to post to my blog. Still it would have been great fun if I'd had time to see if I could find myself a glow-in-the-dark rosary or a magic 8-ball Jesus or perhaps an authentic shroud of Turin replica lampshade.

As it was, all I got this time were a few photos I took through the window of the taxi on the way back to the train station:




The other thing I was curious to see was the wax museum. It boasts life-size wax statues of the entire Last Supper (DaVinci style) and of Pope John Paul II!!! I'm a little hesitant about that place though because it may cross that fine line between tacky and scary...

Oh well, maybe next year!

Lourdes retrospective!

This past weekend, my little family went on a trip to Lourdes.

"What is an atheist family doing visiting one of the biggest religious pilgrimage sites in the world?" you may be wondering. Well, as I discussed here, my husband's aunt is a nun and lives there.

My husband's aunt is a really old lady -- she'll be turning 96 next month -- and she's amazingly healthy for her age. She's all there mentally, she can walk with just a cane, and she doesn't even appear to be losing her hearing. (Every time I see her, part of my little brain say to me "when ninety-six years old you reach, look as good you will not." One of the perks of not believing in God is you can have the still small voice channel Yoda if you like.) Anyway, my husband has kind of adopted her as a grandma since he doesn't have any living grandparents, so we've been visiting Lourdes every year or so for the past few years.

I have plenty of stories to tell you about Lourdes (how could I not? ;^) ), but first let's start with some photos of our various visits:

2003:


Leo was just a tiny baby for our first trip. Here we are walking down from the convent to the "sacred grotto" where Mary is said to have appeared.


The marketing genius of Lourdes: The water -- said to have miraculous healing properties -- is free. But... You don't want to bring home your magical water of Lourdes in an ordinary bottle!!! You need a Virgin Mary souvenir bottle for it, like the ones the woman in the background is holding.

2004:


Leo got a little bigger for our next trip.


Here Nico and his daddy are petting the Virgin Mary's sheep. Is this religious or sacreligious?

2005:


After watching Mary Poppins a few too many times, Nico thought that his aunty's hat and cane were for doing a song-and-dance number...

2007:


Here's Leo during our latest Lourdes adventure!!!

Modern Baal worship??? Um, is that a joke?

I probably shouldn't be giving publicity to Chick Publications by linking to them, but I was just looking over some of these the other day, and I can hardly believe anyone could think this stuff is right. It's not just that they're hateful and offensive -- they're just so mind-bogglingly wacky...

If I were still a believing Mormon, I'd be tempted to take this as a compliment coming from these guys, particularly the thing about Mormonism being a combination of Judaism and Catholicism. Because when the Chick Publications people say you're like the Catholics, you know they really care -- there ain't nobody these guys hate like they hate the Catholics!!!

Just looking at this list I found, it looks like they've got at least ten different tracts to explain that the Catholic Church is the church of Satan, including the fabulously-named made to be a "B" horror flick: Deaaaaath Cookie!!! Mwahahahaha!!!

The one that amazes me most though is The Deceived. When I read the synopsis ("Exposes Islam as a conspiracy of the Catholic church and, by proxy, Satan"), I thought the synopsis writer had to exaggerating or something. Nope. That's really what's in that one. The impressive part isn't so much the efficiency of it (insults both Muslims and Catholics in one stroke!) as the creativity of it. I mean, how would you even come up with such a thing?

It looks like they've written seven tractfulls of holy rebukes for Muslims and five for homosexuals. But aside from the one about evolution, I only found one that seemed directed at atheists. So I guess we atheists are down in the small potatoes category with the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Sheesh, even the Masons warranted two!!! Oh, well... ;-)

Wedding in Brittany

I should probably be gushing about the bride's beautiful dress or the gorgeous scenery in Brittany, but -- although both were lovely -- the main reason I thought my husband's sister's wedding was fabulous was that the reception was held in the same hotel where the out-of-town family guests were staying. So we got to spend the whole weekend socializing with all of the grown-ups, and there were plenty of relatives around to fuss over my little Nico and Leo and play with them.

Our hotel was mostly filled with the Dutch side of the family. You probably didn't know that my little family has a Dutch contingent, but it does. The thing is that my kids' "French grandma" is naturalized French but originally Dutch, from the southern (Catholic) part of the Netherlands. Her siblings are close and lots of fun to hang out with.

Of course, since the Dutch relatives all speak very good French or very good English (but not necessarily both) -- and since my husband and I don't speak Dutch -- the whole weekend we had a trilingual conversation going on in which there were always a few people confused and a few people translating...

My husband's father's line is the side of the family that actually (mostly) comes from France. This was a bit of a family history trip for that line since they're from Brittany, and the wedding was held in the family's traditional parish church. We visited my husband's grandmother's grave in the churchyard.


Here's Leo climbing on the monument to the soldiers from this parish killed in World War I. If you look closely, you can see Leo's great-great uncle's name carved on this face.

The church was beautiful -- it was one of those typical old French Catholic churches with a vaulted stone ceiling, stained glass, and artwork inside and out. I can't report much on the mass or the wedding ceremony since Leo was only able to sit through the first ten minutes before creating a massive disruption. It was just as well. Even though it's half a world away, after ten minutes of sitting on the hard wooden pews and hearing the same well-worn passages recited from the New Testament, my latent unruly-toddler-is-a-good-excuse-to-go-out response started to kick in. Like riding a bicycle -- you never really forget how it works. ;-)

I was a little disappointed that I missed seeing whether or not my husband ended up taking communion. He was worried that since he was up on the stand as part of the wedding party (and since the groom's family is apparently very religious) his sister might want him to take it just to keep up appearances. I assume he didn't though since the church didn't get struck by lightning or anything.

The one thing I was really sad to have missed was the song performed by my husband's cousin, the opera singer. From outside in the church yard, I could hear him well enough to tell that his performance was beautiful, but not well enough to really appreciate it.


Here the math-professor-looking guy on the left is my husband, and the dashing young celebrity-looking guy on the right is his cousin. I don't know who that lady scowling at you is.

On to the reception, the dinner was delicious, the wine and champagne superb, and the ambiance convivial. They even provided a babysitter so we could periodically check on our little naughty guys without missing the grown-up party.

And I drank in such moderation! You guys would be impressed at the moderation with which I drank. Not like at that previous big Catholic wedding (my little brother's wedding in Scotland). That's the thing about alcohol at weddings -- it makes the atmosphere more lively and social overall, but there's usually somebody who overdoes it and makes a fool of themselves, and I really hate it when that person is me. (I don't know if there was somebody like that at this wedding since we went to bed before the party got going.)

You may remember I told you the second stupidest thing I did in Scotland was to miss my flight. I was surprised that nobody asked me what the very stupidest thing was, since to top that it clearly must have been a doozy.

It goes something like this: "Since I'm here in Scotland, I should sample a few glasses of this lovely scotch whiskey even though I've already had plenty of wine with dinner..."

I ended up missing the whole dancing part because I had to go lie down (in another room from the party, but still at the reception) and proceeded to throw up the whiskey and everything else. My little brother was nice about it -- reminding me the next day how he drank too much and threw up all night after my wedding reception (in the chateaux where my whole family was staying). I was pretty pissed off at myself though that at the age of thirty-four I would still be making such an error about my drinking limits, and at a beautiful wedding reception no less.

I'm not recounting this story because I think it's cool or something. In truth I shouldn't be posting such a story to the Internet at all. But, I mean, nobody's really reading this, are they? Clearly in the wrong hands the Internet is a dangerous tool. Somebody stop me before I post again!!! ;-)

But at least I learned my lesson well enough to be on good behavior for my husband's family even if I wasn't for my own...

This will be fabulous!!! or a total disaster...

I'm setting off for Scotland tomorrow to attend my little brother's wedding!! I'm thrilled because I hardly ever get to see my family, and we always have a fantastic time when we get together!!!

The potential disaster comes in because this wedding party contains a an explosive mix of different religions and other persuasions. But our family has a fantastic track record of putting family first -- before faith, etc. -- so I expect that everything will go just fine. (famous last words...)

This is going to be a big, formal Scottish Catholic church wedding. My brothers -- the groom and best man -- are being fitted for kilts as we speak!!!

The bride is a bright and charming young woman from Scotland. The groom is my younger exmormon-atheist brother. Apparently the Catholic church used to be more picky about insisting that both the bride and groom be Catholic in order to have a Catholic wedding (the bride is Catholic), but they've lately taken more of a "well, better than nothing" attitude. According to my mom, my little brother and his wife passed a special Catholic church wedding prep course, which Mom explained was "like a temple recommend" (except that it's just for the bride and groom, not the entire guest list).

Then, to make things more interesting, the best man (my older exmormon-atheist brother) is gay. It's funny how this is sort of the converse of the dilemma Cynthia faced over on Mormon 2 Catholic. In our case -- despite the Catholic church's hateful stance towards homosexuality -- my older brother is perfectly willing to stand by his younger brother and feels nothing but unreserved joy for his little brother on this happy occasion. I expect the Scottish Catholics in attendance will be no less noble in their celebration of this loving union.

Then -- because everyone knows "the more the merrier!!!" -- my older brother John is also bringing along Mike (of MikeAndJohn.com fame) and Leandro. Both Mike and Leandro are "cultural Catholics" and both are very, very gay.

Next up on the religion roster is my Evangelical dad. I don't see that his religion should pose much of a problem unless he starts telling everyone his pet theory about how Protestants and Catholics are fundamentally the same thing (unlike Mormons) since they're all the same "body of Christ". That should go over very well with some Catholics and very badly with others (as discussed here), so let's hope he chooses wisely.

Then we can't forget the Mormon contingent: my mom and my two sisters. They're very tolerant of other worldviews, and happy to be respectful of the beliefs of others as long as they are shown the same courtesy. So I'd be really surprised if they made any trouble.

I'll be sharing a hotel room with my sister who is a mom like me, and we've both arranged to leave the husband home with the kids (because it's an expensive trip, dontcha know), which means we both get an extended "moms' night out"!!! Yay!!!

In my case, my husband has invited his mother to help him supervise our two little rascals in my absence, and the kids are psyched about it!!! Psyched because Grandma is bringing "Toby" and "Duncan" to add to their collection of "Thomas the Tank Engine" toys. We'd been explaining to them that Mommy was going away and Grandma would come, and they were pretty much okay with that until they heard that Grandma was bringing Toby and Duncan. As soon as Nicolas heard that, he immediately turned to me and said "Mommy, can you go to work?"

I'm not joking here or exaggerating -- there was not one second of hesitation between Nicolas learning that "Mommy gone = new trains" and "Bye Mommy!" Well, at least I don't have to spend my trip feeling guilty that my kids are pining for me or something...

In my sister's case, her husband is not only single-handedly watching their three little kids, he's also babysitting all of the family dogs. That includes their own dog plus the dogs of other family members who will be in Scotland attending the wedding. So for all my friends discussing men and housework over on fMh lately, here's an example of an LDS guy who's perfectly willing to step up to the plate in a big way!!!

The only possible glitch is the ribbing I'll surely be getting from my sister after I stagger back from the reception in the middle of the night, wildly drunk.

Now I know many of you will be saying "But Chanson, the solution is simple -- just don't drink too much!!!"

Now, on the surface that seems like a good plan. But think about it. I'll be at a big Catholic wedding reception with my exmo-atheist brothers, and my kids will be safely in the care of someone responsible. So in theory I might say "Okay, I'll try not to drink too much," but in practice, who am I kidding? And besides, my little brother got roaring drunk at my wedding reception, so the least I can do is return the favor.

It's going to be quite a trip!!!!

Weekend in Paris

This is what I did while I was en grève

When you live in France, spending a weekend in Paris is actually a pretty mundane, ordinary thing to do. Paris is so central to French life -- and to the entire French transportation network -- that going to Paris is kind of like a default weekend activity, basically the absence of thinking of something original to do.

Still, no matter how many hundred million times I go to Paris, I'm always happy to go back. I don't think I could ever get bored of it. I feel almost as at home there as I do here in Bordeaux.

By crazy coincidence, my husband's sister's new apartment is within a few blocks of my old Paris apartment (and also within a few blocks of the former apartment of a good friend of ours). As big as the city appears to be, I think everyone secretly lives within a three-block radius of this one random metro station in the fourteenth arrondissement. So during this past visit I got the fun of wandering up and down my old block and seeing the chocolate Easter fish in the window of the same bakery and chocolate shop where I used to get my croissants every morning years ago.

Chocolate fish are my favorite French Easter custom. Sure they have the usual chocolate bunnies and eggs like back home, but they also have this additional chocolate fish custom in honor of Lent. Now you may have heard that people like to give up chocolate for Lent. Well, it turns out that as long as the chocolate is in the shape of a fish, it counts as fish and not chocolate for Lent purposes.

Really. I'm not making this up.

Okay, I am making it up. I think it's more that -- Catholic as everybody is around here -- people don't really give stuff up for Lent.

The next item on the agenda Saturday morning -- after the chocolate fish and taking our leisurely coffee and croissant in a sidewalk cafe of course -- was to go hit the bookstores. Obviously they have bigger, more extensive English bookstores in Paris than we do in Bordeaux, so we started with my husband's favorite "The Village Voice."

I immediately thought to ask for Natalie R. Collins' book Wives and Sisters -- considering that if they had it in stock I'd win her book-sighting contest hands down. (Note this was before I bought it in Bordeaux.) Unfortunately, they didn't have it. Then I figured while I was at it I'd ask for P. G. Karamesines novel The Pictograph Murders since that's what I was reading at the time. They didn't have that one either. Man, it's hard to find Mormon literature in France! I'm starting to think I may be the only person in all of France who blogs about Mormon literature.

Next we went to the big bookstore of academic and university books so that my husband could visit his books. He found two of his three books in stock and a book by someone else quoting one of his theorems. So naturally he was very proud of himself for the rest of the day. I checked the computer books section for my Java book, but although I'd seen it in that store before, I wasn't too surprised that it wasn't there anymore. Such books have a very short shelf-life -- I'm surprised I'm still getting any royalties from it at all. Clearly it's time to get my butt in gear and write a new edition with all of the latest relevant technologies. If only I can persuade myself to stop wasting my time on this highly unprofitable new hobby of being a columnist/humorist/novelist and go back to being a Java guru...

All day Saturday and Sunday -- since the kids were off enjoying some alternate activity with their grandma -- we had nothing on the agenda except to wander the streets of Paris. The weather was cool, crisp, and sunny -- perfect for a stroll down the wide yet Sunday-morning-deserted side streets and then for a visit to view the sights and the tourists over by Notre Dame and the Seine.

Stopping to rest in another sidewalk cafe, I turned to my husband and exclaimed "Greatest city in the world!"

"No it isn't," he replied.

"Well, which city is better then?" I asked him, even though I knew full well that the answer was New York. When you've been married a certain number of years, it's very important to keep the magic of your running-joke-arguments alive.

Considering all the praise I've written about the Paris metro, you may be wondering if I got the opportunity to ride on it during this past visit. In fact I did, but not until right near the end when we were finally too tired to walk any more. I had suggested taking the metro a few times before that, but my husband kept pointing out that with the nice weather it would be more fun to walk above ground to see as much of Paris as possible. He was right of course, but I suspect he was maybe also jealous ever since I wrote that the metro is secretly my true love. It would probably be more of a secret if I hadn't written about it in my column/blog, but I guess it's too late to worry about it now.

Cutting across the quiet stone field of the Montparnasse cemetery one last time, we read some of the descriptions of some of Paris's most permanent residents and made a note of what accomplishments people liked to carve in stone as a final remembrance. Some listed professions or military decorations. We found one woman whose book was mentioned on her tomb, and saw that someone had placed a laminated page advertising the book on the lid of the author's sarcophagus, held down by some rocks. My husband thought this was fabulous and developed a whole theory about how cemeteries are the final yet-unexploited marketing frontier.

Wandering further, I concluded that I would have to be cremated one day because it seems somehow undignified to have one's life summed up in a few lines on a stone covering one's decomposing remains. My husband, however, insisted that he wanted to continue with this fine tradition.

"And I suppose you want me to have them carve in stone a list of all of your books?" I asked.

"Yes. With links to where people can buy them on the Internet!"

Not realistic to be sure, but perhaps a pleasant way to spend eternity.


Published in the Utah Valley Monitor April 12, 2006.

Standing up for Your (Former) Beliefs

My husband is a cultural Catholic. Never mind the fact that he doesn't believe in God. He was baptized Catholic and raised in a Catholic home; therefore, if you ask him if he is Catholic, he will say "yes."

So even though he doesn't practice his religion or believe in its supernatural claims, he still has some sort of attachment to it that manifests itself in strange ways.

For example, it annoys him when Protestants claim that Protestants and Catholics are all fundamentally part of one big church. My dad likes to make this claim. Dad grew up mainstream Protestant -- then converted to Mormonism just long enough to marry a returned missionary in the temple and raise all of the resulting kids LDS -- then switched back.

Despite my husband's unbelief, he takes it upon himself to be offended by claims of Protestant/Catholic equivalence on behalf of believing Catholics. After hearing my dad talk about how Christians accept Catholic baptisms (but not Mormon baptisms), in a later private conversation with me my husband commented, "Just let him say that to my aunt, who is a nun. She'll tell him he's going to hell!"

Now my husband's aunt is super-mega-nice, so it would surprise me quite a bit if she told a Protestant -- to his face -- that he's going to hell. Still, my husband may be right about his aunt's fundamental beliefs.

The first time we went to visit Auntie, she asked my husband "Are you Catholic?" Of course he said yes.

Then she asked me what my religion was. I responded that I am a non-believer, not affiliated with any religion. The funny thing was that she wasn't upset by this at all since she figured that meant it would be no big deal for me to join my husband's religion. Then she told us how relieved she was because she was worried that I might be a Protestant.

Despite what that story seems to indicate, my husband's aunt is surprisingly accepting and tolerant. She's a really old lady (in her 90s) and has been a nun her whole adult life, so normally I would expect her to be really rigid about the whole religion thing, but she has been reasonably accepting of our choices.

Of course, during that same first visit my husband's aunt told us that she prayed that he and I would get married and have our kids baptized, to which we surprisedly responded "But Auntie, we are married."

"Civil marriage," she said.

But after that she didn't bother us about it again, and all the times we've stayed at the convent to visit her none of the nuns have ever pressured us to go to mass or anything.

Since then, on a few occasions Auntie has reminded my husband of the importance of having the kids baptized. But she was fine with my husband's explanation when he told her that because of our unbelief, we didn't feel like it was right for us to go through the motions of such an ordinance, but that we wouldn't try to stop the kids from having themselves baptized if they wanted to later, when they're old enough to make a mature decision about it.

I thought it was funny that she accepted this because in my mind it's not a concession at all. If the kids take up a religion once they're grown, whether we like it or not there's not a whole lot we can do about it. Sure we could threaten to disown them, but that's not really realistic. We have only two kids. We can't go around disowning them willy-nilly over trivialities like what religions they choose for themselves. If we did, we'd pretty quickly find ourselves with no kids at all, and then who would we annoy during our golden years? Think about that.

I can hardly ridicule my husband for his wacky relationship with Catholicism though, considering that my attachment to my LDS heritage is equally wacky, if not worse. I seem to have his same weirdo objection to seeing the true church of my youth diluted into just another flavor of mainstream Christianity. So I catch myself browsing around the Bloggernacle (LDS blog network) posting comments encouraging people to be open about their LDS beliefs and to identify as Mormon first and not just Christian.

Why do I care? Obviously I shouldn't. I think part of it is that after having grown up with the idea that it's a virtue to stand up and be counted as peculiar, I have some irrational aversion to seeing Mormons jumping on the mainstream Christian bandwagon.

Also I think it's because this whole "milk before meat" thing strikes me as counterproductive. I've spent a lot of time with ex-Mormons/apostates on the Internet and elsewhere, and I've noticed that there is one particular small current of ex-Mormon Christians who insist on disproving Mormonism by holding up a list of Bible passages and saying "Mormons think this scripture means this but of course Christians know it means that." This is bewildering to many people raised in the church -- apostate and faithful Mormon alike -- who say, "OK, so you've proved that Mormons and mainstream Protestants interpret the Bible differently. Well, no duh!"

But the thing is that it isn't as much of a "no duh" point as maybe it should be. I get the impression that some ex-Mormon Christians are not so much annoyed about having been duped into believeing Mormonism is true as they are about having been duped into believing that Mormonism is not that different from other flavors of Christianity.

So while this practice of downplaying the unusual aspects of Mormonism by claiming Mormons are monotheists or saying that the church doesn't emphasize the doctrine of eternal progression, etc., may make Mormonism more palatable and increase the number of converts coming in the door, quantity is not necessarily the only concern here.

If you find a person who is aware of the doctrinal peculiarities of Mormonism and converts in spite of them -- or even because of them -- now that's a quality convert. That's someone who will likely say "OK" when hearing more of the various eccentricities of Mormonism rather than someone who will just become progressively angrier until he gets to the point where he not only leaves the church but feels compelled to debunk Mormonism's claims of being "Christian."

It seems to me that one convert of the former type would be worth more than 10 of the latter. But I'm an apostate myself, so obviously faithful LDS shouldn't be taking my advice.

In fact, if you're Mormon you should probably do exactly the opposite of whatever I say, just to be on the safe side!


Published in the Utah Valley Monitor February 16, 2006.

Concurrently run as a guest post at fMh.