Religion in my life 

Random thoughts and reminiscences

In the scientific age in which we live today more and more people choose to reject religion. THERE IS NO GOD. Or, if one insists otherwise, GOD IS DELUSION. While this may be true, there is still a human need for the experience of spirituality.  There are several definitions of spirituality in current usage. I prefer to define 'spirituality' as a way of life in which one attempts to seek meaning for our existence through various spiritual practices such as meditation, looking at beautiful artwork, listening to music, being surrounded by nature or by praying - according to personal desire and belief.

Not being a religious person in the traditional sense, and practically not visiting church (except as a tourist), I strongly oppose the fierce attacks on religion by some prominent scientists, supported by my own husband, a scientist himself,  that I’ve been witnessing for some years now. Beyond mere defiance, I have my personal reasons for a positive attitude towards religion, in this particular case - Christianity.  They are outlined below. 

1. Religious family background

My family as such did not consider itself notably religious, although we were not hardcore atheists either. For instance, my grandmother Sofia taught catechism to grade school students at a young age,  before 1926,  and my other grandmother’s cousin, auntie Vlada, entered a convent in 1928 and became a prioress. My great-grandmother Jadwiga was a devout Catholic;  her deep faith in God, whom she believed “worked in mysterious ways”, helped her hold steady through the hard times when she lost two husbands and two sons, one after the other, to tragic deaths. My parents, a doctor and a teacher, described themselves as non-practicing Catholics (a somewhat evasive attitude, one might say). 

2. A gloomy small-town childhood in postwar Poland 

I was born in Poland in the era of Stalin. Although it may seem inconceivable or illogical, the overwhelming majority of children born in the postwar Communist Poland was baptized in infancy in the Catholic Church, and received the First Communion at the age of nine, which constituted a significant emotional event in the life of a child, a spiritual rite of passage. Young Poles, myself included, were expected to diligently attend  catechism classes at a local church until graduating from secondary school. Attending mass on Sunday was a regular part of  life for an average Polish family. All Catholic holidays were celebrated by both believers and non-believers alike (read: the Party officials, although the latter did it rather unobtrusively, if not in secret). 

As for me, I quit catechism classes in the eighth grade because of an abusive priest, and stopped attending services because the sermons bored me to death. Both decisions coincided with my resolution to start to think independently.

As a little girl, in the nineteen fifties and sixties, before my rebellious adolescence, I had lived with my parents for a period of seven years in Żychlin, a small gloomy town with a big smoky factory looming over it. Every morning at 7  except Sundays, the factory would swallow up the majority of the town’s adult population only to spit it  out eight hours later. At the wail of the siren, the huge iron gates would open, and the dun crowd of tired workers would spill out, greeted by their none too well-fed children, with keys dangling on shoestrings around their rarely-washed necks. 

All children went to elementary school, then to secondary school or vocational school, depending on their abilities and interests, and the family background and ambitions. In post-War Poland, anyone with a completed secondary education was considered by small-town residents to be a respectable  member of the intelligentsia (the Polish term for well-educated members of the society) and held in esteem - even though that the Communist propaganda glorified workers and peasants. 

Those, who possessed a university degree (e. g. physicians, veterinarians, pharmacists, high-school teachers, and lawyers) represented a small percentage of the overall population. University-educated people were treated with distrust and contempt in the post-War Poland. Could this be interpreted as a manifestation of class struggle in a society which, in theory at least, eliminated class distinction? In the situation of general poverty such as then existed, people fed themselves on envy, pettiness, and resentment.

The older part of the town consisted mostly of shapeless one or two-story houses built around the intersection of the two main streets; many of them had formerly been Jewish homes.The houses had no running water, no toilets, and no baths; just as they had been in the pre-War period, they were then inhabited by “God fearing” people - in this case, peasants born in the surrounding villages, who took possession of the modest dwellings as soon as the Jewish population was evicted from them (which I learnt of many years later). I’m not sure today how these families made a living, but work in Communist countries was a citizen’s constitutional right, and everyone had easy access to some employment. 

3. My first aesthetic experiences 

It would had been unthinkable for any Polish town or village not to have a church, with its distinctive silhouette visible from afar. Similarly in my town, Żychlin: St. Peter’s and Paul’s, which dated back to the 14th century, stood predictably on a square adjacent to the main intersection. The parishioners were proud of their church, which had been rebuilt several times throughout its history, to finally end at the late Baroque. Looted, and turned into a warehouse during the German occupation, the church was gradually restored and renovated after Stalin’s death. In my time, it acquired new stained-glass windows, and new confessionals and pews. 

We lived on the outskirts of town, in one of the modern housing blocks designed for the factory workers. The factory was opened in 1921 by two Swiss engineers named Brown and Bovery, and had  specialized in the production of electric machines ever since; nationalized in 1945, it subsequently bore the name of a German communist, Wilhelm Pieck. The older worker blocks, constructed at the same time as the factory, had faded plaster facades, while the newer ones, constructed of red brick, represented the dreary socialist realist style, which maybe lacked individuality, but at least provided the tenants with running water for cooking and washing, not to mention the customary Saturday night bath. 

In this world devoid of color and excitement - at least in my memory - only Sundays were worth waiting for. On Sundays, as if by magic, the common untidiness yielded to festive cleanliness, grayness to color - still subdued, true, but already signifying something more sublime than everyday life. Visible effort was undertaken to beautify our gloomy reality in order to make this day special: the sidewalks of the streets leading to the church were swept clean the day before, and people dressed in their Sunday best. No wailing factory siren that day - only the joyful church bells. 

The contrast was not lost on me. I vividly remember the feeling of elation which usually accompanied me on my way to church: I almost danced. What made me so happy? Surely, not the freshly-ironed dress, the white socks (in summer), and the brightly polished shoes. The clothes, restraining to a certain degree the individual’s behavior, did play an important role in the whole experience. As a child I loved going to church. For me, entering the baroque church then was like entering another world: I marveled at the huge paintings depicting events in the life of Jesus and the saints, the altars, the plaster Stations of the Cross, the marble baptismal font, the marble sculptures, the shiny silver goblets, the heavy red fabrics embroidered with gold thread, and the white lace adorning altars. Being a compassionate child, I was deeply impressed by the heroism of  the martyrs, the courageous men and women, tortured and murdered in strange ways - stoned or riddled with arrows, for example - for believing in Jesus. The organ’s  encompassing music only added to my overall exaltation (although I could barely withstand the out-of-key singing by the congregation.) It is to this parochial church that I owe my very first exposure to art. However limited this exposure was, it awakened my aesthetic sensitivity. Had I stayed in this small town, the church  might have been the only contact with art, or rather religious-themed art, in my whole life. 

I read somewhere recently that the Council of Trent in 1563 laid down the following rule in reference to religious art: that it was to be dramatic, and appeal to the viewers’ emotions in order to raise their faith and religious fervor. It certainly worked on me, although my faith left a lot to be desired.

4. My religious beliefs

Despite my exaltation, and despite praying to St. Monica, my patron saint and perhaps my first role-model, the patient mother of the early Christian philosopher and theologian Augustine of Hippo, I had never believed in God, and still less in the Christian Trinity. At the same time, I had never doubted that Jesus of Nazareth really existed.To me he was an extremely smart and charismatic man who demonstrated gentleness and compassion in the brutal world he was born into, surrounded by guards with spears, and ruled over by powerful Roman governors. Jesus of Nazareth taught love and empathy, and he was kind to women and children. His martyr’s death gave rise to a new religion. 

This overly simplistic understanding of the New Testament was enough for a nine-year-old girl.  But was it really all about brotherly love, I kept wondering in later years, or was there something more? Surely, Pilate would not have killed Jesus for performing alleged miracles and claiming to be God's Son. He would have considered him a lunatic and sentenced him only to flogging. Instead, he gave way to Sanhedrin, which saw Jesus as a serious threat - and probably rightly so.  Jesus’ actions were political, no question about it: he challenged his society's social structure by, for instance, throwing out the merchants from the Temple. Thus, he was executed as a political trouble-maker. 

It wasn't Mahatma Gandhi who introduced non-violence as a political strategy to the Western world, it was Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus took a non-violent stand against the Jerusalem Sanhedrin’s collaborators with the Roman occupiers; Gandhi imitated him by opposing the British occupiers in India. In turn, Gandhi’s works inspired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his civil rights activism. “Jesus Christ gave the motivation,” King wrote, “Gandhi showed the method”. Nonviolence and spirituality also inspired Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

5. The religious and cultural “tribes” I identify with

I consider Christianity to be my cultural heritage. Understanding paintings and the visual arts of the Middle Ages and later centuries, as well as the literary references of any period of European History, requires at least a cursory knowledge of the Gospels. The birth, life, and death - and the Resurrection - of Christ have stirred the imagination of countless European artists, architects, musicians, and writers, and still do. The history of Christian civilization is a European history. Denying it means denying who we are. In a vain attempt, as it proved, to completely dismiss religion as “bourgeois superstition and nonsense”, Communist governments tried to reject large parts of their countries’ cultural and religious heritage -  which would have been an irreversible loss, indeed, had they succeeded. 

Christianity has its roots in Judaism, which makes us, as Europeans, part of a larger and very old “tribe” (the history of Judaism spans more than 3,000 years). Christianity borrowed heavily from Judaism:  the concept of monotheism (the Trinity was developed over the span of three and a half centuries after the time of Jesus), the belief in miracles and signs, not to mention incense, the Eucharist  (matzah), confession, the center of worship, the concept of resurrection and of a Messiah. The Old Testament is full of captivating miracles: the plagues sent upon the Egyptians, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna and quails in the desert, to name only the most spectacular ones. All this was the work of God, not of prophets like, for instance, Moses. To confirm his divine nature, Jesus of Nazareth simply had to perform miracles, demonstrate healing power, and predict things that were going to happen well in advance.  

Last but not least, Christians adopted the Decalogue from Judaism. In countries with a Christian  heritage, the Ten Commandments still serve as a solid foundation of ethical behavior in society. Those of us who don’t subscribe to the concept of a divine origin of social order, still ask ourselves whether morality is inherent in human nature. Charles Darwin proposed that morality was a byproduct of evolution, a human trait. Francisco Ayala, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine sees morality as consisting of two parts: the capacity for ethics and the specific moral codes that we follow. He proposes that, while ethical capacity is a product of biological evolution, moral codes are products of cultural evolution. Unlike other animals, humans can understand the benefits of morality. This understanding has inspired humans to create laws that enforce the moral codes that benefit their society. In my opinion, at the beginning of human social history people invented laws and gods (at least before they developed this ethical capacity) to control the violence among people. It was the fear of the punitive, judgmental gods and the force behind the rule of law that created the foundation of society. 

Incidentally, morality was initially a “noble morality” which means that the noble class judged what was good and bad. According to Nietzsche, the eventual conversion of pagan Rome to Christianity is the evidence of the victory of Judeo-Christian morality over noble morality. Something to consider in the context of the contemporary world: aren’t Westerners the new “noble class” of the contemporary world? 

Early Christianity developed in Rome, which makes us close to Greco-Roman culture.  We owe our philosophy, science, drama and sculpture to the Greeks and the Romans. We also owe them law, roads, warm baths, and central heating. Greeks and Romans worshipped numerous gods. There are some pagan elements in Christianity, such as the cult of relics in Catholicism, prayer for the dead, sainthood, and even the doctrine of the Trinity. Christianity offered a sense of belonging to a group, a promise of immortality, and relief from earthly misery by believing in Heaven.

The word “catholic” means "universal”; “Catholic” was first used to describe the Christian Church in the early 2nd century to emphasize its universal scope.

6. Final remarks

For as long as people have existed they have needed religion. It is quite probable that all religions were born out of fear, out of the feeling of helplessness in the face of unbridled nature. When humans first inhabited the earth they created gods and goddesses to help them survive. Gods initially represented various aspects of nature such as the sun, wind, rain, and fire. Over the course of time,  people came up with animal-like gods, then with more powerful human-like gods. We could reject religion now, as we understand more or less how nature works and we don’t fear it, but we still need something which infuses life with meaning. Could it be art, now? Creativity? Science? The beauty of Nature?

Christianity continues to exist within the modern world, although its presence in the lives of people has been visibly declining. Some say that this Christian civilization is about to complete its allotted life of two thousand years. If so, then why waste time on waging virulent anti-religious campaigns? Why saw off the cultural branch on which one sits? Let's appreciate our heritage and enjoy what is left of it! 

Rebecca Thaddeus, the author of One Amber Bead, is a contemporary American writer with Polish roots. In her novel she describes the complicated and difficult circumstances in which Polish people lived in the chaotic and tumultuous 20th century, as seen through the eyes of two cousins, one living in U.S. and the other one in Poland. 

There are three heroines in One Amber Bead. In order of appearance they are Jadzia, Apolonya  and Evelina or Evie. Jadzia and Apolonya live in a Polish village called Niedzieliska in southern Poland; Evie lives in Chicago. Jadzia and Evie are cousins of  the same age (born around 1923), and Apolonya is a couple of years older. The three girls differ not only in their looks like day and night but also in their personalities. 

The pale and fair-haired Apolonya (whom I prefer to call Pola, though she has nothing in common with the famous Hollywood silent movie actress Pola Negri, apart from the name and a rural origin) is more serious than her age, bitter and disillusioned. She knows exactly what she wants, which is to never leave Niedzieliska. Being a principled 18 year-old woman, Pola won’t forgive her brother Antek, a Nazi sympathizer, for his treason, when he voluntarily joins the German army. Proud and fearless Pola refuses to be forcibly deported from her village. This act of disobedience costs her her life - she is shot by a ruthless Nazi commander in front of her whole village, including her best friend Jadzia. 

Equally pretty, but dark-haired and complected Jadzia is her best friend opposite: cheerful, immature, naïve, and full of illusions about human nature. She had dreamed of leaving the village, so she is not afraid of being deported and initially treats it as a kind of adventure. Later, as a slave laborer in a German countryside, she maintains positive feelings toward her masters and tries very hard to please them. As if this was not bad enough, she falls in love with their 16 year old son. Had she forgotten that there was a war going on and that she had not come to Germany of her own volition? Had she not been taught  at school and at home the legend of the Polish princess Wanda, who chose to drown in the waves of the Vistula river, rather than marry a German prince? Her naïvete causes Jadzia physical and mental humiliation, and she almost ends up in Auschwitz. After the war, disillusioned Jadzia marries a gentle, kind man, has two kids, and adapts quite well to life in communist Poland. When her kind husband dies, she marries … Antek, who meanwhile returns to Poland from Argentina, where he was hiding along with many other Nazis, and adopts his brother’s name, Alfons. Jadzia’s and Antek’s past affection towards Germans, the centuries-old enemies of Poland is the shameful secret they share now. 

Evie, Jadzia’s American doppelgänger, leads a life typical of the second generation of Polish immigrants to the States at the beginning of the 20th century: her dad and older brother work, her mom stays at home and takes care of the younger children.  While Jadzia’s dad is kind and dedicated to his family, Evie’s father is abusive and scary. He does odd jobs and drinks heavily, so the family lives very modestly. The sudden death of her mother and her younger brother put an end to Evie’s fairly happy childhood. She takes on the responsibility of her mother’s role with her little sister (who was born just before her mother died), and her father then becomes even more  abusive and violent towards the girls. Evie’s situation is not to be envied, but it does  suddenly improve: just before U.S. enters the war in December of 1941, Evie gets engaged to a Polish young man, Mikosz, whom she has known since their schooldays and whom she initially despised. When Mikosz goes to war, Evie takes a job at a defense factory. She meets the factory owner at a dance and soon afterwards they become romantically involved. She is not naïve, yet at the same time she has a glimmer of hope that the rich man will eventually want to marry her. It does not happen, so she marries Mikosz, and leads an ordinary middle-class life raising two daughters. 

Typically, the second generation of immigrant families  feels little connection to the parents’ country, considering itself  American rather than of the parents’ nationality. Not Evie though: she is proud of her Polish descent; she celebrates the holidays and weddings as it was all done in her mother’s village. When it comes to Polish food, the natives and immigrants alike seem excessively (at least to me) attached to pierogi, kiełbasa, bigos, and kołaczki, the latter considered as comfort food (presumably some local delicacy, perhaps from Małopolska or Silesia, unknown to the people from central Poland), and vodka. 

Jadzia and Evie, finally meet in 1970 in Chicago after 37 years of exchanging letters in which they confide their innermost secrets to one another. 15 years after this meeting, shortly after Jadzia’s death,  Evie travels to Poland to visit her mother’s and Jadzia’s village. It’s a difficult journey, a bit like going back in time (there are still outhouses in small villages!), for which she is not mentally prepared. However, she bravely tolerates all discomforts, and overcomes the feeling of alienation and not fitting in.  She even comes to terms with Jadzia’s deepest secret about her husband, Antek, and returns to the  U.S. with a sense of a mission fulfilled: Poland became her second home.