Treehab

by Bob Smith

  At her granddaughter Amanda’s Bat Mitzvah, I was moved to tears when Edith stood with her in the Temple. Of course, the performer in me wanted Edith to crow at that moment, “Fuck you, Hitler!” and then sing, “I’m still here!” from Sondheim’s Follies.

  At Rosh Hashanah this year, Edith mentioned to me that she had gone to temple that day and had read in the day’s lesson that “God is always just.”

  “It’s upset me all day,” she said in her melodic middle-European accent. “God isn’t always just. My twin brother was killed. My cousin’s baby and my parents. Their deaths weren’t just. It’s not right and I’m writing my rabbi about it.”

  I was deeply moved by Edith’s thoughtful approach to her religion. It’s not a simple leap of faith for her to remain observant, but she also remains true to her experience. She’s faced the universe at gunpoint and her faith in her own powers of reasoning made me believe that she would tell God to his face that he’s unjust. And I have no doubt that would be a divine moment. I admire that the Jewish faith permits you to have a difference of opinion with our Father who art in heaven and not get kicked out of the family.

  Of course some Jewish beliefs are puzzling to this goy. For example, the kosher rule not to mix meat and dairy. But don’t cows mix meat and dairy? This sounds like the genesis for the venerable Jewish tradition of the punch line.

  The younger sibling of monotheism is Islam, but once I read that Muhammad led wars against neighboring tribes I lost interest in investigating that religion. Surely a prophet of God should be able to resist the temptation of going to war? Jesus and Buddha were peaceniks and I think the standard they set has to be observed by all prophets of God. The other thing I find off-putting about Islam is that they consider dogs to be ritually unclean animals. This may be a personal failing of mine, but my dog, Bozzie, is my friend, and if someone speaks badly of my friends, I want to have nothing to do with them. But my knowledge about Islam is limited and Emerson would never claim I’m having an original relationship with the universe by looking up Islam on Wikipedia. Certainly anyone who’s seen Islamic architecture will come away thinking Allah has an equal claim on our spirituality. I’ve also been appalled by the freely expressed anti-Islamic bigotry spouted in our country. I’ve traveled to an Islamic nation, Turkey, four times and loved every minute of it—Edith loves Istanbul also—and most of the Muslims I’ve ever met there were nicer than most of the Christians I hear on radio or see on television. The tragedy of Christians, Jews, and Muslims is they all claim to worship the same King of Kings, but each of them claims to be the favorite daughter of this Lear Above Us and then proceed in turn to behave like Goneril and Regan treated Cordelia.

  I believe all good books should be judged on their literary merits. If a religion tells a story that is hateful, prejudiced, or clumsily implausible, even in part, it’s not a good book.

  The pick and choose morality of religions is also a deal breaker. All three orthodox branches of the monotheistic faiths are officially homophobic, sexist, and for most of their history tolerated slavery. In the Bible there are more prohibitions against usury than there are against homosexuality, but banning marriage between bankers is a nonstarter since it would probably hurt the church, mosque, and synagogue fund-raising drives.

  I firmly believe all denominations deserve our tolerance, but many of them don’t deserve our respect. The Mormons didn’t officially consider African Americans equal until 1978! Yeah, God suddenly changed his mind about black people after he listened to all the great funk music in the seventies and then he relayed the revelation to his prophet Spencer W. Kimball in Salt Lake City.

  The Mormons also lead the campaign against marriage equality for gay couples, but never mention their founder Joseph Smith married a fourteen-year-old when he was thirty-eight. They also omit their second leader, Brigham Young, proved he liked to fuck ’em young when he married a fifteen-year-old when he was forty-two! So Mormons please lecture the gays that marriage is reserved for a man and a woman because you’re the experts on the subject with those shining examples of marriage between middle-aged men and middle school kids.

  Of course, the Southern Baptists also loudly proclaim the gays are sinners even though their church was formed in 1845 to support slavery. I really want to worship in the Plantation House of God with old slave cabins out back. (They probably called them “slave mangers” to make them sound more Christian.) If an organization is founded for an evil purpose can any good come of it? Let’s see, your church was formed to support separating children from their parents and auctioning them off, and yet you now claim to defend families? I know God is old, but he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. He’s not going to forget that his supposed followers, devils with a drawl, allowed children to be whipped and sold and then each week dropped their blood money in the collection plate, or that his other followers allowed children to be slaughtered by the Nazis and molested by priests, or that his other followers married children. And yet they all claim love between consenting same-sex adults is sinful.

  The ancient Greeks would call that hubris. Religious faith is by definition unproven, but many believers possess an overweening arrogance that allows people to behave despicably due to their smug conviction they’re doing the right thing. For the most part the ancient Greeks told bedtime stories that made even the most rewarding afterlife sound like a punishment. The Iliad and Odyssey were the touchstones of ancient Greek religious and cultural beliefs, and they’re probably the only two examples of Good Books that are actually enjoyable to read. Every educated Greek was familiar with the works of Homer, and in book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus visits the land of the dead and meets Achilles. Achilles died a hero’s death, a death the Greeks honored, but he appears to Odysseus in a dream and tells him that living as a metic, basically a serf enslaved to a tenant farmer, a man with no home, anathema to the Greeks, would be better than being a dead hero in the afterlife. This is a chilling message every Greek knew and while it’s one of the most beautiful passages in all of literature, it’s not exactly comforting about death and the afterlife.

  The Greeks had no fixed canon or bible about their gods, and every generation was allowed to have an original relationship with their universe and tell their stories anew. The stories of the Greek gods, like the best stories in our Bible, capture a sophisticated and often dark view of life and human nature. Demeter caused autumn and winter because she was depressed about being separated from her daughter, Kore, who had to spend six months a year as a prisoner of Hades. It requires a nimble and witty culture to make a riveting story about seasonal affective disorder.

  One major difference between our one God and a Greek god is they all had sex, except for Athena, who remained a virgin, although she seemed to take out her frustration by being a goddess of war. Zeus and Apollo were bisexual. It’s great to have a religion that isn’t homophobic plus gods that are hotties.

  According to his unflattering portrait in the Old Testament, our God is more into stoning than getting his rocks off. We’re told our God is love, but he never gets laid. Uh-oh. That explains a lot. We all know from experience, if someone’s not getting any and they’re in a position of authority over you, you’re fucked. And even worse, our God’s watching his creations boink all the time. Which turns our God into the strangest sort of wanker pervert leering at us through the clouds. And does anyone really believe a God who’s never had any kind of sex is in any position to judge the sex lives of consenting adults? If a human did that we’d just blame his disapproval on envy.

  Of course, the Three Stooges of Monotheism and the dysfunctional family of Mount Olympus aren’t the only faiths on earth. There are the Eastern religions of Buddhism and Hinduism. They ask everyone to buckle down and seek enlightenment. It sounds good until I discovered the path to enlightenment is by reincarnation.

  Reincarnation is a school system where almost everyone is a slow learner who keeps flunking the final. But is the almost universal rate of failure the fault
of the students or the educational system? Is it fair that everyone’s memories of their previous lives are wiped clean like a blackboard and we have to start from scratch each time? Reincarnation comes off as an idiotic way to impart wisdom. You have to relearn every life lesson repeatedly as if childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, and old age were flashcards you were too dumb to memorize when you were a priest in ancient Egypt. Not to mention that reincarnation is responsible for the idea of karma and this notion of cosmic justice has been misused to treat other people as “untouchables,” one of the most unjust and repellent ideas in history.

  Buddhists also believe in rebirth, but it doesn’t guarantee your soul will return to be reborn. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation is closer to cosmic recycling where if you lived as a plastic bottle and were good, you might come back as an inflatable pool chair, but if you were bad, you’ll come back as a toilet seat. Many of my close friends are Buddhists and I actually appreciate the cosmic ambiguity of their concept of the afterlife. I can live with a mystery, but one of the five tenets of Buddhist belief is that life is suffering.

  I don’t buy that. Life includes suffering, but for the most part, my life’s been fun, even after I was dealt a poker hand with four Angels of Death. I have a hunch that if Buddhists stopped believing life is suffering the world would suddenly be a lot pleasanter for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.

  Now many people find spiritual inspiration in the natural world. One of my favorite writers and one of Emerson’s best friends was Henry David Thoreau, who said, “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” It’s a sentiment I concur with as I’ve definitely felt a cosmic sense of awe when I’ve witnessed a hundred blue-footed boobies plummet from the sky into the ocean in the Galápagos, seen fifty killer whales rising from the sea in Alaska, walked through redwoods, admired the chilly fire of New England’s forests in autumn, or seen a hummingbird courageously sitting on its nest, even though a big plodding birdwatcher was gawking two feet away.

  I revere the natural world and believe there are many places on earth where you can feel we never left Eden. Finding God in nature seems initially comforting since, like Thoreau, I also prefer hugging strange trees to strange people.

  Many fundamentalist Christians support right-wing nutjobs who oppose protecting the earth. (I never use the word “conservative” because right-wing “conservatives” don’t conserve anything.) They’re ignoring numerous Bible verses about caring for God’s creation. “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock, and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth” (Genesis 9:9–10).

  That’s every living creature. I’m not going to allow wolverines to go extinct because selfish greedy men are determined to make the world an office.

  Worshiping Nature isn’t easy once you realize your reverence for the Grand Canyon also has to include bowing down before smallpox. Nature is not a merciful god, and as Thoreau lay dying of tuberculosis, I bet he would have gladly said, “Fuck Nature! Give me some antibiotics.”

  Some religions tell stories of such beauty that they express the cosmic. The Yup’ik of Alaska believe everything has a soul: animals, people, rocks. A belief I embrace. When Yup’ik women collected driftwood on the beaches for their fires, they would occasionally overturn a piece in order to make the wood more comfortable and relieve it from sitting in the same position. To me, that belief is cosmic and comic. Showing compassion to a tree limb is a more profound expression of hope than a guy hanging on a cross. If we can learn to be considerate to wood, maybe we won’t end up being selfish pricks for our entire lives.

  Isn’t it time to consider a God who’s not our crazy shut-in relative in the attic? Do we need a God who makes us jump through hoops to earn our haloes? Shouldn’t we believe that the God who created the cosmos isn’t petty and small-minded? And shouldn’t we have a religion that’s also based upon faith in people like Jackie and Fred? Even if people only answer your prayers 10 percent of the time, that’s a track record that beats God’s. There’s nothing wrong with believing in a loving God, and my emphasis is on a loving God, as many religions still profess a belief in a vindictive God, but Fred and Jackie have made me believe talking to people should be the first thing you should try; if that doesn’t work, then pray.

  Oh, and if people believe God gave me ALS because I’m gay, or he’s sending two middle-aged lesbians to hell for kissing or barbecuing a scared teenage girl for having an abortion, it’s the opposite of divine love. It’s time to stop tolerating the idea that religions that hurt and kill people aren’t evil, out of a sense of misguided politeness. It’s time to exercise our right and duty to demonstrate we love our neighbors by fighting against intolerant faiths. Religions that preach hate should die and go to their bigot heaven where the angel’s robes are accessorized with Klan hoods. If you insist on believing in a vengeful God, I pray that my loving God will punish your hateful intolerance for eternity by sending you to heaven, where you’ll get a pair of angel’s wings and then discover you’re allergic to feathers.

  So what sort of religion would I advocate? My bible would be two paragraphs:

  Anton Chekhov wrote, “My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take.” And Walt Whitman wrote, “This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God.”

  It is pointless to argue about God since the only people who claim to have spoken to him are usually certifiably insane. My problem with most religions is they encourage procrastination by holding out the afterlife as the place where all our problems will be solved, rather than pointing out that most human problems can be remedied here on earth. I’m more afraid of dying horribly, being unable to walk, talk, eat, write, or wack off than I am of being dead. And God is not going to prevent me from dying horribly; people will. People will find a cure for my disease and people like Jackie and Fred give me hope.

  God has to be Love—any other alternative is universally unacceptable—but many Christians wear bracelets bearing the initials WWJD: What Would Jesus Do? First of all, Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality and so fundamentalists should follow his example and shut the fuck up. Second, seeking to emulate Jesus is setting yourself up to fail, since you can’t get news that you’re going to be crucified and vow to rise from the dead three days after you croak.

  I have proof of the goodness of people and faith that love and compassion can make even the horrors of a monstrous disease bearable and reveal that heaven on earth is possible. My partner, Michael, proves this to me every day and so does my best friend, Eddie. Jackie is truly the most compassionate, loving person I know. She’s changed my life more than God, although I am open to the idea God brought her into my life. I can always figure out how to do the right thing by just asking myself: What Would Jackie Do?

  I’ve had a funny amazing life and get a terminal illness when I’m forty-seven? I have no qualms about asking the God of Love, Who the hell brought me on the early train? I bet Anne Frank and Jesus would back me up. If I’m admitted through the gates of heaven, I expect shirtless Apollo to be waiting. He’ll ask me out for a date and then I’ll believe in paradise.

  At Walden Pond with Henry

  John, guess where I am.”

  “Sitting in front of your laptop, either writing something funny or checking out something filthy.”

  “Good guess, but no. I’m at Walden Pond. Doesn’t it seem hilariously wrong to have good cell reception here?”

  “It’s hilariously wrong to use your cell phone there. Thoreau would be pissed.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. I’m right outside
a replica of his cabin. Henry was a New Yorker. He built a studio apartment in his Central Park. And you know how we New Yorkers love our cell phones.”

  Walden Pond State Reservation is a characteristic example of how we enjoy nature: 2,680 acres of protected forest enhanced by several acres of parking lots. I continued to chatter with John while walking under the shade of tall trees and admiring the pond where wilderness preservation first dipped a toe in the water, when a man stepped into my path.

  “John, I have to go. I’ll call you later.”

  “Bob, I’m trying to savor this grove,” said the man. “But it’s an insurmountable task due to your ceaseless hubbub. You’re aggravating the cicadas.”

  It felt as if I had chugged a can of adrenaline. Had I dropped dead? The man who scolded me looked exactly like Henry David Thoreau. And then he introduced himself. “Thoreau here. But call me Henry.” Henry’s tight-lipped mouth looked like a corral for untamed words. His trimmed dark beard, long nose, lean build, and brown suit give him the air of a schoolmaster, but his memorable blue-gray eyes made me sense he would teach me something that would change my life.

  I explained the reason for my call, pointing out that my friend is a fellow Nature Boy, and that he mocked me for using a machine for anything at Walden Pond.