Cowboy Confessional

Kinky Friedman once opined that singer Willie Nelson was “spiritually horny,” an assertion that old Willie was broadminded enough to find enlightenment in whatever he was doing or smoking that morning.  Toby Keith once claimed to have gotten a contact high from touching Willie’s tour buss, so Nelson’s assumed spiritual sensibilities might merely be Mary Jane manifestations.

In this, Willie and San Francisco have much in common.  While researching my next book, in which I tackle the impossible task of explaining San Francisco to the rest of the country, I noticed that this town has had too many spiritual and anti-spiritual springboards.  It was founded by Catholic zealots who either converted Indians or killed them.  San Francisco was also the starting point for Jim Jones’ Temple and the Church of Satan (and, no, those two institutions are philosophically worlds apart, oddly with the latter being more saintly).  If you are in need of a random does of enlightenment, just walk around this town for an afternoon.  You will find at least two of every faith, theory, philosophy and spiritual derangement.

And boat loads of atheists and agnostics, who exist to anger all the other groups.

I recalled this last weekend while taking a random walk through the neighborhood of my sweetheart’s grandparents.  San Francisco’s Mission district (so named for a leftover outpost from the original Spanish mercenary missionaries) has seen many populations come then go.  It has at times been occupied by Irish immigrants, German immigrants, and now a mix of Mexicans and hipsters.  Presumably the Mexicans arrived first and the hipsters followed so they could get some good food before sliding into ironic, old-school Irish pubs.

When rounding a corner we happened upon a gothic church painted very, very red.  This contrast was too enticing to ignore, so we strolled the extra half block to see what religion was so wacko that Day-Glo spires were their motif.  What we discovered was an example of reworked religion, where the one old religion supplants a newer one’s digs.

The building was a German Lutheran church erected shortly before the Great Quake of 1906 that leveled and burned most of San Francisco.  That the building survived is a testament to engineering, luck, or proof that Gawd is a Lutheran (Old St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral did not fair as well).  Eventually though the Mission ran out of Germans, which meant it also ran out of Lutherans, and the church was deconsecrated and turned into a residence (how Gawd felt about squatters in his house is unknown, but we’ll assume he has other real estate holdings elsewhere).

Then came the Buddhists.

Therein is how gothic architecture came to be an oddly red beacon in a somewhat shabby neighborhood.  Since San Francisco is home to the largest collection of white, middle-class Buddhists and Buddha wannabes, it was natural for that Eastern practice to seek (not Sikh) a large home in Frisco.  Some things had to change aside from the color scheme.  Stained glass windows depicting the Christian symbology of being born again would ill-suit a center that detests being born again and again and again.

The new definition of ‘depressed’ would be someone born into a household with Buddhists and Baptist parents.

This is not San Francisco’s only supernatural abnormality.  The City is rife with young urban Rastafarians, old age new agers, and some people so self-medicated as to encounter Gawd on an hourly basis.  Yes, San Francisco is littered with seekers, because the Firesign Theater noted there is a seeker born every minute.

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Monday, April 18th, 2011 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Religion, San Francisco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.