I've been reading Fields of Blood. With that as a background the mommy and I watched a lot of the pope this weekend.
I like him.
The coverage (like all coverage these days) was filled with hours of watching people waiting for the pope while people talked about how great he is. We clicked away for most of that. We watched most of the three masses and the visit to the school in Harlem. All of this broken up by hours of Mom's favorite show: Blue Bloods. She likes Tom Selleck. She has a hard time following plot lines these days so she likes to watch things that she knows, most of which seem to be cop shows. NCIS is her other favorite. It made for an interesting juxtaposition. Cops. Crimes. Lots of shooting. Blood.
Pope Francis talks a lot about peace. I listened to that as I read a section of the book in which Pope Alexander VI (AKA the Borges pope) orders a bunch of killing.
Armstrong (as usual) is detailed in her description of how violence, politics and religion wound together. Her scholarship is profound and overwhelming.
Every so often I try to wrap my head around the Ottoman Empire. Seriously. I always end up feeling dim witted. There were points in the book when I had to skim because I couldn't take it all in. I couldn't take in the information and the relentlessness of war. It's just always there. It always has been. It's sort of easier to understand how people with limited resources felt the need to protect themselves. Maybe even easy to to understand the desire to use your beliefs to buoy justification of that violence. But it never ends.
I could write an entire post about Blue Bloods. At this point I have watched episodes over and over. Even if I read while it's on it's the background noise for so much of my day now. It seems like they try to take on issues in policing and represent them from different angles but there is a lot of shooting and shouting and twisting of the rules. It tends to wrap up neatly with this one NYC, Irish, Catholic family taking care of everything.
I was a Protestant kid on block full of Catholic kids. I walked toward the public school when they walked toward the Catholic school. The only hostility I remember was when a kid told me I was going to hell because I wasn't Catholic. I went home in tears and my Grandmother dragged me to the kids house to demand an apology. Not terrible hostility. Just the background awareness of difference. Just a mini war. I also remember wanting to be a nun. My babysitter became one and I wanted to be like her.
I was a devoted child. I was a fatherless child. I wanted God. The father. In my adult life I continued to look for God. I wanted an active relationship. I wanted to see cause and effect. I wanted miracles. Now I say I believe in God but I don't know what I mean by that.
If you walk into the nest you'll see a lot of Catholic iconography. I like the art. There are also Buddhas and Ganesha and Shiva and lots of fat women. Ha!
When the pope stops every thing to go and kiss the forehead of a child I tear up. I feel that longing for belief. But there are the problems of belief.
The Saint of Small Type from MarkFiore on Vimeo.
Fields of Blood.