Religion speaks to family---a group of people consciously spending time with others they often dislike, going through motions in the silence of their dreams. The devouring worship and mystery of religion functions to make the relinquishing of self meaningful. One Sunday, three times a year, on holidays the Idiot Ceremony widens to a few more family members. The uncle tweaks the children's noses, the grandfather argues about baseball, resolutions are made to lose 20 pounds, all spoken smiling solemn as prayers in an obsolete language. None of these people have even explored more than 100 miles into their own country.These are their permanent coordinates, religion and routine like a gravitational pull.
Family watching home videos and acting as if god had stopped smiling upon them. "Oh! I looked so young,"
"Weren't you cute when you were 10 months old, what happened!?" Everyone laughs.
They all fnd it impossibly endearing.
What could have gone wrong? They have performed every tired action to perfection. With no more babies to soothe and clean, and too many funerals to attend. Nothing is left except strained relationships with children and spouses. Who are these people? And religion still, invites them to lose everything again. It was there when they clenched their teeth through the loss of their aspirations, and it's there now to soothe.
Year after year, in the home movie they were gathered in a kitchen, dark with primitive necessity. Long, dully domestic sequences of people piling spaghetti on their plates with the same old big wooden spoon, women cleaning the crying infants. Speech transforming into an indeterminate mutter, like savages. The words mean nothing, the sentiment only a little more---it's all about the tribe.
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