The Religion of My Childhood

I grew up in a casual Catholic family with a younger brother and an older sister. We all went to Catholic school from kindergarten to 8th grade. But as a child I never really paid much attention to all the rituals and beliefs. I remember being taught certain things to memorize, like the seven deadly sins, the seven virtues, etc., but I never really gave any weight to them - just memorized words. I do remember even at a very young age feeling that out of respect I should do what was expected during mass. So I did all the things - sang the songs, responded when we were supposed to respond, went up for communion, etc. More than anything I think I was doing those things out of respect. Generally during mass, while someone was talking I would zone out. None of it meant anything to me, save one thing. When they would talk about Jesus's life I would be interested. The man seemed very interesting to me. I didn't want to hear what other people thought about him, or what other people thought about what he said; I wanted to here about what he actually did and said in his life.

Sometime around the age of 10 I was in Movie Gallery with the whole family after eating chinese. My parents were letting us choose whatever movie we wanted. After walking around for a while I went to my dad with Franco Zeffirelli's masterpiece Jesus of Nazareth. Of course this was back in the day of VHS, so the six-hour installment was on, I think, 3 tapes... which I carried up to him. My dad kind of smiled and looked amused, but I don't think anything surprised either of my parents much at this point. So he rented it for me.

I ended up watching the entire six-hour mini-series by myself. I remember this feeling of thinking how awesome Jesus was. I felt like he was everything a man should be. I looked at him in reverence like he was the cool older brother. He wasn't afraid, but he wasn't proud either. He was strong, but not hard. He was confident, but not arrogant. He was gentle, but not weak. He was the perfect embodiment of what real manliness was about - an inner strength unmatched in all of the world, a strength that was untouchable by anything on earth. No man or beast could truly injure this man. Even on the way to the cross, having been abused beyond anything we can imagine, even then, he still held all the power. As mankind thought they were winning, they were in fact only making fools of themselves at the expense of someone who did nothing wrong to them. And in not raising a hand against them, he overcame them. Even in crying out to God while on the cross, Jesus still was all the man anyone could ever be.

Through most of those younger years, I would model myself after this Jesus of Nazareth, and I would put all my problems on his shoulders, knowing that he would hear me and help me, and hoping somewhere in there that he would one day make a real man out of me too.

I remember at some point in middle school when my friends started this thing where they'd punch each other in the chest or on the shoulder for no reason. And the person who was hit would of course immediately hit back, but when someone would hit me I wouldn't even have the urge to respond. It seemed just as natural to me to do nothing. It wasn't something fained; I just didn't feel the need to respond in any way.

Of course, 8th grade came, and so did the hormones. I started sagging my pants very low, below my navel rather than above. I started wearing boxers instead of briefs. I started rebelling. And I began hitting back. The conviction was still there - the faith, the reverence, the brotherhood. But the hormones were coming strong. I used Saint Augustine's story to justify to myself the rebellion. He was bad until a later age when he gave himself back to spiritual purposes, why couldn't I be bad until a later age then?

Entering and Trashing

Someone broke into my car last night... Well not broke, ummm, opened - since I generally leave my car doors unlocked. It's an old clunker, and I keep nothing valuable in it, so it was quite amusing to come to it this morning with the seat pulled up and trash thrown around... Apparently they didn't find anything worth taking and just left the trash (well mostly plastic recyclables that I take to work to get recycled).

Finished Lost Season 5 last night...

Of course, back to Lost, that fantastic series. We just finished season 5 last night, and it was great. It was even better than some of the previous seasons. Season 6 is going to be the last one where they wrap everything up. It ought to be interesting.

Too Few Summer Plans

I have been mapping out some free music lessons to put up online in video form which I hope to be filming sometime soon, probably over the summer. So there's that. Of course I'll be working full-time so it's not like it will be a special break. I suppose I'll dig up some of those draft blogs now and finish them.

The Long-Awaited Final Fantasy XIII

Somehow I didn't find much time over spring break to really get into the new and long awaited Final Fantasy XIII. I suppose it was all the other side projects I've had going. But I am several hours into the game, and it's just as great as I expected. The game's advertising slogan "The battle within begins" is just starting to come to Light - actually that's her name, the heroine - Lightning, but she says, "call me Light." She certainly has some problems within. Circumstances leave her with a group of strangers who become branded (literally) with a destiny they have yet to have figured out. There's deep history and myth involved on the exotic planet where all this takes place, although 8 hours into the game I am still on the mechanical outer surface where the story thus far has taken place. After each cutscene, your "datalog" gets updated with new information, usually giving, in prose, a deeper take on what just happened in the game - altogether it can be a lot of reading if you choose to get even deeper into the story than the movie-like cutscenes allow, but it's not required. I have found it to be a great game. I only wish I had a little more time right now :)

New Moon, sequel to Twilight

I got my wife New Moon on blu-ray for her birthday recently. It's the sequel to Twilight, a vampire/werewolf film based on the novel (the first in a series of 4) by Stephenie Meyer. My wife read them and really enjoyed them. We did find the first movie, Twilight, to be pretty cheesy. A lot of the acting was overly dramatic, and the movie has quite the following of haters. Nonetheless, we did enjoy it, and we also recalled that being 17 and in love was very cheesy even in real life. But New Moon was great. It seems they worked on the cheesy acting. I was really surprised. So that's how we spent the last day of our spring break - watching Twilight, then New Moon back to back... Then played some Final Fantasy XIII then watched some Lost. A good final lazy day.

Blogger's block...

Seriously I sit here in front of the computer and no matter what topic, it just doesn't want to come out. It's okay though I have several drafts saved here that just aren't finished yet. That should take me up to the mark once I finish those out and post them. I think I'll need to let some space into my brain over spring break. I took off work for that week too, a much needed break.

Best. Vacation. Ever.

My best vacation was on my honeymoon. I can't say too much about it since we try to keep it a mystery to maintain its non-touristy nature so that we can go back possibly in the future without it being replaced by hotels and restaurants.

What made it awesome was that it was an island and we stayed in a condo right on the beachfront (well about a 1-minute walk). Going a week without a clock or a watch, sleeping and waking to the sound of the ocean, strong and clean ocean air, strong winds, whale-watching with binoculars from the balcony of the condo, hiking anywhere in any direction to the multiple deserted white sand beaches... Seriously, I didn't think this kind of thing could be experienced in this day and age, and it really can't in most places, but there are a few places left to make this possible. We also got to go snorkeling for the first time ever, and we got to ride mules down a mountainside.