On Recognizing My Secular Saints

and sacred texts.

When I was younger, I was very precise in recounting each and every harm done to me by Catholic school. Sister Dorothy did this… It was often about Sister Dorothy, my nemesis. It was about judgmental church ladies moving pews when someone came in looking nonconformist, let’s say, and wept while praying the rosary; my mother was the only person who didn’t. How strange Father Bob was about my hair… Witnessing endless hypocrisy and pettiness by those who most vociferously claimed their goodness. And I’m only considering here my personal experiences, which were truly minor compared to so many horrors!

As I grew older, I polished this trauma down—made my attachment to Catholicism into kitsch, not wanting to believe in a real way that what promised me salvation gave me wounds to heal. After all, liberation theology provided me with the framework that still governs my worldview; later, I’d find Ivan Illich, Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan, and other Catholics who used the religion to envision a better world, not a smaller, more parochial one. The wall over our couch is a collection of ornate crucifixes I’ve gathered on travels. I’m smiling the same big grin in photos at Cinderella’s Castle in Disney World and Saint Peter’s Square. Catholic school, Catholicism: It hurt me and gave me Saint Francis of Assisi. It hurt me and made me precisely who I am.

I was never so pious (I was never at all pious) that I didn’t worship at altars I built to musicians out of pages torn from magazines and pasted to the wall, creating my secular canon of saints. I didn’t read the Bible over and over, but instead had my own sacred texts in Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs and S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. Saint Francis of Assisi—he’s a saint in both spirits. He can stay. It’s for my devotion to him that I cry whenever we hear “Sólo Le Pido A Dios” at the coffee shop…

How do I meet the world? I have to ask myself this regularly as a writer, and in working on memoir, I have to ask myself repeatedly, over and over, digging an ever deepening well to understand myself and create art / artifice out of it. We all establish our own cultures, but maybe I turned culture—literature, art, film, food—into religion, in order to place it into a framework I understood. To make a religion that wouldn’t feel like surveillance and shame, but ecstasy and evolution. Would that be so bad? Or am I Rob in High Fidelity. I can barely get through any story about my life without using bands or books to explain the context. I can’t talk about my one year in the dorms at college without referring to The Mars Volta album De-Loused in the Comatorium or telling you I knew I wouldn’t get along with my roommate when I noticed her Buckcherry clock. If I want to tell you about the pivotal year of 2013, I need to tell you about I Love Dick by Chris Kraus. In fact, I’m going to need you to read it.

One of my secular saints is Eileen Myles, who in “How I Wrote Certain of My Poems” in Not Me, writes:

“I am obsessed with culture. It’s my mental community, what configuration of art and art makers I belong with. Alone, I’m the culture of one. I’ve got my paintings, heroes, cult movies—any person who lives alone knows the situation of feeling like some kind of private museum. But, I also want to address my culture (some new, larger one out there which I suspect exists) which I begin by making work which violates the hermetic nature of my own museum—as a friendly gesture towards the people who might recognize me.”

If Catholicism provided my framework for building my culture, it also undoubtedly influenced my perspective on food—perhaps it’s the most present here, where I certainly can be dogmatic about the significance of simplicity and seasonality, the false indulgence of thoughtless meat-eating. (“Cheap hamburgers are a false prophet,” she declaims from the pulpit.) I love stories about cheese-making nuns and alcohol-making monks, and I love From a Monastery Kitchen by Brother Victor-Antoine D'Avila-Latourrette. While I have predictable issues with the pope and the Church as a whole, I found the recent talk on “gluttony” interesting: “Jesus, he insisted, showed us with His own actions that there is nothing wrong with enjoying a good meal or some wine…” Well, yes!

If I find something beautiful in Catholicism (aside from its stunning churches, iconography verging on idolatry, and embrace of mystery), it’s that it can enable these sorts of meditative approaches to relating to what we eat and how. I take the good with the bad. We bring Benny for his blessing on Saint Francis of Assisi’s feast day; I’ve always regarded prayer as both communion and argument, as conversation. We think about going to Mass but then I remember my anger about too many things—I can polish my own harms down into jewels, into stories, but I cannot polish nor forgive the extensive and disgusting suffering of others. But oh, did you know? My favorite show is The Young Pope. 

Eagle-eyed readers will note this is not the promised essay on why I don’t write about restaurants, which was ready to go—but I am holding it for another round of edits, as I wrote the first draft in JFK at midnight waiting to get on a flight that kept getting delayed. It’s a sensitive piece and I need to ensure I’m saying what I need to say, not what I say when I’m mad at airlines. It’s also too long.

Paid Subscriber Notes

This Friday, From the Desk Recommends… with a roundup of links to articles, essays, and podcasts that I’ve enjoyed in the last month—plus the monthly playlist and a book giveaway from my stacks.

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News

I made an appearance on the podcast “Without,” hosted by journalist Omar El Akkad, to discuss what a world “without” meat could look like—don’t worry, there’s nuance.

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I’m writing a book for Hachette—in case you didn’t know!—with the working title On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites. I’m on target to have a first draft done by the end of September. While I finish this manuscript, this newsletter is the more or less the only other work I’m doing, because trying to write the newsletter, a book, and do assignments is too much juggling (I know from experience with No Meat Required). I don’t often say it outright, but if you enjoy my work, please consider a paid subscription. I will be offering new things soon (The Desk Lifestyle Edit launches this month; a class on creating an editorial vision for an independent publication will launch in January).

But, to any editors who want to work with me on something, I’m all ears for the right assignment.

Reading

The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft

A Lifestyle Note

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