One of my readers asked me today this simple yet so far-reaching and complex question:
What was my relationship with God when I was growing up in Romania?
One word: complicated. I know I’m quoting Dorian Grey’s answer to the question ‘What are you?’, but there it is: my relationship with God has always been complicated.
I was born in a God-fearing Orthodox family. My mother instilled in me from an early age an unhealthy dose of respect for superstition and what she believed was true faith, but what really is proto-Christian Pagan animist bovis stercus.
En revanche, I taught my daughter to question everything she hears from everyone, including her parents. This way, I can guarantee she will make her own mistakes, and not repeat her parents’ stupid choices.
My mother forced me into the Orthodox faith saying that my grandfather was unjustly condemned by the evil atheistic Marxists to prison. She also told me that my grandfather will curse me if I dared change my faith. People talk about toxic masculinity all the time. Most times, they don’t know what they’re saying. What about female toxicity or toxic feminism?!
My mother also told me that if I ever sold the family chalet in Busteni, my grandfather, who is always watching perhaps like God of the Old Testament, from Heaven, will curse me.
So, you see, folks, my mother placed a lot of stakes into the ground, almost condemning me to the fate elephants and dogs suffer in their infancy.
I know, pathetic, right. But again, my mom was never right in her head. Only my leaving the old country and settling a long ways away from her madness safeguarded me against her curses.
For my mother gave life to me with one purpose in mind: to make me in her own distorted image.
And this is what I have managed to avoid so far in raising my daughter.
For instance, and let me be blunt: I like Andrew Tate, my daughter hates the man.
Another example, I am not a feminist, my daughter claims to be one.
I believe in Mens sana in corpore sano – A healthy mind in a healthy body; my daughter believes her supreme goal in life is financial security and independence through hard work and steady application and learning. No room there for physical education.
I used to dream about moving on a farm, and raising horses or cattle or sheep or chicken. Really anything to get away from the City, which is a source of stress, trepidation, pollution, despondency, irritation, and insanity. Yeah, you heard me right, I still believe that living in an urban or peri-urban area breeds insanity.
My daughter would scoff at the very thought of living next to a forest. Now, not so much. Perhaps, she is discovering what took me 30 years to discover. Who knows?
But now I am changing. And I kind of hate myself for it. Why? Because I lived two weeks in a very disjointed fashion. For 12 days, I took care of my mom in the morning and well after lunch. But the après-midis were mine and mine alone. Well, mine and my friends’. We would go out and reminisce about the good ole’ days of auld. We would congregate, flock together, mostly us boys, but sometimes their spouses would join our perambulations, and we would chat.
So, after two weeks of this, I am of a mind to do something with my life so that I can have that camaraderie with my old friends every year.
I am of a mind that Life is about Family and Friends. Nothing else matters.
As a matter of fact, one night surrounded by my pals and confidants, and being in a state of inebriation, I told my friends that I should like to be the first one to die. This way I would be sparred the horrible fate of seeing all that I love and cherish wither and die.
For if there is a fate worse than death, is seeing your family and friends go.
And I told them that I will put it in my last will and testament that I should like to be buried in Switzerland, my head to the North, and I should like them to make sure I am buried with all my Swiss bayonets and arms, under the Swiss flag. And that I should like to be buried while this tune is played.
Bottom line, I will live anywhere, as long as my family and friends are there with me.
Ubi bene ibi patria.
I would go through hell and back for my family and friends.
But fact is that my daughter and I do not see eye to eye in many respects. In fact, I like guns for their historical, artistical, and intrinsic value. My daughter hates them as objects of abject violence.
Up until now, I was mesmerized, sad and even depressed thinking that my hobby will not be continued by my lineage since my daughter told me that guns will be banned in her household.
But I do not know how to put this, perhaps there is a higher rhyme and reason for this. Perhaps, this is how God teaches me that most precious lesson of them all: humility.
I resent my mother’s oppressive indoctrination of my youth and adolescence. I am teaching my daughter how to learn and study and question everything all the time. So perhaps the lesson here is that my daughter has made her own decisions, and one of these decisions is to be hoplophobic.
I may not like it but there it is. I will not try to change her. Freedom comes with a price tag. This is the price. My mother could never understand this. One of her favorite all time expressions used to be when I was growing up:
Eu te-am facut; eu te omor.
And yes, today this would be construed quite literally by people. But back in the 80s and 90s Romania, this adage was on the lips of most parents driven to rage by their obtuse and obstinate offspring.
But I am not like my mother. I am my own man. I am rational and I believe in Freedom.
So if my daughter tells me she don’t like guns, that’s it, that’s all.
But enough beating around the bush.
My relationship with God was imposed on me by my mother, who lost her mind after marrying a bigamous asshole in 1988 who stole all her savings ($10,000), losing her father (1988), and going through the Romanian Revolution in 1989 and being shot at and manhandled by armed soldiers at gunpoint while working as a nurse in a hospital, and finally her own brother stealing away her apartment the year it was built and commissioned (1990).
So, yeah, when I put it like that, I realize that most of us would also lose their minds. And I do not for one second blame my mom for any of my trials and tribulations. I was created like Andrew Tate says in the thick of battle.
I personally like the quote from the royal letter opening the enquiry into the Templar Knights better.
“If some among them are innocent, it is expedient that they should be assayed like gold in the furnace and purged by proper judicial examination.”
I was assayed like gold in the furnace of life and purged by proper living. The shit I saw puts me next to Rutger Hauer, trust me on that, in terms of life experience.
But again, I guess, when all is said and done, Faith allowed mom to survive so far in a wicked world determined to squash people back into dust. And this is a feat in and of itself.
And Faith also helped me rationalize the world around me. At least up until now.
I have always been a practical man. For instance, faced with a choice between two unknowns, one being ‘There is a God’ and the other being ‘There is no God’, I hedged my bets and went with the former. My reasoning being that one cannot possibly know whether God exists or not. So, why be negative, and deny His existence when you can be positive, and affirm It!
So far, so good, eh?
But the booboo, and trust me, there is a big one coming up in a sec, the booboo, folks, is that my mother has spent all her life in a state of communion with God Almighty, and what does she got to show for it?
A son gone overseas, who has left her to her own devices? A cat, that has become her only raison d’être? What else, twenty or so candles permanently lit that have turned the walls of her apartment into a dark cave that looks like an old monastery from the 1300s? And the list of ailments could go on and on. But what would be the point? For we are all going to be my mother sooner or later.
No matter what we do, we will all visit old age, become decrepit, senile, and then die.
But what really amazes me is this. My mother has loved God with a fervor few of us could ever match, let alone try to emulate. Yet, God has seen fit, in His supreme majesty, to take away her wits, reducing her to a diminished shadow of her former self.
Turning her from this…
Into this…
And this…
Is this what God does to His children? Is this how He rewards Faith, Abnegation, and Subservience?!
Because my mother did not kill, rape or steal anything from anyone. She did not whore herself, although she did like men, and men liked her. But love, even physical love, is not a sin. We should all try to be like my mother: unapologetic in owning our decisions.
So why did God then punish my mother? Why? Why? Why?
For you see, folks, the question is not what my relationship with God was when I was growing up in Romania.
The better question is What is my relationship with God now?
And that is certainly a far superior question, to which I can offer no answer.
P.S. Since I am not made of ice, I still hate myself for putting boundaries between myself and my mother. That’s because I love my mother, and I hate boundaries. But sometimes, they are useful in that they provide a degree of separation that allows people to evolve naturally and independently. It’s something that my daughter teaches me now when she refuses to do my bidding. And it’s something that my mother always overrode in me: my reluctance to do hers. I miss my mother and I do not like what old age has done to her. I hate old age as much as I used to hate insanity. Perhaps one day, I will end up both. Who knows?! Life is full of surprises and very much like diarrhea.
I could have ended this on this low note, but I prefer to leave you on a higher one…
Götterdämmerung 