God and I

[LiviaOlivia]

God and I

Originally published in Telos #3, November 1980, edited by Fred Haskell, Gary Farber, and Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Reprinted in Making Book by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, published by NESFA Press, 1994. Copyright 1980 by Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

It's been a jackpot year for catching reruns of old historical riffs. For instance, I was tickled to see the Papacy get it together one more time and denounce the legitimacy of secular authority. That doesn't mean I expect to see Helmut Schmidt standing barefoot in the snow at Canossa any time soon, you understand, but it was the sort of thing a Pope is supposed to do. After that, JP II agreed to re-hear Church v. Galileo at the instigation of a member of the Dominicans (which again is fitting), on account of a slight suspicion that the Catholic Church was in the wrong the last time they tried the case. And Israel, now, has gone over to the shekel standard in a move to combat inflation. I was even privileged earlier this month to once more sit in front of the television, getting smashed while watching a President I could wholeheartedly hate--though the last time I did that, the President in question was resigning to avoid impeachment.

So pick your own anachronism. Myself, I got hauled up in front of an ecclesiastical court this summer and formally excommunicated. Really. A genuine heretic, anathematized by the grace of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormons. (By the way, if you are a Mormon and are reading this, I should warn you that I've touched all the pages in this issue of Telos and the paper is probably crawling with heretic-microbes. Don't let me stop you, but if you suddenly go weak in the knees and develop an irresistible craving to vote the straight Socialist Workers' Party ticket while drinking a cup of coffee and praying to the Blessed Virgin Mary in a swimming pool on Sunday, you'll know what's happened to you. Sorry.) I could wish, just for the sake of completeness, that they had dashed the candles to the ground and all, gone the whole route, and that if I were to die without a reconciliation they would hunt up an unsanctified crossroads to bury me under; but what actually happened--well, what happened comes in the proper course of this story. So let me maunder on for a while and then I'll explain how the deed was done, along with other mysteries like the Holy Underwear of God and the Book of Ether.

You can take your pick of where this story ought to start. I'm inclined to favor 1964, when I was eight years old. That's the age when Mormon children are baptized and confirmed and thereafter held accountable for their sins. Even at that age I'd already had some difficulties in Sunday School, since I'd fallen in love with archaeology and fossils, and one day, in all innocence, argued Darwin over Genesis to my teacher. After that episode my mother took me aside and said that by all means I should believe in evolution, but that I wasn't to speak of it in church. I was confused, but I mostly kept my mouth shut. I didn't give up on the dinosaurs, though.

But my baptism was a rank failure. I was duly interviewed by my Bishop and recommended for the ritual--after all, what sins does an eight-year-old have access to, aside from the milder sloths and avarices? They have neither the temptation nor the opportunity for really solid wickedness--and then I went around for weeks sinning incessantly. I figured that the sins would shortly be all washed away anyway, and then after that I'd have to be good. On the appointed day I fasted and was dressed in white cotton coveralls, by way of ceremonial vestments, and then after some prayers was firmly dunked, head under, in a baptismal font. It should have worked, but it didn't. I never felt the least bit saved, or cleansed, or intitiated, or much of anything besides wet all over. Besides, as soon as I got home I snitched and ate a Tootsie Roll intended for one of my brothers, and only afterward remembered that this constituted theft and was now a sin. I checked by the clock. My sinlessness had lasted for something under two hours, and it was all downhill from there.

~snip~

This is long but please continue at:

http://nielsenhayden.com/GodandI.html

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. Great read. Amusing. Thanks for posting.

[onager]

2. Hilarious!

Thank you.

Mormon history is almost as goofy as $cientology history...