TGIGF

(Disclaimer: This is long. It’s not about sex. I hope you’ll read it anyway, but I just thought I’d warn you.)

Ah, Good Friday. Good because the three shiksas in my office (including yours truly) get off for the day. Bad because, well, this is, like, the day the music died. For my ignorant, non-Catholic friends (hello LA GUY!), this is the day that commemorates the death of Jesus. Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to get all mega-Catholic on you, as many other semi-non-practicing Christians do on days like Ash Wednesday when we pretend to go to Mass during work hours, only to come back with cigarette ashes on our foreheads (yes, I have done this) and then say shit like, “I’m sorry I missed the budget meeting, but this is a very IMPORTANT day in my church!” After all, I am certainly not enamored with my technical religion (Roman Catholicism).

Now I know I usually write stories of blasphemy - tales of sex and masturbation; eulogies to deceased vibrators; etc. - but I do actually have opinions and stories about things even my grandmother can read. And religion is one of them. It’s because I have spent my life confused, and did not grow up, as most people did, with a true foundation of belief. Let me explain.
My parents (who were both raised Roman Catholic) were hippies. They wanted their children to find their own religion and, as a result, my brother and I were never baptized. However, I did attend a Jewish nursery school, not because of the Judaic curriculum, but because it was “the best.” Here’s how those years went:
I dressed up for Purim - and Halloween.
I was the dreidel in the Hanukkah play - yet helped my mother set up the manger on Christmas morning (after Santa had come - and I was certain there was a Santa).
I ate matzo during Passover - yet believed in the Easter bunny.

You see, my parents didn’t want to practice any religion or force anything upon us kids, yet they kept these secular Christian traditions because (even though they won’t admit it) they brought some strange comfort to them. So I practiced everything, yet nothing at all. In other words, I was completely fucking confused.

In the third grade I was once again sent to “the best” school they could find - a Catholic school in the Country Club section of the Bronx. I remember my classmates reciting the Our Father on my first day of school and having no idea what they were saying. When we had school Mass, I couldn’t get up to receive Communion and was, as a result, called “the devil” by my classmates. This, coupled with the taunts of being a “nerd” made every school day a living hell. And so, in some way, I began to believe that maybe I was the devil.

When I reached the age of 12, I couldn’t take it anymore. While other children were succumbing to the normal peer pressures of smoking, drinking and sex, I felt pressured to become Catholic. I wanted to be Baptized. And so I was. I received Holy Communion on the same day and was Confirmed a month later. I had employed an EZ-Pass way into the Church and then, once I was truly in it, had no idea why.

I went to Catholic high school. In fact, I won the “Religion Award” on graduation day for having the highest GPA in the subject over the course of all 4 years. However it wasn’t because I believed - it was because I truly studied, read every passage assigned to us and questioned everything it said. I wasn’t the dedicated scholar they wanted; I was the Doubting Ella, calling bullshit on everything. I once wrote a paper in favor of euthanasia. My teacher wrote, “This is a dangerous position to take and I believe you should reflect and pray to dissuade yourself of this belief. However, it is well-articulated and well-argued, so you receive an ‘A’.”

In high school, I went on two trips to Europe with my school. The first was to Italy, where we spent Easter Sunday in St. Peter’s Square, listening to Pope John Paul II perform Easter Mass. My classmates wept. I wanted a cigarette. The next year we went to France, where we attended Midnight Mass on Good Friday in Notre Dame. For those of you with no point of reference, Good Friday Mass is always depressing. It is, for all intents and purposes, a funeral mass for Jesus, filled with somber prayer and somber song. At Notre Dame, however, they go all out - performing the service completely in the dark and in Latin (the most terrifying of all languages, in my opinion). I admit, I cried. But not because of the occasion we were commemorating, but because there is something about suffering and loss (and you can think I’m crazy) that is inherently beautiful. I had a similar reaction while watching The Passion of the Christ many years later - I wept for most of the movie (while on a date with an Israeli Jew, mind you) not because it was about “my Lord and Savior” but because I was so distraught at the hate men had/have for other men. Even if Christ never existed, torture and crucifixion did , and the images of that emptied my heart for days.

However, there is one moment in my life where my skepticism felt defeated, where my disbelief was suspended in mid-air. It was during my senior year of college, when my friends and I went on a trip to Spain during winter break. We took a day trip to Montserrat, a place well-known for its statue of Mary - its BLACK statue of Mary. Now, as most of you know, most Christians cannot handle the fact that Christ - if He existed - was not a blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon, but was, in fact, of a darker complexion. And this would mean that His mother probably had a darker complexion too. Was She black though? I don’t know. But regardless, this statue causes a lot of Christians to feel disgusted (a rather un-Christian behavior, in my opinion). Anyway, to get to this church one has to ride a cable car about 4,000 feet up into the mountains. Now, it is important to note that at this time Ella was suffering from severe panic disorder (complete with therapy and medication), which made things like this about as appealing as a bullet wound to the chest. Yet I trekked onward, going up in this rickety car, shaking the whole time, listening to Fleetwood Mac in hopes of distracting myself from the plummeting death that I was certain would come. Yet we lived.

After spending the morning on a typical sightseeing tour, my friends decided to take yet ANOTHER cable car up even higher. I declined and told them I would wait for them. But instead of waiting, I set out on a hike, following a trail through the woods - all alone. Along the path I jutted in and out of the woods, taking photos of statues, beautiful statues - of whom, I don’t know - along the way. I kept going, higher and higher, in a circular pattern that was somewhat dizzying. I didn’t see a single soul for at least 30 minutes and - although I knew I could find my way back - I felt like I had gone too far. I sat down on a rock in a state of absolute panic. Pulse racing, dizzy, terrified I wouldn’t be able to stand up and walk back. It was then that I started to hear a tap, a rhythmic noise along the ground. I couldn’t quite pinpoint where it was coming from. And then I saw him. An old man, probably close to 85 or 90, walking down the mountain I felt like I couldn‘t climb, cane in hand. He walked slowly, very slowly, with a cat behind him, and smirked at me as he moved past. “You’re pathetic,” I thought to myself, about myself. It was then that I stood up and started climbing back up that mountain.

Finally, I got there, to a cliff lord knows how many feet up in the air. A cliff jutting out over a huge chasm of land, that suspended me in mid-air at a level that could make a seasoned rock climber squirm. Upon this cliff sat a giant cast-iron cross and a circular guard rail, a flimsy piece of metal that basically says, “You’re supposed to come all the way over here. So come on.” I felt my palms get sweaty. I’m going to die here, I thought.

I inched my way towards the cross very slowly, trying to dismiss thoughts of toppling over, down to a horrific death. A death full of way too many moments of fuck-I-am-going-to-die clarity before one hits literal rock bottom. All the while I kept staring at the ground, at the dusty dirt and patchy grass and smooth stones beneath me. And then I saw it - a single rock, sitting among at least 3 dozen others, with a black cross drawn on top of it. I remember thinking how beautiful the rock was, and I vowed to take it back with me as soon as I got back from the edge of the cliff.

I kept walking slowly until, before I knew it, I was standing under the cross. On a tiny cliff. In mid-air. Thousands of feet above where a sane person wants to stand. And for the first time in years, seriously YEARS, I felt calm. I wasn’t scared at all. I walked right out to the guard rail and looked over, hung my head down, in fact, and felt every ounce of fear, terror, panic just fly away from my body. It felt as though I had taken a handful of Xanax or the way I had typically felt only in my dreams during those years I was a panicky, fucking mess. I sat. Took pictures. Wrote. Listened to Stevie Nicks. Cried. Laughed. Smiled. Felt nothing. And nothing - at that time - was everything.

I stood up. Brushed off my pants and got ready to head back. Took one final picture and walked back towards that pile of rocks to find the stone. The stone with the ashy black cross, a cross which I imagined some other tourist had drawn with a cigarette. But it was gone. GONE.
I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t high (didn’t touch drugs back then). But that rock I had seen, had bent over to admire, was gone. Not one rock lying there had a mark on it. I started picking them all up - maniacally - in search of that rock. But it simply wasn’t there. But it had been there. I know, with absolute certainty - to this day - that it was there. I saw I, I studied it, and I wanted to take it home. It was supposed to be there when I got back from that terrifying journey onto the cliff. Yet it was gone.

I often think about this experience in Spain - especially around Easter and Christmas. It didn’t quell my disbeliefs. I didn’t even make me certain that there is a God, a Christ, a Holy Spirit. But it did make me more certain that there is something out there - something bigger than me, to keep looking for, to bring me to my knees and make me question. Something to humble me.
Whatever you celebrate at this time, or any time of year, have a happy one.

With love,
Ella