My grandmother never wore shoes, bought her finest clothes at yard sales and could sew anything that didn't move. As her only, and therefore best, granddaughter, everything and anything I did was "buuuuutiful." I miss her most of all when I play the piano; the old rocker next to my upright has not been used for nearly three years.
I pray to a God that I've never seen or met to take care of her, give her a garden to pick her tomatoes and a rocking chair to sit at when I sing in another world below. It is a leap of faith, a hope that my grandmother's passion for music, nature and art can live on in me.
The need to have faith to explain what we don't understand is deeply ingrained in humanity. Some thousands of years ago, humans not all too different than ourselves, wanted an explanation for the world around them. From Greek gods, Egyptian pharaohs, to the Pope himself, religion gives us something to hold on to when we are helpless and something to thank when we achieve. The creeds of religion all center around maintaining a strong personal integrity and respecting others and their property. So while my church may say "forgive us our trespasses" and your church may say "forgive our debtors," we are all living for the common good. Call it God, fate or gravity -- there is some force stronger than ourselves in control. We hope there is, we want there to be. This is faith: having something to hope for and to believe in.
While we have created religion to deal with society, society's influence has redefined faith. Religion operates on society's need for faith and has been used to maintain authority, rule countries, and wage war. Religion, originally meant to make faith into a creed, has been turned into a paradox.
Which brings me to Willard Building, where my favorite man on campus, Gary Cattell, feels the need to shout to all of us that if we weren't going to hell already, that because of last weekend, we most definitely are now. Gary has spurred quite a bit of controversy over his years at Penn State whether he violates the university's fire code, or the university violates his First Amendment rights.
I had heard Gary many times before, but I had never really stopped to listen for an entire class-change of lecture. Gary was sick today, his voice a little raspy, but this did not stop him from preaching on this beautiful afternoon. His scripture reading and lecture did have good points: good and bad happen to everyone, abstinence until marriage is best and drinking should be done responsibly. So if this was his message, then why is he so offensive?
Gary assumes that all college students are the same. I suppose it is because of this that we are all going to hell. We all lack responsibility, spending our weekends fornicating, drinking and being homosexual, among other things. Not only do I find it strange that the Willard Preacher equates homosexuality, lust, fornication and drunkenness with murder, but that he actively judges people that he does not even know. One of the main creeds of religion, and even the foundation of Gary's lectures, is that God does not judge. This seems ironic for someone claiming to be so unbelievably religious.
On a human level, he uses scare tactics to get us to listen. One of the main things I learned in my speech communications class was not to alienate an audience. If he intends to invoke any sort of change, Gary is going to have to consider becoming more human and less of a preacher. He treats the student body as a mass and is judgmental, making him more of a Willard mascot than a religious advocate.
Gary is by far the most annoying and dynamic preachers that I have ever come across. He gives this university character. He gives us something to think about (and me to write about), whether it's protecting his freedom of speech or considering our religious views. He has become the norm to the point that if he is missing for even one day, we wonder where he could possibly be. We step around him as we walk to our classes in Willard and laugh at the people that make comments in his direction.
The day I decided to inhabit the Willard steps, there was more than the usual Gary crusade. In addition to the usual jeers and cheers at Gary, a group of parishioners from York were making their annual trip to Penn State with the sole purpose of passing out pamphlets and talking to students about the word of God. They just happened to decide that Willard was also the best place to reach most of the Penn State student body. They were at least a little less vocal about proclaiming who will go to hell by putting up an orange spray painted sign, "The Wicked Shall be Turned into Hell."
Let the games begin: A very random, long-haired sort of man was insistent that this Roman Catholic parishioner knew nothing about Greek Orthodox Catholics. For nearly ten minutes, he followed the parishioner around screaming that he knew nothing about his religious creed. The parishioner sifted maniacally through the pages of his Bible, attempting to defend his accused ignorance. Students formed a fight circle like some sort of West Side Story mockery, all in front of the Willard Building. Here we were, 2000 years after Christ's crucifixion, continuing to bicker and fight about religion.
The paradox goes against what religion was intended to do and is what drives potential followers away. Religion is more than the creed you follow, it is the way you live your life. Be a good person, consider the consequences of your decisions, realize that everything you do affects other people, and that someone or something with a power greater than you will ever understand is in control. This is faith, not religion.
None of us know what is beyond this life, not even Gary, not even the visiting parishioners. Fighting about religion is a contradiction that I will never understand. It is faith, a combination of fate and self-determination, that gives us peace of mind.
Every time I look in my mother's eyes, play my piano, or burn a casserole with one of my grandmother's homemade potholders, I know that faith is in my life.
She lives within me and within my faith that life will go on.
