Happy Birthday, Bae Jesus — And Merry Christmas to the Rest of Y’all
As a Black child growing up in the inner city of Chicago, my first encounters with religion were accompanied by the joyful noise of full-throated, full throttle “shouts,” led by high stepping pastors and choirs with what seemed to be indestructible vocal cords.
I was mortified, however, when the “Holy Ghost parties” began. All of the most pious sisters, the most well-respected and normally dignified brothers would vault from their seats, whirling like dervishes and howling like banshees, both sexes ecstatically insisting “cain’t nobody do me like Jesus.”
Like most of the younger folks in attendance, as the frenzy crept from pew to pew I covered my face with both hands when female relatives jumped up to do their “holy dance.” And I would fervently pray to the same Jesus who had apparently driven the others barking mad to please spare me the humiliation of seeing my mother pass out on the floor in front of the entire congregation like some of the other mothers had.
I did not want Him touching my mother and turning her into a raving lunatic in front of all my friends. And I swore that He would never touch me, either. Never. Not a chance.
So last year, some 50 years after I made that stubborn declaration of spiritual independence, I became a full-fledged, baptized Catholic.
Whoa. How did that happen?
Well, life led me here. Through an admittedly circuitous route.
I say this because Catholicism was, for most of my early years, a religion that my mother and many inner city Black folks seemed both frightened by and envious of.
“Those Catholics,” they were always called. Almost the same way some white folks called us “you people.” But tinged with a touch of respect and awe that “we people” did not receive.
“Those Catholics,” I gathered, were a very serious lot, whose religion required a level of discipline few could maintain. For instance, the nuns we gawked at when we caught a glimpse of a few in their black habits were all supposedly married to Jesus, a fact that both impressed and vexed a lot of the local men.
It made Jesus both bad ass and more than a wee bit greedy. And of course, there was always the unspoken question about how He could possibly satisfy all those women, especially when He wasn’t even here. Not in the flesh anyway.
Nevertheless, the strivers amongst us fought hard to get their children into Catholic schools and out of the gang-ridden hell holes the rest of us were destined for. Few converted to Catholicism full on, but they spoke reverently of the strictness of “those nuns,” and the rigor of the curriculum.
Even so, there were other rumors. Something I forgot about until a few years ago when my mother, by then living in a nursing home for medical reasons, caused a Catholic roommate to ask to be moved to a different room.
After watching said roommate pray to her saints and say her Rosary for several weeks, my mother finally began to question and then rebuke her for “idolatry.” And then one day, my mother told her “all that incense and chanting and whatnot” reminded her of “that hoodoo they used to do down in Mississippi.”
I apologized on her behalf. But it wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. Many family members had expressed the same fears. Catholics prayed to statues and “talked to” dead people.
Catholics lit candles and waved incense around in “those” churches. Even worse, the priests thought they were God. And people had to go apologize to them every week, or they would go to Hell.
Ironically, many of the things my relatives and friends were so afraid of and scandalized by are the things I went in search of throughout the 60s and 70s. I wanted the structure. I wanted the rituals. I wanted a “spiritual representative” here on Earth.
Those were, after all, the years of Transcendental Meditation and experimentation with “altered” states. Friends became devoted Buddhists and Hindus, chanting fervently at altars in their tiny apartments.
It was also the time of Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar — one of my boyfriends would play the lead in the touring company of the latter. Every hippie guy I knew compared himself to Jesus. Usually as a come on, but sometimes sincerely. There were Christian communes and “Jesus freak families” flourishing all over the world.
I careened from religion to religion. Discipline to discipline. Became, finally, Baha’i for a short while, wooed by the requirements for daily prayer and the magnificent white domed temple in Wilmette, Illinois.
Later, when I married into and lived among the Hopi Tribe out in Arizona, I was introduced to a world that revolved around religion, rich with ritual and an unparalleled personal relationship with Spirit. They believed in one god, too. And lots of saint-like spirits who danced in the village plazas on summer weekends, and could take their prayers to him.
I would also meet a Yoruba priestess, steeped in a similar spirit world which my African ancestors had brought with them over the water. They had prayed to their spirits on those slave ships. And hidden them, later, under Catholic saints throughout the Diaspora.
I was, the priestess said, a daughter of Oya, the whirlwind goddess of transformation who had come to me as a tornado in a dream one night, with all my ancestors walking proudly in front of her.
A huge honor, that was, she told me. And I was honored. But the required rituals and incantations were uncomfortable and overwhelming. And ultimately, too foreign on every level. There was too much American mixed in with my African after so many generations.
And so, I picked up the white Bible I’d received as a child one day. Rather reluctantly. I had read it on my own, all the way through, twice — once as a child, seeking answers to that Sunday insanity that had vexed me so. And Jesus had impressed me, I admit. I read all the red passages over and over again. But then I fell in love with John Lennon and that was that.
This time, something very strange happened. It spoke to me. And it was also more poetic, mystical and yet also practical than any other sacred book I’d explored.
But I couldn’t go back to my mother’s church. I’d lived too many lives, seen too many cultures. I needed a combination of all I’d experienced.
I also needed a religion with a “pedigree.” To be part of the religion that my Beloved had established. The one that descended from his Disciples. No detours.
But by then, as a child of the 60s and the wife of a Native American artist living on a reservation, I was wary of Catholicism for political reasons. I will not belabor that point. It is, however, a point forcefully made by friends just before my recent baptism.
I was joining the religion of The Oppressor. The religion that had enslaved and helped exterminate millions of indigenous people. The religion of the Crusades, the religion of The Inquisition. The religion that did not allow women to be ordained, the religion that shamed homosexuals…
But one Christmas Eve, my daughter’s boyfriend insisted we go to midnight Mass at a nearby church, and Jesus was there. I felt Him.
I wasn’t ready for Him yet. It would take a few serious slaps upside the head and a near-fatal illness to get my full attention. And some love, too. Love like nothing I’d ever felt before.
No, it’s not sexual. It’s better than that. Though sometimes I’m like a high school girl who can’t wait to catch a glimpse of That Boy walking by. Can’t wait to get to Mass and sit next to Him for a whole hour. He even does that Edward Cullen thing, sneaking into my house all hours of the day and night.
Leaves me little “love notes” all over the place. Miracles. Honest to God miracles. Things I can’t explain away. Things I kept mostly to myself at first because I couldn’t explain them — I won’t try here, either. Except to say that I begged Him not to make me crazy like those people who used to act a fool in my mother’s church.
But when He wants you, He wants you. And he puts all other suitors to shame.
So after a personal invitation from The Man Himself and months of soul-searching, I took The Plunge. Literally. With all my skeptical things standing beside me as the priest doused me with holy water.
That song they used to sing at my mother’s church is true: cain’t nobody do me like Jesus. I just had to meet Him over at His House to get the feels.
So, happy birthday, Bae.
And to the rest of y’all, a very Merry Christmas.
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