Come to think of it…

Not only is spontaneous empathy not necessary to make moral decisions and be a good person, in fact, the majority of morality is learning how to treat people well even when you don’t have empathy for them.

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This is just one example, and it’s very Christian, because that’s how I was raised, but:

The story of the good Samaritan: When you see someone who might be in trouble, and instead of thinking “Oh, that poor person! I’ll help them!” you think “Ew.” … you should still help them.

We tend to think of this as teaching people to have more empathy, but I don’t think that’s what it is. No matter how many times you train your subconscious to stop going “ew” at a particular group of people, there are always more people out there who you’re going to feel that way about. What we need to teach people, ideally, is to even try to care in the first place. To reconsider their gut reaction. To not assume that who they happen to feel empathy for is an accurate guide to who deserves their regard. To make a habit of thinking “What if I should care?” when their subconscious doesn’t care.

I have strong feelings about religious music.

And all the responsive-reading things and prayers and stuff.

I’m telling you about this because I went to Sparkly’s “baccalaureate” (a church service to go with graduation). Because Sparkly’s college is Catholic, it was extremely long (I was there for 2 1/2 hours, because I came early in order to get a seat) and there was a lot of music and a lot of responses that the congregation was supposed to say.

And the people sititng near me totally slacked off on all of it. The woman next to me gave me funny looks for actually singing when the leader person gestured to the audience. And it seemed like the percentage of people in the whole room who bothered to sing or speak went down as the service went on.

There was supposed to be a part where all the friends and relatives were blessing the graduates– with someone at the front reading a bunch of blessings, and it said in the program that we were supposed to say “Amen” after each one. But she didn’t even really give us time to say it, and nobody did.

I am not Catholic and I wasn’t raised Catholic so I don’t have any familiarity with any of it– I didn’t know any of the music, and most of the responsive things were different from anything I’ve done before. But, two things:

— There are a lot of musicians in my family. Ever since I could read, it was just assumed that I would sing in church. I’ve never thought of not singing as an option. Boundary Girl once said something about feeling self-conscious about singing in church that was just completely incomprehensible to me. At my parents’ church everybody sings, including the ninety-year-old ladies who could be better described as croaking instead of singing. It doesn’t matter whether you sound good. That isn’t the point. The point is the action of singing, of joining your voice with everyone else’s, of focusing all your attention on the words and the music, and doing it to praise God.

— You can’t not participate because you think it’s silly. Everything becomes awkward and silly if people aren’t willing to put effort and sincerity into it. And even really silly things can be important and meaningful if you put in the effort. I also have strong opinions about what types of religious music I like (basically, all my favorite things were written before 1900) but I never refuse to sing anything.

My experiences with music are as close to believing in God as I get. I’m incredibly frustrated and disappointed that so many people at the baccalaureate decided to have an awkward experience of mumbling and listening to the choir and taking pictures instead of an actual religious service.

I grew up among people who you truly cannot beat for actually saying Amen, out loud and all together and sounding like they mean it. I wanted to give Sparkly a proper blessing and a proper prayer and, y’know, give some indication of “the community supports our graduates!” besides it being written in the program? But no. They made it a thing to sit through instead of a thing to participate in. Apparently the people around where Sparkly was sitting actually sang, so that’s good at least.

I went to Easter Vigil with Sparkly tonight.

Perks of living in a big city: a big fancy cathedral with an archbishop.

Thoughts:

Apparently Catholics do a thing where everyone gets to hold a candle for Easter. Growing up, we only did that for Christmas Eve.

Holy shit chant sounds so much more awesome as part of an actual service. The part of the service that was in the dark was really exciting, too. I had way more religious feels than I would have ever expected.

I may have said “oh, shit” very quietly when he mentioned complementarity in the homily.

About Beliefs

Even people who are generally very logical sometimes form opinions and beliefs in the absence of complete proof. People don’t usually believe in things when there’s a lot of evidence against them, but in cases where there isn’t any clear evidence either way, or there’s contradictory evidence, lots of people still have opinions. They believe, for all sorts of reasons, that if new evidence comes out it will prove certain things right.

And these people may not have proof that what they believe in is true, but they do have reasons. A person who believes that physicists are eventually going to find the Higgs boson, for instance, doesn’t suddenly change their mind unless the information they have changes somehow. And it’s the same with beliefs that are less factual and specific, like Are human beings fundamentally good? or How should I discipline my children? or Which political party will run my country best? People have reasons that are imporant to them for their beliefs, even when they don’t have proof their beliefs are true. People may change these beliefs, but again, they have important reasons for doing so.

And this is why it bothers me when people say that religion is a choice. When somebody sincerely believes something, they don’t just arbitrarily decide to stop believing it! Sure, religion isn’t something you’re born with, but the fact that I wasn’t born a Democrat doesn’t prevent me from being very attached to my political beliefs. So please, stop saying “religion is a choice” like you expect people to be able to turn it on and off. Beliefs aren’t like that.

Living with a devout Catholic is confusingly similar to living with a pagan.

Boundary Girl came home with a box of blessed candles to light for her aunt who’s ill, and told us she got her throat blessed to prevent sore throats and choking. There’s so much actual, physical practicing of religion going on here I just don’t know what to do with it.