In the October 2010 Issue of Ode magazine, Rabbi Rami said the following in his article “Standing Barefoot Before God: The Agony and Ecstasy of Writing as a Spiritual Practice”:
Being damned is quite liberating. That’s why the saved fear the damned, and why they damn them in the first place. Salvation, as too many of us imagine it, is ultimate conformity to one or another system of belief or behavior, while the damned are those who insist upon living outside that system. Authentic spiritual practice–disciplines that don’t merely mirror the imagined world of any given system of thought, but shatter the mirror to see what is on its own terms–is about living outside the system, any system.
Good God, what a wonderful quote!
I first read that article several years ago because I was into spiritual journal writing at the time and still do it here and there, but found that that single paragraph transcended the rest of the piece in its wisdom, universal applicability, and irreverence!
You see, I find that I am among the damned in so many fields because I’m too fucking jaded to accept orthodoxy as anything other than the oppressive views of the majority. I am a sort of a Christian, but because I don’t give a flying fuck about most matters of doctrine most religiously-minded folks throw me into the theological outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of metaphysical teeth. As an anarchist I don’t completely reject religion, and therefore I might not be taken seriously by some radicals, again finding myself damned.
A few months ago, I was involved in a church that practiced a sacramental form of Christianity and in which most clergy are not paid for their work, but have to support themselves some other way. I was encouraged to pursue priesthood and I even took a minor order that was bestowed upon me by the bishop for the USA of the denomination. I later left that denomination for a lot of reasons, way too many to outline here, but among them was the fact that the hierarchical structure in which the clergy have to operate was, in the end, too restrictive and just a pain in the ass. I resolved that, if I were to pursue being any kind of religious teacher or leader, it would be as a damned person, a man who operates outside of the rigid boundaries of what that denomination defined as orthodox. And since then, it’s been so nice to not worry about what that rightwing Masonic douchebag bishop thinks.
As Rabbi Rami said in the quote above, it is freeing to be damned. I don’t care what the Christian authorities say about my theology or what the anarchist gurus say about my views. Fuck ’em all.
Perhaps we should start a kind of a “Church of the Damned.” Hmmmm…. sounds way too much like the title of a horror movie.