Sheep and Religion

Yesterday the group took a bus to Wells, and then to Avebury. The trip provided a nice contrast of scenery, lifestyle, and religion. In Wells you've got a gigantic catholic cathedral whose laborious intricacy tell a story of fervor and economic power. Avebury could only boast grassy rolling hills, wandering flocks of sheep, and the odd Wiccan ritual.

The cathedral sits on a big square of grass that was made completely flat and uniform, perhaps to contrast with the incredible detail of the masonry. The focus is not on nature, but on the domination of natural forces, even gravity, in the name of God. The structure is so heavy and ornate that some of its support pillars began to sink, and it had to be reinforced by the "scissor arches" in the nave. Its only failure to bend nature it its will is the prominent pre-copernican clock which sends the sun slowly around the earth--as far as I know, this concept has not yet been imposed on the solar system. The cathedral is surrounded by a town with an assortment of shops and businesses, a market, and a Starbucks (I only saw one, but there could be more).

Avebury was a completely different experience. I noticed only after I had a moment to relax my attention from the minefield of sheep poop that this place was indeed cooler than Stonehenge. It has huge circles of stones with all the same ancient mystery, but none of the unfortunate attributes of the tourist trap that Stonehenge has allegedly become. What's more, the field of sheep poop came complete with the fuzzy white culprits. A few of my classmates decided it was imperative that they go sneak up on a sheep and touch it, but the rest of us wound our way out to find fresher sights and fairer grounds. I was impressed by the way that the hills just cried out for free roaming exploration, and I was pretty bummed out when I saw fences dividing the land into private properties and denying my impulse. We paused a moment to watch the local children make prudes of all of us with a festive poo flinging fight, and then finally got to the main event: people in funny clothes standing around near a rock and looking very solemn.

When I walked up and asked for information from what looked like a semi-involved bystander (untamed hair, smoking something), he informed me that I was seeing a Wiccan wedding. Fascinating, thought I. If you want to know about Wiccans, look them up on wikipedia. To put the scene succinctly, most of them looked and acted like they came away from Lord of the Rings with a literalist interpretation. However, from what one woman explained to me about Wiccan beliefs, the whole deal sounded just as legitimate as the big ol' cathedral I had just come from. The Earth is alive with spiritual energy and prehistoric rocks are neato, all that good stuff. To be perfectly fair, Catholics wear funny clothes too; they just have a bigger budget.

I don't really mean to denigrate either religion, but I would like to point out that if you think Catholicism is more reasonable and dignified than the Wiccan religion, you are probably operating on some unfair bias. You'd be a fool to think that extremely useful and optimistic ideas can be verified by popularity alone, as they tend to be very catchy, so what's left for distinction?