Very slowly we begin to realize how many children have been trafficked -- even sold by parents and even in the US -- and how many of them are boys. I have seen writing and images made by these boys and I see that many of them have deeply religious questions. Reflecting as former active clergy, what can be said to such boys who have been so tormented and distorted by their lives?
First of all, no notion of a big male all-powerful, all-knowing “king” in the sky is going to be the least bit reassuring in the long run. Perhaps at first the idea of a hero-savior is appealing, but the fear that this entity may turn on them, that they must bend to a greater will, is toxic. The link below quickly reviews one of the core stories of the three Middle-Eastern “Abramic” religions. I myself would relate it to the willingness to sacrifice young men in war.
Second, most of the “religious” ideas in our culture come from institutional religion, perhaps as pervasive as the Abramics, but also Buddhist, Pagan, Wiccan, American Indian, African forces -- which are much less well-known but also invested in written manifestos, power hierarchies, and specific dogmas about all sorts of things. These are of no use to street boys. They are more likely to respond to the ideas of science, the cosmologists and the cell biology people, because those address sensory perceptions and their own diseases in vivid ways, ideally without judgment.
Third, religious disciplines like attendance at group services, or a regular schedule of prayer, or practices like confession that involve judgment, penitence and atonement are not likely to help a person whose life is chaos. Pizza might do more good.
What is the entry point to all religious systems? I would argue it is deep experience. Not a matter of shaped and refined thought, but simply spontaneous intense response to givens whether as deliberate as lsd or as accidental as a misty dawn when a triple rainbow appears through the sky. (You have to be facing away from the sun.) Sometimes it can even be from an ordeal, accidental or requested. People seek it in relationship, maybe bodily sexual and maybe intense intimacy without touching.
Something needs to stop the tumbling grayness of alienation by anchoring on a point of light: a meaning that can offer orientation, a source of gravity. Bodies are meant to operate this way and bodies are the source of identity, which offers the emergence of meaning. This is more likely to happen in a protected environment: a garden, a monastery, a safe house. Stop the chaos, probably not by capture but more like a kind of magnetism.
Nothing is more magnetic than work. Not forced labor, but the kind of focused attention and skill shown by someone who loves their work, their product, the process of creation. As the fellow jokes, “I’m not afraid of work -- I could sit right next to it all day.” Everyone loves to watch work. Auctions of Western art now routinely include artists who paint on site while the patrons cluster to watch. They aren’t there to see naked women or shocking symbols. They just love the empathic enjoyment of paint going onto the canvas, the developing of it, the smell and texture of it. At Scriver Studio the entrance to the workshop from the foyer was a Dutch door, originally meant to let the workers see whether someone was there, but finally so people could watch the workmen. Pretty soon they itch to do something of their own.
Maybe there is something more magnetic than work: wickedness and the forbidden. Religions often base their power on these, either by claiming to have control of it or to have special knowledge of secrets and initiation into them. The symbolism of wickedness -- Satan, Voodoo, Black Mass -- is continuous with that of the traditional institutions, simply reversed. Immaculate white feather angel wings versus black leather bat wings. And so on. Gangs that can be entered only by criminal acts, even murder, versus orders that can only be entered by long study and worthy discipline. Those who model the power of the wicked know that the point of reference might be a black hole. The power of the virtuous? An innocent embrace.
The lone child -- bruised, infected, violated, cold, hungry, and stunned from drugs meant to stop pain -- is likely to be resistant to all approaches except those of his own kind. If a boy thrown out of his family and into a wracking social maelstrom is approached by another boy, he may muster a sense of affinity that can become trust. Centuries ago there was a phenomenon called the Children’s Crusade. Perhaps it is time for a new version, not to fight some competing religion but to reach out kid-to-kid. Actually, it’s already happening here and there.
Because this IS a religious war: a war against the religion of prosperity based on control, domination, exclusion, and neglecting other people’s children. The ideals of human survival do not say that this kid gets to live protected (if smothered) and this other kid is on his own and no one cares. Getting rich -- proclaiming it is the result of free enterprise and natural merit plus hard work -- is dogmatic, institutional, theological (the theos loves me because I’m just like the theos, at least like the punishing tyrant in the Old Testament) and corrupt. Very wicked. A black hole.
But that principle is a return to the terms that have done so much damage in so many ways. NOT what people are now calling the “spiritual,” which is to say the “felt” world that is a source of connection and growth. Dump the rules and dogma. Go to nature and all the arts: dance, music, paint, clay, constructions, movies, all photography, stories and poems. First, stillness; second, awareness; third, creation. Some will come to stillness only through movement; trust only through experience; and creation only through empowerment.
Who am I to make these flat statements? No one in particular. I just try to pay attention. It’s all there in plain sight.
ampludihedron = scientists are saying this is the most basic secret of the universe in schematic form
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