Religion is hard.

[feuervogel]

Or: an atheist ex-Christian attempts to write a (casual/lapsed) Muslim.

It's been 15 years since I went to church on a weekly basis. Not coincidentally, it's been 15 years since I moved out of my mother's house. We went to a United Methodist church while I was in high school. I *did* attend while I was home on breaks from college, but mainly so I could see my friend and sing. I miss singing.

But I still remember things:
A mighty fortress is our god -- well enough to know the dreadful alterations in a Catholic hymnal (I'm still amused at the irony of a Martin Luther hymn in a Catholic book)
A bunch of other hymns, far less well known: Be still my soul, the lord is on your side (to Finlandia) (I can recognize the titles and hum at least the first few bars of a lot of the songs listed at hymnsite.com.)
Holy, holy, holy lord, god of power and might. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord. Hosanna in the highest.

They say to write what you know, and I don't know Islam. I do, however, know how much you can retain after not using something for 15 years, when it's something you did regularly for even 4 years. And my character did it far longer than that, and more frequently. Five times a day, even. He'd remember his prayers, even if he doesn't believe a syllable of them. And if anyone calls me on that in the editing process, I'll sing Amazing Grace or Abide with Me or Come thou Fount of Every Blessing at them.

Comments

[matt_doyle]

Now I have "Holy, holy, holy Lord" stuck in my head....

[feuervogel]

It's a different holy holy holy WARNING: autoplay midi, but yeah. (I can place the blame for remembering the prayer on the S2 finale of Shadow Unit, however. Drat them.)

[matt_doyle]

That is different.

Yeah. The finale hit like a brick.

[feuervogel]

I had to read the ending two or three times to figure out what happened. I read fast, and my eyes wander to the end of the page/screen, so it was kinda like "wait, what? back up...."

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

Hi, my name is smarriveurr, and I'm a recovering Catholic - you never really get "cured." Eleven years clean, though, and going strong.

To this day, I find myself accidentally singing along with hymns, completing the Our Father and Hail Mary. I can even kick off the first half of the Apostle's Creed, and finish it if someone's reciting with me to kickstart my memory. I might need a while to remember the sit-stand-kneel choreography, but I can keep up with a Catholic Mass if it's English. And the only Masses I attended were Easter/Christmas, and maybe a monthly mass while I was in those 8 years of Catholic school.

Yeah, you can stay clean and sober, but you're never really cured.

[beth_leonard]

Sit to learn, kneel to pray, and stand to sing and worship.

--Beth

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Word. I've been sober half my life now and the prayers are still there!

But knowing the Hail Mary is actually kind of useful; it's a good length for reciting internally if I need to clear my mind of something else -- a stuck song or an obsessive thought. I think anything meterless of about that length would work, really, but that's what I had at hand.

[feuervogel]

It's good to know I've got you two to cover me on this one :)

(I'm curious - in the Lord's Prayer (Our Father), are Catholics sinners or trespassers? Methodists trespass, or they did last I went. I try saying it with 'sin', but the meter feels wrong.)

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Catholics trespass, definitely.

[feuervogel]

It must be some other Protestant denomination (further removed from Catholicism) that sins. (Methodists are 2 steps away, as an offshoot of the COE/Anglicans/Episcopalians.)