My Disbelief in God and My Love of Churches

For my art piece, I made a digital sketch overlaid with a watercolor brush that was inspired by two small quotes found in The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood. The first quote can be found in chapter 18 of the book, “ … flickering like images of saints, in old foreign cathedrals”. This inspired me for the shape and background of the image which was supposed to model a piece of stained glass that one could find in an old foreign cathedral. The main focus of my training came from a quote in chapter 25. “ Saint Serna, on her knees, doing penance”. This gave me inspiration for “Saint Serena” who I sketched in a nun garb in the Commander’s Wife blue with a halo around her head and a small shovel in her hand. The reason I chose these two quotes for inspiration is because of the religious imagery they both convey. Throughout the reading, I have found a fair bit of religious imagery scattered all through the book so far. And in my annotations of the first quote I wrote, “I am always very intrigued by religious imagery especially the way Atwood writes it; somehow subtle and overt at the same time”. I went to catholic school from pre-k all the way through 8th grade. Though I can say that sometimes the experiences I had in the catholic school system were memorable in a positive way, I can also say for a fact that the idea of God was shoved down my throat so much that I eventually threw it up; God was a person or entity that I had no wish to think about or interact with. Even through all of the turmoil and in some cases trauma that I went through in Catholic school, my enjoyment of religious imagery never dwindled. My complicated relationship with the church as a whole never stopped me from appreciating one church in a moment, the beauty of the architecture, and the images of Christ embedded in stained glass. These images were so wondrous and grand to me that I never really doubted the sanctity of a church until I stepped foot outside of it. Eventually, I started to understand why I found these images of faith and belief and religion to be so powerful even though I was actively unsubscribing from them; I saw a strange fascination with the worship of something I knew not to be real to me. Staring at the carved marble of the Holy Father in awe knowing that to me He wasn’t real but being moved to tears by the fact someone more than likely driven only by faith put so much time care and attention into displaying a beautiful image of Him and watching people knelt in front of Him, rosaries in hand doing the sign of the cross. I am by no means a faith-oriented person and I think that’s what makes religious imagery that is done in a quite beautiful fashion such as Atwood has spoken so closely to me. I may not feel the same pull to religion that other people do but when I see these beautiful pieces of art that are motivated by faith I am brought to a point where I can empathize with them on a much deeper level; their worship is shown to me in an enchanting fashion that makes me understand the depth of their faith more than any bible verse could.