19–23.06.2026
In accordance with the wishes of my father—whose own father was a Mason and a virulent anti-Catholic—I was raised in the Roman church. I went to mass every Sunday with my grandmother and sister while my mom, a convert, sang in the folk choir; this was the ’70s after all.
In addition to the weekly service, I attended catechism once a week as soon as I was of age. The only thing I remember about it was the day we were given a sheet of paper and asked to draw what we thought God looked like. Most of my classmates proceeded in drafting the usual old white guy with the flowing beard, but I, not being savvy enough to see where this was going, drew a psychedelic mandala, incorporating ersatz Native American iconography mostly gleaned from National Geographic and Eagles album covers. Needless to say, this was not what the nuns were looking for, and so the first rift in my relationship with Organized Religion was formed.
I did continue on, going through the rituals of First Communion and Confirmation before hanging it up. This would have been right before the first major child molestation scandals hit in the mid-’80, continuing on through the new century, and effectively putting a pin in my faith where the Church was concerned.
This is not to say that my belief in a higher power ever wavered. Experimenting with psychedelics throughout the ’80s only strengthened my conviction that there is a force for good that runs through it all (and just maybe Jerry Garcia’s guitar solos had something to do with it).
This is a good place to mention my grandfather on my mother’s side, a polymath if there ever was one. Born in Hinton, West Virginia, he had an insatiable appetite for learning, devouring everything from Shakespeare to Crowley, from astral projection to, in his later years, calculus (which, in retrospect, doesn’t really seem the kind of thing one can learn on your own). When I was old enough, I borrowed books on Castaneda and mushroom cults from his extensive library, the glorious result of a bibliomania that appears to be hereditary, and probably fatal.
It was the late ’80s when I found myself taking a Comparative Religion class in college. Our assignment was to attend three separate services in religious organizations other than the one we may have been exposed to. No pun intended. It was then that I learned that my grandfather had studied Hebrew so that he might read the Kabbala in its original language, as one does as an expatriated Appalachian academic.
He had actually worked with a local rabbi on the project and called him up to ask if he and I might visit his synagogue together. We arrived at the evening service and were lent a pair of yarmulkes to show proper respect; I would say, “to blend in,” but that was not going to happen. Unbeknownst to us goyim stumbling through reading from the back of the siddur, or prayer book, we had arrived on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when the Nazis rampaged throughout Germany, destroying as much of the Jewish communities as they could.
One by one, survivors of the pogrom, and its horrific aftermath, stood to bear witness to what they experienced and endured. I felt as if each speaker was talking to me, making sure that I understood where that sort of ideology could lead if left unchecked.
Finally, the rabbi stood and announced that there was a special opportunity that night. As the synagogue was new, they had written back to Eastern Europe for a torah. He explained that, as the Germans advanced toward the Soviet Union, leveling communities and places of worship as they went, they collected the typical silver ornamentation and velvet wrappings that the ancient scrolls usually wore, and tossed the naked torahs into a warehouse to be used in a “museum to a dead race” to be built later.
The rabbi announced that this would be a rare chance to actually touch an 800-year-old scroll, as the mantle, or covering, did not reach to the bottom of the parchment. My grandfather and I watched as the object was carried down the aisle and the faithful touched it with total reverence. When they got to our pew, I deferred at first, feeling that—as an outside visitor—it was a step too far. I soon realized that the men who carried the scroll were not going anywhere and they redoubled the offer, saying that it was fine.
As soon as I touched the edge of the parchment, I felt what I can only describe as a spiritual shock. The men just nodded like, “yea, this happens all the time,” and moved on to the next pew. In later years I learned about yogic awakening and the movement of Kundalini energy up through the chakras to the Crown chakra representing a connection to the divine. My grandfather’s Kabbala study had taught him about the Hitlahavut, or “catching on fire,” an intense burst of ecstatic spiritual passion. I’m not sure that’s what I experienced, but it was something.
Itzhak Bentov, a Czech-born Israeli-American scientist, inventor, and mystic, wrote about how consciousness itself is an all-encompassing energy field and is responsible for creating our physical reality. A certain place or an object can amass psychic power and significance through protracted attention (I can only imagine the charge that an eight-century-old Pentateuch belonging to a community that had been through so much grief might hold).
In quantum mechanics, as much as I understand it, this is called the Observer Effect. At the subatomic level, particles exist in superposition, or waves of probability. As soon as they are observed, the wave collapses, causing the particle to exist in a single state.
Is faith a mechanism to create reality? Or are we the outcome of an outside observer? This bears further thought, but it’s late and I must sleep. Perchance to dream a better world.
Román Leão 