5 hours ago
10
I have never been a religious or spiritual person, even though I grew up in a religious area and had friends (and strangers) throughout school and university trying to lure me into whatever prayer disguised as organised fun they were up to. I did try it out shortly for a desperate period when I was young, attempting to pray to a god I didn’t really believe in to make me not gay, but blessedly he never answered.
Despite my resistance to organised religion, I have always had a soft spot for nuns and their counterparts. The girlies.
This is probably partly due to pop culture, specifically Sister Act, but even more specifically Sister Act 2 (underrated). There are of course many real life horror stories involving nuns and people in similar positions of power, but nuns and the nun-adjacent are often portrayed as the kinder and more reasonable arm of the patriarchal power structures of organised religion – groups of women dedicated to a higher cause and direct hands-on caring for their communities (except Sister Michael from Derry Girls).
This topic has been top of mind recently, since discovering the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist Catholic order. I’m sure all of those words mean things, but I only know what I’ve seen on TikTok, which is that as part of their outreach, they’ve started a podcast. It’s just what God would want. The sisters themselves don’t have personal phones and don’t have anything to do with the production, they just get set up with microphones, and the rest is their gift of the gab. They talk about a variety of things, including what their lives look like.
In one moment that went viral, one sister talks about how she loves playing ultimate Frisbee back at the religion farm or wherever they live, and the other replies “Sister, and you are so good at that!” – a phrase that has taken off. They have gone viral, not just because they are religious sisters doing a podcast, which is like seeing a priest use a vape, but I think because of how calming they are, how sweet and unguarded, how simple their lives seem, and how they radiate genuine kindness. In a time that feels saturated with cruelty and hollowness, these qualities are especially magnetic.
In recent days, US president Donald Trump has gotten into a spat with the Literal Pope Leo, after the latter said in his prayers last week: “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life.” Using my decoding skills, I believe this was likely a reference to Trump and the war on Iran. In response, Trump called the pope “soft on crime”, a line I would have been proud to write as a satirical joke before the year 2017. The reality is that the big boss of the Catholic church, an institution I have a large amount of distaste for, and one that has been definitively not on the same “beliefs” page as me, is now the person in power making the most reasonable statements, or at the very least statements that sound recognisably human: that war and genocide is bad, that human life has value.
In recent months I have seen many lapsed Catholics speak jokingly(?) about how Leo is starting to reactivate their dormant Catholic sensibilities, as well as many non-Catholics sharing his words. To me this trend speaks more to morality than spirituality. It is a relief that someone in a powerful position is correctly identifying right and wrong. It is a relief to see Pope Leo decrying cruelty, because apparently most current world leaders lack the necessary spine. I am not going to become Catholic or religious at all, but with each passing day in this world filled with the despair of genocides, inhumane wars fought for oil, Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal of rich and powerful predators, generative AI dismantling our curiosity and tenacity, and the daily horror of what humans are capable of doing to each other – I feel myself turning towards something.
Of course there has always been human evil, but right now our species’ penchant for atrocity is palpable. It is gleeful, it is proud, it is brazen, it is spreading, it is bringing more stupid people along for the ride every minute.
It’s especially stark and shocking to see how much of this palpable evil comes from people who claim to be God-fearing. Watching those who pretend to be religious carry out the most wretched actions against others for power or money is enough to make me start thinking seriously about souls, something I haven’t done until now.
I think these people are soulless. They are empty. Hollow. Watching people get away with murder (often literally) is so difficult to swallow that it actually makes me hope the afterlife they profess to believe in is real. It would be appropriate for them to suffer in eternity for their actions. But right now on Earth, the psychic damage of watching them surge ahead has given rise to a strange new feeling in me. It’s not faith, but it’s a feeling that humans can be a great deal better than this.
I won’t ever get to a place of religion, but I find myself feeling more connected to other good people. It’s making me seek out people who care, who want to look after each other and Earth herself. This is not because I’m some hippy goodwill-to-all-creatures Ani DiFranco lesbian (although I love Ani DiFranco, am a lesbian and enjoy quite a few creatures). I am no Dominican Sister of Mary with a gentle nature, sweet thoughts and ultimate frisbee skills. I want the world to be better, and I am angry at the people making it worse. I want them to face consequences, but none are forthcoming, so I find myself drawn into a powerful moral solidarity with other people, one that seems to resemble spirituality, a kind of non-religious faith in each other.
Those who can need to push back against the darkness – not to get into heaven or avoid hell, but because it’s the right thing to do. And Sister, you could be so good at that.
