Sacred

Liz and Peter left North Dakota for Colorado, their home, late one afternoon; they’d agreed to drive home together after about three days at the demonstration against the pipeline at the Standing Rock reservation. They had gone there on a lark, mostly, but Peter, before they had even left, had given Liz an old ring that he’d found in his mother’s jewelry box. His mother agreed that he could give it to Liz, with the understanding that it was an engagement ring. The two had been talking about marriage for a while, but were both quite young, and uncertain about their future.

It was a long drive from North Dakota to Colorado, and it was mostly open, empty, and bitterly cold plains. Also it was likely to be dark for most of the trip, though they were young, and both claimed they didn’t mind driving all night if they were talking about something interesting. Getting a hotel was possible, but would stretch their budget, so they preferred just going on through the night, talking about whatever came up. Every once in a while they’d come to an exit, with golden arches, maybe, or a truck stop, but they decided they’d keep on driving and talking as long as they could.

For a while Peter was talking about the Spaghetti Monster. He’d been stuck thinking about the Spaghetti Monster ever since he’d learned that he was distantly related to the guy who had first invented it, in Kansas. The essence of the story, as told in the family, and as Peter related it to Liz, was that the state’s justification for teaching creationism in school was that you couldn’t prove that God didn’t create the earth. So, this guy who challenged the law, said Peter, said you also couldn’t prove that the Spaghetti Monster didn’t create the earth. And he invented the Spaghetti Monster, with its various tentacles, and two meatballs in it, and went on, in defiance, insisting that he believed that the Spaghetti Monster created the universe.

Peter went on about how the movement caught on, and people had started wearing colanders on their heads for pictures where religious headgear was allowed, for example, on drivers’ licenses. This had been picked up in various places, and the movement was especially big in Europe, where various courts had ruled that even movements that seemed to be a parody of true religion were just as valid as true religions, if people maintained that they believed in them. If we thought a colander was sacred, said Peter, who was anyone to judge what was parody and what was real?

Liz, at this point, was driving. The road was straight and long, and the night seemed endless, and it was so cold that she couldn’t crack the window. She didn’t want to argue with Peter, whom she dearly loved, but she thought that the Spaghetti Monster was ridiculous. People who made a big deal about a fictional character with many tentacles and two meatballs were ridiculing religion, and God, and of course they should be allowed to do it, but that didn’t make it right. She didn’t say anything, though. She was, as she drove, receiving texts from her mother, who kept asking about her progress on the road, and telling Liz about her own adventure, down in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, where she was cleaning out her aunt’s old house, along with her sister. The aunt had died about a month ago, and there had been a funeral service, which Liz had attended, though she hadn’t known the aunt, her great aunt, well; it was a fairly close family, though they didn’t see each other a lot. Peter would read the texts out loud to her as they came in, since she was driving. Liz would then tell Peter what to respond. This went on for a while, as it became later; it was nine, nine-thirty, ten, and the road went on endlessly, once they’d filled up with gas. Peter, along with answering the texts, was also in charge of music, which he chose very deliberately. Liz concentrated on staying within the speed limit, though, with her ring hand on the steering wheel, she’d often rub the ring with her other hand. It was so easy, out here in the middle of nowhere, to just go eighty, but she was determined to not get a ticket, and to make it home.

Peter, it seemed, was even more stuck on the Spaghetti Monster, since he’d met some Europeans at Standing Rock who were able to give him a report of some of the things they did in Europe. Now, however, after a point, Liz was getting a little irritated. The Flying Spaghetti Monster people, he said, maintained that basically nothing was sacred, unless people agreed that it was. Therefore, if they agreed that a Spaghetti Monster was sacred, it was. And on and on he went. Finally she decided to respond.

“But what about the Standing Rock?” she asked. “To them, water was sacred. Old grave sites were sacred. That was the point of the demonstration. That’s why we went to North Dakota in the first place,” she said. There was a conch, that a Native American had given her at Standing Rock, in the seat beside them, and she picked it up and put it in his hand. “What do you think they would say about the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Did you ask them?”

He was quiet for a while, but finally he admitted that he was talking about it, not so much because he believed in it, but to work out how he felt about it in his mind. “Some things,” he said, “might have been sacred at one time, but lost their meaning over time, like that ring,” he said, and pointed to her ring, which was right on top of the steering wheel as she drove. It was a beautiful old ring, obviously very good quality silver, with an inlaid design, but, he said, he had to admit that the best he knew from his family, well, he didn’t really know very much about it. It had been in the family for a while. It had belonged to one of his grandparents, but probably had gone back way before then, when rings were made differently, and also when they meant more. Or rather, it seemed that way, he said, since you don’t really know what things mean to people, unless you ask, and even then you often don’t know. This last part he mumbled, as a kind of admission that he and his family weren’t able to conjure up much of the history.

Liz, inexplicably, began to cry, as she drove. It upset Peter, a lot, and they switched drivers, but this was partly because she was tired, and it was his turn, and they’d have to switch eventually anyway. She was also receiving the last of the texts from her mom, who was going to bed back in Colorado, though it was actually earlier out there than in the midwest. As Liz settled in the passenger seat, and Peter started driving, she gathered up her phone and read the old texts. Mom was now texting about some candles that they’d found in the aunt’s house. These candles were part of a story; the aunt, and her sister, had kept the candles for years, but had never lit them; when they actually wanted to light a candle, they’d go get another kind. When Liz and her mother had questioned the old sisters about what they were doing, many years back, when Liz was a young girl, they had said that the candles were sacred, and had come down through the family, and were to be used in a certain way, but they didn’t remember the way, so they didn’t use them. They had remembered the sacredness, and protected it, yet didn’t remember the exact meaning. The candles had actually been smuggled up there, they said, and they wanted to protect them at all costs.

The two aunts, both sisters of Liz’s mom’s father, had told them this together, several years ago, but one sister died shortly after, and the second sister had just died about a month ago. Thus the memory of what they said was still fairly clear, though neither Mom nor Liz could ever figure out what they’d meant by “smuggle” or even “up there” – which could have meant they were illegal down in the valley? In Colorado? This didn’t make sense. Candles, it seemed to Liz, weren’t illegal anywhere, really.

Maybe they were Marranos, Peter said. And then, he explained a little about Marranos. He happened to know, because he knew a lot about history, and this was a topic that had always fascinated him.

The Marranos were Jews in Spain and Portugal, around the time of Columbus, who were forced to either convert to Christianity or leave Spain. Many chose to leave Spain or Portugal. Many ended up in far-flung parts of the world, like the Amazon Valley or elsewhere. But some had actually gone with Spanish or Portuguese explorers, and decided to get as far away as they could from the center of the Empire, so as to be left alone. And thus, some came to Mexico City, and followed the early explorers north, as far as New Mexico or Colorado, which at that time were the far reaches, as far as you could get, from the centers of power. If you were Jewish, he said, your choices were to convert, to go as far away as you could, or do both. Or, a third option, go as far as you could, pretending to have converted, and then be free once you were at your destination. But the problem was, these remote people, or communities, in some cases, would try to keep their religion, once they got where they were going, but things would get lost. They’d lose track of the rituals, and would have no contact with other Jews, or with any formal organization that could do that for them. In those days, they didn’t have phones, or even newspapers, or anything else. And the San Juan mountains were very remote.

At this point Liz was in the passenger seat; her mom had stopped texting, having gone to bed. But Peter’s story rang a bell with her; she thought this was very possible. She had been brought up, really, without a religion. Her mom had freely admitted that she’d let go of her religion as a child; her dad never mentioned the subject. When Christian religious holidays, like Christmas and Easter, came around, they would celebrate them, but only in a token kind of way, not really religious. Unlike the Standing Rock, they didn’t really have anything that was truly sacred to them; they lived in a world where the parents, both being scientists, rarely even discussed these things. Yet she knew a little about the family history, and knew this was possible. She listened to Peter’s story and entertained the possibility.

Peter now had driven for a while, and Liz, finally, fell asleep, exhausted. Peter himself had grown up in a religious family, where lots of things were sacred, but he had always disdained the prescribed meaning of everything – cup, altar, crucifix, statue; it seem to him that people put too much importance in these, and that’s why he’d been attracted to the Spaghetti Monster. If people were going to be like that, he thought, he would use his power to make fun of them, or to show how ridiculous they were. He didn’t want to accept someone else’s definition of sacred, or the idea that some objects were so close to holy.

But he was also deeply in love with Liz, and could see that his even mentioning it, or bringing it up, had been hurtful to her. Having nothing as sacred was like being at sea, being lost, having no culture at all. It was ok for him, as he was questioning everything, and, being young, rejecting everything his parents were assuming he’d pick up. Part of being young, though, he thought, would be making their own way, he and Liz, starting a new life, finding their own path in the world. He determined not to bring it up again, not to make her cry.

At one point Peter himself became too tired to drive, and, at a rest area, pulled over, turned the car off, and slept a little, until the car became too cold and they both woke up. Liz, now, was ready to drive, and drove until they got home. Hungry and needing coffee, still they chose to just drive and talk, trying to process what they’d seen and heard at Standing Rock. She’d been heavily influenced by the Standing Rock and the demonstration, and came home interested in water issues, pipelines and environmentalism, unlike Peter, who was more interested in political end of it, and issues of the powerless, fighting against the big corporations. They were really quite different, Liz and Peter, but got along very well, and made a good couple, and they were deeply in love with each other.

They got married within a couple years, and though Liz had inherited the candles – that was why her mother had been texting her, really – it was years before they even thought about religion, or did anything about it. Peter, who loved history in all its forms, dug up some accounts of Spanish explorers leaving Mexico City, coming all the way north, through a great desert, and up into New Mexico and finally the San Juans, an enormous voyage, almost incomprehensible; it made their long trip across the plains, in the winter, seem like a walk to the park. Unfortunately, while they were camping, Liz lost the ring. But they kept the memories of things they’d done together, and they would frequently remind each other: things are as sacred as you make them. They themselves would decide how sacred anything was. Hopefully they would decide together, respecting each other’s differences and growing together. She kept the old conch, and put it in her kitchen window, and Peter never mentioned the Spaghetti Monster again.