...about the saints.

They would enter my church, see the statue of Mary the Blessed Virgin (not a saint strictly speaking, but not officially part of the Godhead either -- somewhere in between), and call it an idol. We also had statues of St. John the Evangelist (patron of the parish), St. Anthony (for the Italians), St. Patrick (I bet you can guess for whom), St. Anne (Mary's mother, with the child Mary), and St. Joseph (Jesus's stepdad).

At my grandfather's church, which would have been the cathedral had the diocese lines been drawn differently, there was a grotto down in the basement, accessable by a marble staircase with a gleaming brass rail. The grotto held many many saints and their rows and rows of candles in different colored glass cups, a different symbolic color for each saint, to be lit for each prayer said. The walkways too were marble, and the walls were brick and marble. The clicks of people's Sunday shoes echoed throughout the small space, and you never heard a word above a whisper, unless the voice of a small child called out to one of the statues, quickly shushed. It was chill and dimly lit and smelled of burnt beeswax and soap, a thoroughly magical place enhanced still further by the bubbling of a working fountain that simulated the shrine at Lourdes, France: its stone cave, its miraculous spring, the apparition of the virgin lit from behind, and a life-sized (as were all the statues) girl Bernadette, unafraid in front of the celestial mother.

The non-Catholics claimed we worshipped the saints. I had been to catechism classes, so I knew the way it worked: prayers were offered to God through different saints as focus points, so we could think about our problems through their stories, because their humanity is not so very different from our own. Or, in another, simpler explanation that I still find charming if not quite theologically accurate, God is very busy, so we go to one of the saints' offices to make our small petitions, and the saints will offer them to God in our stead, as a mighty noble might speak for one of his or her vassals. Each saint of course had his or her speciality. St. Blaise for throat ailments; St. Lucy for afflictions of the eyes; St. Anthony to find something lost; St. Cecilia for musicians; St. Jude for Impossible Causes... The very sweetest idea, and least theologically appropriate of them all, was that any prayer offered through Mary would be considered with special tenderness, because she was Jesus's mother, and even God has a special place in His Heart for His Mother.

Looking back on it through the statements you just made, and considering that many of the pagan customs and celebrations didn't vanish, but were absorbed by Christianity, I can now say out loud that of course much of this amounts to a kind of polytheism, in which the lesser spirits stand in mediation between mortals and the Great Ineffable, which is some days too Great and too Ineffable for a small effable being to contemplate.

That too is what pagans do, with their many small gods. Are you up at dawn? You sing to her Rosy-Fingered splendor. Does the sky rumble? You speak to the one who wields the Hammer. It's more about the moment, and the encounter you have at the time. Does someone whisper a poem or song in your ear? Surely this is not the voice of the Universe, for it speaks no language, but a small spirit, a Muse, a Sprite, might speak. As many notes make up a fugue, so do all their little voices each singing one note in one key add up to one Piece of Music, and the Whole greatly exceeds the sum of Its parts.

There will always be people who think that the sweet poetic interpretation is the literal reality, because they are neither trained nor inclined to think beyond that. This is true of any religion that has been cut multifacetted rather than as a cabochon. But for all that, the sapphire has as much beauty in its fractious glittering facets as has the opal in its cool smooth irridescent splendor. The same light shines on them all.