On the heels of the latest statistics showing a precipitous decline in Roman Catholic Church membership and churchgoing in Rhode Island, Post-Catholic Midrashim gives an intimate and philosophical portrait of how and why one might leave. “The Roman Catholic Church may be the most successful cult in the history of the world,” Lutz says. “And I don’t use that term lightly. The church has all the psychological hooks of a cult: the attractive promises, the sense of belonging and meaning, the fear of punishment for leaving, the spiritual abuse (for example, the very idea of eternal damnation by an all-loving God). I was able to get free, thanks to Roger Williams and his ilk, and I’ve been able to seek through many paths, teachings, and teachers in the 61 years since my baptism. One of those teachers, though, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, says, ‘don’t cut yourself off at the roots,’ meaning don’t reject your religion of origin as a whole. So this poem collection lovingly prunes those roots for the health of the whole.”
Advance praise:
Karina Lutz’s Post-Catholic Midrashim draws the reader in with strange and numinous poem titles, such as “Amniotic stage of the [n]ew [a]ge”, “Ash and light”, “Suicidal Buddha.” Having narrowly escaped her Catholic upbringing, Lutz chooses the Judaic notion of Midrashim to elaborate and interpret the skeletons in her intimate history. Encountering specters of parent, priest, the brokenness of dream, the beauty that still remains, she comes to this: Who knew/emptiness is the medium/of all light? As poet, she says of wisdom, I wanted to be invited in/but all I could do/was peruse the grain of the door, yet we find ourselves inside nonetheless, in the house of her poems.
—Dane Cervine, author of Earth Is a Fickle Dancer
Readers will be able to pass through the door this Friday evening. The poet will read from her work at Listening Tree Co-op, which this spring launched the Spoken Word! @ Listening Tree series. The event Friday, Sept. 27, at 7 pm, will feature Lutz followed by an open mic in the intimate setting of the community’s great room.
More about the book, from the introduction:
Midrashim are Judaic interpretations of scriptures, which often elaborate the stories found only in skeleton form there. In this spirit, contrary to the ways of Catholic dogma, I interrogate the social-spiritual effects of historic Catholic interpretations, including a child’s mind’s understanding. My parents raised me what I call “social-justice Catholic.” In contrast to the better-known right wing of Catholicism, this vein’s moral imperatives were to rectify inequality and end war, at least during the period I was brought up. Since then, those values have been integral to how I have moved in the world. At the same time, it took years of inquiry and vigilance—and yes, even prayer—to disentangle myself from the Church’s more insidious Patriarchal and punitive thought systems and contradictions. Forty-four years after leaving the Church, I keep having to extract and reinterrogate what hides in the early-formed folds of my brain. Therefore these poems: Post-Catholic Midrashim.
Careening between sass and earnestness, the poems rail against religion, while struggling to recover an authentic spirituality. I debate my late mother’s theology, at the same time as I try to honor her truth, her own questioning, her extraordinary intelligence, and her ability to live with/in the contradictions. I don’t so much argue with God as I argue against religions’ big lies.
Perhaps every religion places big lies next to the big truths, where the lies shine like moons through no light of their own.
Preorder deadline from Finishing Line Press for Post-Catholic Midrashim is Oct. 4: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/post-catholic-midrashim-by-karina-lutz/. Advance copy of electronic manuscript available to reviewers.
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