Once upon a time, the Christian church venerated the holy people in their midst. This veneration began as an informal respect, later to a formal appreciation, and eventually to a quasi-cult system where Saint Genevieve was worshipped for her refusal to sacrifice the precious flower to an invader and medieval thieves could pray to their very own Saint Nick.
The saints never achieved divinity, of course, but they appropriated a sense of help. The saints were your nurses, your Apple Geniuses, your State Farm agent: in your neighborhood to help you with the Big things in life.
At The Convent in Massachusetts, we also worship our saints. We have many of them -- some who are Departed Sisters*-- but also those whom we have never met. Like medieval saints, they are removed from our experience of reality and yet influence them.
The most popular saints at The Convent are Dr. Temperance Brennan, Dr. Meredith Gray, Doctor Who (a more remote saint, whose cult is therefore more respected for its foreign origins), occasionally Don Draper, Rory Gilmore, Michael Scott (the patron saint of lunatic employers) and the entire cast of every Korean drama ever produced.
These holy men and women provide aid to the Sisters of Wellesley. They relieve the need to process, analyze, deconstruct and fail to reconstruct Reality. These TV saints protect Wellesley sisters from believing that everyone knows where James Joyce lived after the age of 22. They remind us that romantic relationships are valuable despite their lack of resume appeal.
They remind the straight Sisters that men exist, and that some of those men are attractive. And these televised sages remind Wellesley Sisters that the Sisters are smart, and that one day they shall achieve union with Success; for if we worship in the cult of Bones, we too can be successful forensic anthropologists with David Boreneaz as our luscious partner.
The Medievalist must confess that there is a surprising aspect to the Wellesley cults. There is a fervent dedication that I myself have succumbed to: the radical forms of worship. It is not uncommon, and even I dare say expected, for most Sisters to spent one week per semester in prayer to these Saints. These televised marathons take place in the quiet solitude of the cell, where the Sister may pray to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and learn the miracles by heart (seasons 1-3, at least.)
I would continue this deliberation, but even in my summery separation from the Convent, I still dedicate myself to the patron saints, Evan R. Lawson and Jane Marple, to whom I owe adoration.
Later Note: The Medievalist failed in her worship of Jane Marple, as she claimed higher allegiance to Sleep, the rival god to Success. Success will hopefully not harm her; Jane Marple, on the other hand, might.
*Departed Sisters: sisters who have left This Life to enter Life with Success. Notable Sisters of this convent are those known to all, such as Nora Ephron, Madeleine Albright, Madeleine Albright's current successor, Diane Sawyer, and so on.
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hahaha. "long hours spent staring at magic screens." so true! BUT SO MAGICAL! people still watch Buffy though? Weird. That show used to scare the CRAP out of me. I still have a fairly deeply rooted fear of seeing someone floating outside my window asking to come in and have a snack (despite the fact that my basement floor doesn't require someone floating anymore).
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