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Turtle Talk #1

I come, absolutely by chance, from a western European religious tradition.
I did not choose it, nor did it choose me:  it just happened that way.

Our father, born in Norway, was a Lutheran, but he was an angry man,
so he was angry with Lutherans, too, because they were there.
His special form of revenge was to listen to fundamentalist idiots on the radio.

Our mother was a daughter of people born in Norway, so she was a Lutheran, too,
but she wasn't angry:  she just ought to have been so.
Instead, she learned to play the pump organ slowly,
just to keep the hymns from getting out of hand.

I was pushed by chance and perverse good intentions, into thinking about becoming a Lutheran pastor;
not by my parents, but by the solemn souls who provided Sunday School materials from the same people
who supported the radio broadcasts our dad listened to:  good, turtle-talking stuff:
a mechanic's view of creation, a bloodthirsty view of redemption, and a dismal view of the good life.
I was one of those kids who could read a whole sentence, although no determination of my teachers
ever convinced me that sentence diagramming was not just a leftover medieval form of torture.

I tripped-up during the first week of high school, and was expelled--
I went on strike for a student whom I did not even know--
which brought to mind that I had been tossed out of grade school, too,
and together with my parents, had to go see Mr. Rose, at his home, and throw myself onto the mercy
of the Weyerhaeuser Grade School School Board Court:  he was the president of the School Board--
an experience that had taught me my lesson--
so I had to forge my mother's signature to get back into high school.

I went to college because, in 1950, there were no service stations in our neighborhood--
only gas stations--so my employable option did not yet exist.  I commuted, of course.
I had thought to become a veterinarian, so after a year
I transferred to the State College, where the veterinarians were, and away from having to sit
in an assigned seat in the Chapel while a stool pigeon in the balcony recorded where the empty seats were.
I had a particularly good seat, up close to the lectern,
from where the President of the College told us the truth.

I tried to run away:  I had transferred to the State college, but they had a religious emphasis week,
and God spoke to me in Koine Greek and told me . . . well, there is the problem:
I did not know Greek from Shinola, and I never did understand how to diagram a sentence.
I got it all wrong:  instead of staying where I was, and getting good grades,
I went back to the church college where I had been, and enrolled in Greek, and medieval sociology,
and the on-campus Democratic Club.  The Dean of the College threw us out of Old Main
just because we had invited the political opponent of the College President's son to explain to us
how the President's son could collect veteran's bonus checks from two different States,
just by claiming to be a resident of two different States.

And that naturally led to a theological seminary, and a parish, and graduate school, and a growing conviction
that something was all wrong.  The heart of the religious argument--
keep in mind that I am speaking here specifically about the tradition I was in:
Christianity come through Europe--required that my head had to live in a three-storied universe
populated with gods and demons and heaven and hell and angels
and miracles and damnation and salvation and walking on water
and rising from the dead and a virgin birth and maybe a holy itch, or something equally irritating.

Why am I telling you this?

A couple of weeks ago, I replied to a broadcast invitation from the theological seminary
where I spent four pleasant years avoiding Greek, and getting married, and diagramming the New Testament.
The invitation asked how we might suggest improving theological education, or something like that.

I sent off a modest suggestion or two, and have not heard from anyone, so I think I will try it here,
in a subsequent post.  Why?  Because although I am no longer religious,
I do think religion is important, for two reasons:
1)  if it remains what it used to be, and still generally is, it is an obstruction to rational thinking, and
2)  if it wants to be useful, it will have to rethink what it is about.



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