Mostar - Medjugorje and Blagaj

I have always been uncomfortable in religious spaces. 

My parents are atheist hippies and I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to an official church function. I didn't think there was anything wrong with this; some people had to go do some stuff on Sundays and some didn't. It wasn't until, in what I think was an effort to broker some peace and quiet during the summer months, my mother sent me away to, what I later found out, was a religious camp for two weeks that my indifference to it all changed.

During story time, when I asked aloud "who's Abraham" after the councillors talked about him as if I was supposed to know who that was, it became clear to everyone that I was not part of the gang. There were nice to me and everything, but there's were a group of kids there that just mastered projecting this vibe that I did not belong and that they were better than me that just sort of made an impression on me of a type of person that I did NOT like. 

I had a few classmates in elementary school that projected this vibe a lot and now I knew where it came from. 

Fast forward to high school, my boyfriend and I agreed to go to youth group to appease his religious parents because I was "the older woman" (by one year) and made them very nervous around their precious innocent angel baby (to be fair, they should have been, I debauched him well and good).

Anyway, this pastor starts talking about "the curse of eve" and blah blah blah, and I could just feel my face sort of morph from being neutral to perturbed, and finally, as he talks about one of their congregation who passed away in a motorcycle accident and he'd stopped coming to church and maybe that's why god let him die, my whole face was anger and my arms were crossed and if fire could have spurted from my eyes I think I'd have made it happen. 

That was when I knew this life was not for me, not even in a pretend to make peace kind of way. If that made me a heathen, then so be it. 

So, imagine my apprehension when our itinerary for day three in Mostar involved travelling to not one, but TWO religious sites. 

The Marian shrine of Medjugorje, we learned, is the third most visited Christian pilgrimage site in Europe, after Lourdes, France and the Vatican. In 1981 a couple of kids saw visions of the Virgin Mary on a hillside in the town and people have been flocking here ever since. 

Blagaj, alternatively, is a small village on a peaceful river. It is a protected site because there is an islamic Dervish monastery that's been there since the 1500s.

Bats kept flying in and out of that cave.

And here's me - a heathen who is the type of person that will immediately start swearing in inappropriate places, realize it's inappropriate, try and apologize, include a swear word in the apology, exclaim a swear word, then swear an apology again, then slowly fade into nothingness as soul and body disintegrate into dust. 

I was for sure going to be smote on this day. 

When we got to the shrine in Medugorje, I was struck by how much it seemed like a theme park. It was a whole compound that had this sort of plastic feel to it, like it wasn't quite real. It reminded me of Disneyland - false buildings and an unnatural level of clean. I mean, there were gift shops selling rosaries and holy water, and large groups of people wearing matching items of clothing. I later learned that these were modern-day, honest-to-goodness PILGRIMS. 

There were several of these detailing what I'm sure are very well known tales of Jesus.

There was also this big bronze status that all these people were waiting to go up to and rub the knee. Apparently it secretes some kind of water that people collect and use for blessings? We of course all waited our turn to touch the magical water knee with our tissues and walked back to the parking lot to get back on the bus. A little blessed knee water couldn't hurt to keep around, after all. 

It's shiny so it must be true.

Once we were back on the bus and driving towards our next destination, I couldn't help feel like the whole setup was trying to hard to convince us it was real. I think whatever powers that be sunk a LOT of money into setting the shrine up to feel legitimized by the permanence of its structures and the manicured shrubbery. 

I dunno, maybe I'm jaded by the mean girls from camp but it all felt very insincere. 

That the first place felt artificial was only solidified once we got stop number two.  

I don't know if it's just the nature of old buildings, but you can feel the history in them. You can see the worn down treads of stairs, the antiquated building techniques, the drafts that flow through them. The Monastery building in Blagaj had this feeling in spades. 

The other thing that I didn't think would feel so significant, is that because it was an Islamic site, the female members of our group could not enter without their heads covered, and if the rest of their garments weren't modest enough, skirts as well. I was wearing long enough pants, so I only had to put on the head scarf

Act natural...

It was such a profound experience observing something that is culturally so far from anything I'd been exposed to before. I don't know why it felt like there was more weight to it - like I didn't feel moved to investigate islam further for my own spiritual purposes, but for some reason it felt like observing the custom deserved more of my respect than rubbing the shiny knee of a supposed apparition. 

Maybe because this was a house that people had lived in for hundreds of years devoting their lives to something they felt was greater than themselves. It would have been a disrespect to the legacy of their lives or something. 

Ultimately I don't know why, but as I walked around the rooms of this ancient building, on carpets and rugs that were who knew how old, and admired the complex carvings and woodwork, it just felt more authentic and real than anything we'd experienced earlier in the day. 

I don't think that I'll ever be comfortable in religious spaces, but I would much rather visit something authentic than manufactured any day.