The lion in the corner

I’ve always been chary of organized religion. My Mom was raised as a Polish Roman Catholic and my Dad was culturally Jewish, but agnostic. After they married, after World War II, my mother’s father didn’t talk to her for 15 years, because she had married a, presumably, Jew.

Kahns come from Alsace-Lorraine: contested territory between France and Germany. It’s the only French administrative region better known for its beer than its wine.

My Mom, descendant of Polish immigrants, was the first one in her extended family to go to college, at the University of Chicago. Tuition, she told me, was $50 a year.

She was working as a secretary for the medical school when she met my Dad. She had a crush on another professor, who invited her for a night out in Chicago, which ended up in a walk on the beach. My Dad went with them, to the shore of Lake Michigan. 

Well, my Mom, who had never drunk alcohol before, got puking drunk, and her date abandoned her to my Dad, who walked her up and down the beach for hours, talking with her, sobering her up.

They fell in love and got married. Then her father, Grandpa John, put the freeze on his daughter, for 15 years.

This lunkhead was a steelworker. I do not recall him ever saying Word One to me, or my brothers and sister.

At his funeral in Cleveland, 50 years or so ago, a stranger walked up to my Grandma and took her hand and said: “I’m a widow today, too.”

My seldom-seen Grandma asked what she meant. Turns out that Grandpa John had a second family, with that woman. Not only that, they had four kids — just like my Mom’s family.

Not only that, the other lady had her kids the same year my Grandma had her kids.

Not only that, the other lady’s kids had the same names as my Mom and her sisters and brother.

I guess that solved a few latent problems for the old lech.

That’s one of many reasons I’ve never had any use for organized religion. I consider it like a bunch of competing country clubs: that the main point is to keep other people out — you know: the ones inferior to The Members.

Every religion of whatever type, and every country club and secret society is like that.

Organized religion has been one of the most destructive forces in the history of the human race. And is to this day.

I said “organized religion.”

I have felt what I’ll call religious impulses. How can you not, when standing on top of a mountain? But I never wanted to join a country club.

This is one among many reasons that I am chary of — all right, detest — politicians and preachers who wear religion on their sleeve, and flash it about, as though it means … anything. Other than their lust for office, and power, and the perks that come with it.

I give you: the Taliban. Narendra Modi. Ron DeSantis. Clarence Thomas. Greg Abbott. Ken Paxton. The Texas and Florida Legislatures. The “Freedom Caucus.” The Sovereign State fascists. The Klan. And so on …

Now I shall tell you a story that I believe shows the true meaning of Christian, or Jewish, or agnostic, love. It’s a true story about my family.

We were living in Berne, Switzerland, in 1958, where my Dad was on sabbatical. Upstairs in our apartment building lived a very nice, elderly, fanatical Christian lady. She was always trying to convert us kids. My parents let her do her thing, without comment. I was 7; my little brother was 6.

One afternoon Mrs. Wild asked the kids up for milk and cookies. While we dunked the chocolate chippers, she showed us a picture of Daniel in the Lion’s Den, with the lions eating all the heathens except Daniel, and she told us the Bible story. (Daniel 6:10-17).

My little brother — now a scientist, and from birth an animal lover — let a few tears fall from his eyes.

The Nice Christian Lady, sensing a potential convert, said, “Why are you crying, Ricky?”

To which my brother replied: “That lion in the corner isn’t getting any.”

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