Good Vibrations Magazine

It’s Christmas time. The time of year when every Jew, no matter how assimilated, feels JEWISH.

Oh look, decorations… not for you. Oh listen, music… not for you. And everyone wishing you merry for a day. Merry? We Jews really aren’t a merry people, too many pogroms.

But not long ago I saw a Church under construction that raised my hopes for reconciliation, a meeting of the minds. It was the Church of Christ the Light, the new main Catholic Cathedral for the diocese of Oakland.

Its design is a great departure from your typical cathedral. Cathedrals of old seem mostly to be of the phallic style, one or two long and hard spires standing ramrod straight atop those flying buttresses. And what fine buttresses they are, curved and tight from all that time on the stairmaster, Holy Father indeed.

The Church of Christ the Light is different. Standing along the fine shores of Lake Merritt it rises encased in a curving sea of translucent glass. Light will shine out at night turning the church into a beacon.

As the cathedral went up I noticed that its inner chamber, the one made of wood inside the outer glass structure, had a certain shape. It was warm and inviting, rounded and open liked two cupped hands. The front of this shape opened wide, welcoming you in. There’s no other way to put this, it seemed to be shaped like a vulva, a venus mons, terra lovely.

It’s entry way like a slit, the wood cascading down like labia. I found myself drawn to it, my tongue reaching for this building. Perhaps, I thought, they’d put a single church bell at the top of the opening. There was even, for a time, a crane high above and horizontal, appearing to be on the point of entering the Church.

Holy Moses, I thought, could it be that out here in the West, in the Bay Area, the Catholic Church was courting Gaia? Was I witnessing the marriage of the Church to the Earth Mother? Was the Cathedral of Christ the Light the Catholic Church welcoming it’s parishioners into the womb?

Day after day I rode by gazing into this Catholic womb. The strangest sensation came over me. I wanted to go inside.

Now it is a well-known fact that Jews do not like entering Cathedrals. First they’re cold, secondly we’re convinced our parents, no matter where they might be, are having a heart attack right at that moment, and thirdly we can hear the whispers from the walls, “Kill the Jew”. Yet this cathedral called to me.

As the glass walls went up they surrounded the opening like a pair of beautiful thighs, the Great Catholic Vulva recessed in them. Yes, to my mind I was witnessing nothing less than the end of the cult of the virgin birth. No more phalluses in the sky but rather a loving womb in whiCh the faithful could experience god. The Catholic Church was finally coming to its senses around sex, understanding it as a communion with the divine; constructing a Great Vulva as metaphor.

Construction continued. The Cathedral opening remained wide-open, wanton, the wind, the light, the whole world moving through. This was a building striving towards all that is good and kind in the world, the kingdom of heaven right here, in Oakland. The fertile shores of Lake Merritt glowing in it’s light.

Alas, all was not what it appeared. Piece by piece, beam by beam, a checkerboard of steel was built across the opening, closing it off. What was once inviting, now forbidding. The Cathedral of Light had crossed her legs. The Catholic Church had fitted Gaia with a chastity belt.

When I looked online at models of the final structure I saw that a great big cross was set to go across the opening as well. For the sexually minded it may as well have been a sign reading, “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.”

Even the glass superstructure appeared to be a ruse. One might think the glass was used to denote transparency in the wake of the recent sex abuse scandals. But in the models you can see the plan is for light to come shooting out from behind the glass. The Church doesn’t want you to see in, it wants to blind you with its glory.

I wonder what kind of Cathedral Jesus would have built. Oh wait, that’s right, he wouldn’t have built one.

He would have stood on the concrete steps of the Cathedral of Christ the Light and denounced their capital campaign to fund construction while people slept along its sidewalks.

Jesus would tell us the Cathedral of God was inside us.

He would tell us to stop stressing about material presents and instead try to be kind and loving.

And he would tell us to touch each other with loving kindness.

That’s because Jesus was a Jew. And Judaism has no admonitions against sex built into its philosophical foundations, except kinky sex and farm animals and a couple of out of context quotes about homosexuality.

What would Jesus say about sex? He would say be kind and loving when entering your partner.

So this Christmas season, don’t bother with church and it’s impotent virgin cult. Have sex for Jesus. It’s what the messiah would want you to do. After all, he was a nice Jewish boy. All this caroling would have driven him crazy.