I think I’ve figured out how churches got so powerful.
People need them. People need there to be something bigger and stronger and more important than mankind. Who was it that said if religion didn’t exist we’d have to invent it? Someone smart.
A friend of mine died last week. She was old, she had been dying for awhile but even when you know it’s coming it’s not any easier when it actually happens. And when you talk to your dad who to every little girl is the strongest man in the world and his voice breaks and you realize that no person is any stronger or weaker than the next, it’s scary. You want to believe there are people out there better than you, stronger than you. That’s why people idolize celebrities, why Obama is under so much pressure.
But there’s not. Which is why people need a God. (Or a king or a righteous revolutionary agenda…) As egotistical as we are, I think on some level at least we realize how truly lame and incompetent we are. We want there to someone (or something) better, wiser. I do at least. I am fully aware of my patheticness. I want there to be more than me.
When I went to Chartres this past weekend with my roommate we went into the Cathedral there and I lit a candle for Emily. The candles are beautiful but the flame is so small and burns such dim light, but you look up and the windows are so tall and majestic and shed brilliant light. I know that these are just things material things and maybe it’s wrong that I’m affected by it, maybe I’m just too ignorant to see past the illusion but to me it seems more an allusion than illusion. Maybe it’s not. What do I know. But then, what do you know?
There are not many people or things I need. I rarely feel lonely and I don’t rely on people much. But after Emily died, and we went to Chartres cathedral it was really comforting to feel and to think there is something more for her. I think today in general we are much less dependent on human relations than ever before. For peasants back in the day, who didn’t have so many Things and distractions, whose whole world was based on human relations because that’s all they had, of course they needed a God. Of course they needed a king. It makes perfect sense.
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