In Which I Twitpic Midnight Mass

So I was raised Catholic. I went to church every Sunday. I was baptized. I took part in the annual Christmas Eve pageants, and wrote award-winning essays about the meaning of the Christmas Star. I wore a tiny wedding dress to my First Communion. I even went to confession.

When I got to be about 13 years old, I started thinking for myself. I decided I was over it. Church didn't really do it for me. I eventually stopped going. I stopped praying. I started questioning.

I haven't been to church in about 10 years, but for who-knows-what reason, this year I thought Christmas Eve midnight mass at the Los Angeles Cathedral sounded like a good time.

Minus the part about having to get there over an hour early to secure seats, it started out OK. Kids everywhere, news cameras, and police directing traffic outside.

The mass ran like a machine. Always flowing, perfectly choreographed. Songs of praise, sung by a chorus of 5,000, echoed throughout the enormous, modern hall. It was sort of beautiful, and I couldn't fucking stand it.

By the time we had praised God and begged for mercy and proclaimed our unworthiness more times than should be legal, I was ready to flee. I stayed just long enough to hear Cardinal Roger Mahoney's Christmas homily- a full 20-minute commentary on the importance of being obedient and servant to God. No talk of peace, love, acceptance or compassion for our fellow beings. Just obedience.

When I could no longer stomach the call for faith, and after watching an aisle full of folks miming the placement of cash into the overflowing collection baskets, I left.

Now, before you get all "you're going straight to hell and don't you even dare look over your shoulder" on me, let me explain my thoughts.

I believe in love, peace, acceptance and equality, and I believe in Jesus. I believe he was a controversial philosopher, a man who brought about a new way of thinking in a time of violence and opression. He was a Ghandi, a Mother Teresa, a Saint. He walked the Earth as a man of incredible wisdom and light. But he did not walk on water.

I accept your beliefs. If you want to go with the whole Jesus Christ, son of God, born of immaculate conception in a stable surrounded by glowing angels and goats, that's fine with me. But Holy Crap. This spectacle we call religion is insane.

If you follow this blog, you can probably guess the political connections I'm making in my head here. This is the part where names like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly start popping out of my mouth along with words like "evil" and "imaginary friend for adults." I'm not going there today.

Today I'm sharing my TwitPics.