Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #32: Writing on Religion: The Stylite

BuddhistNuns

Some of my writing follows religious themes. I am constantly intrigued with what people believe and how religion affects their lives. I try not to be partisan. My religion is Christianity, but my writing recognizes a wide system of belief or lack of belief. One of my characters begins a prayer, "Lord Buddha, you know I don't believe in you." Religion takes many forms and includes many varieties and stripes of belief, from cool to lukewarm to overly-zealous. I am not hostile to religion, but then again I see the problems too much religious fervor brings about. Fundamentalism of any sort—whether it is a Baptist fundamentalist like Jerry Falwell or an atheist fundamentalist like Richard Dawkins—is not a good deal. Yet religion can make for interesting stories.

The next story in my publishing history was one about religious, titled "The Stylite."

Saint Simon the Stylite

What is a stylite? It's really weird. Stylites were monks who live on the top of platforms. That's it:  they lived on platforms set on poles up to forty feet from the ground. People sent food up to them and they lived on the poles in all kinds of weather, praying, meditating in their solitude, sometimes so many that the areas they lived in were called "forests." These were some of the excesses of piety that existed in the early days of Christianity—unbelievable to us but historically true.

Myrna is a devout girl who belongs to and identifies with the Orthodox Church. Her world is turned upside-down when her brother, Stephen, who lives alone in a house a short distance from where she lives with her parents, declares his intention to become a stylite. The family is alarmed when they can't talk him out of it. They call in the priest who says such behavior might have been a proper expression of devotion in the second century, but now it would amount to spiritual exhibitionism and would become a scandal to the church. He promises to talk to Stephen.

She goes to school the next day. Her friends ask her what her brother is doing. She hopes their priest has altered his inclinations, but when she drives home, she finds a crowd of reporters at his house. The story is all over the internet and on television. With horror, she realizes what this will mean for her at school, where she is popular. Her enemies will use it to brand her as weird. She will topple from her high place on the food-chain there. She despairs, not understanding why her brother would do such a thing. He has been loyal to the church, but never overly devout or pious. She, in fact, is the one who has stayed for different periods of time at convents and seriously entertained the idea of becoming a nun.

While contemplating this, she—like many people in the Bible and throughout Christian history—has a revelation.

Myrna has a date that night. Because of her commitment to religion and to perhaps becoming a nun someday, she has remained a virgin. She asks her boyfriend for a kiss before they head out to a barn dance. He notices the miniskirt she is wearing and says he better not because it might make him try to violate what he calls her "underwear rule"—meaning that underwear will not be removed—in other words, she does not intend to have sex with boys she dates. Myrna simply replies “Tonight you don’t have to worry about my underwear rule. I’m not wearing any.”

The next morning she goes to her brother and sends a note up to him. She will not be a nun, she tells him:  Stephen—I understand. I won’t go to the convent, ever again. I can’t be a nun now. I’m disqualified. It happened last night. I think you know what I mean. Please come down. She watches with relief as a rope comes down and her brother climbs it to the ground, abandoning his place on the stylite platform.

Religion is good in many ways; still, I can't help but thinking that when it leads to extreme asceticism—self-denial and the abrogation of pleasure in life—it isn't helping itself or anyone else—the very thing Stephen is trying to show his sister. Benjamin Franklin, whose views on religion were controversial, said he was in favor of people having faith as long it did some good for the human race. John Milton said he could not praise "a fugitive and cloistered virtue." My views lean toward this. Living on top of a platform is not the best way of showing your devotion toward the Divine—but there are a lot of other ways of showing devotion that are also wrong.

"The Stylite" appeared in a journal called Five Fishes, no longer in operation, but, happily, with an archive. You can read the story here. Some poems are featured first, you will need to scroll down to get to my story.

Read my latest book, Le Cafe de la Mort. Coffee to die for, served up by the Angel of Death.

I would love to hear your comments and questions.