My Aunt (Part II)

My aunt goes to church every morning at 6.30 before going to work and on Sundays. Before that, she makes devotions at home in front of shrine to the virgin. She prays with ostentation. It makes me smile because from what I remember from the Gospel is that Jesus clear dislike for that kind of attitude. But hey Jesus is dead so I guess people don't have to stick to what He said… I'm no going to get started on religion and Christians in particular because it is one of my pet hate. I wont say a thing on the reigning hypocrisy, the judgmental attitudes, and in the case of some Born Again, Pentecostals etc…, the hijacking of God who find Himself reduced to signing pre-death salvation insurance contracts the minute someone stands up in church and declare "I'm saved", forfeiting His right to the Last Judgment, renouncing His own words which say that salvation is an ongoing process (if God is really that cheap I'm not interested would be my stance). Nothing on the unbelievable dogmas, the far-fetched interpretations of texts, the gilt-riddling message of the Roman Catholic Church and the self-hatred that comes from never being good enough (we're already born stained and then the Devil/free will -same thing really- are thrown in the mix just to make things that little bit more interesting). I won't say anything on religion except that I kind of like what Jesus actually said. He's on my list of cool and misunderstood people.
So, my aunt at home in the living room has a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. A shrine that makes me think of the voodoo shrines of the Haiti or Brazil dedicated to Yemanja, goddess of beauty and rivers. There's a tall statue of the Virgin, an abundance of white and blue cloths, flowers, rosaries, holy water in a phosphorescent Mary look-alike container, incense, pious images and a candle burning all day long. I wrote once an essay on African religions in the New World and how slaves used the Christian pantheon to camouflage their African deities. I'm not sure of how to interpret my aunt shrine though. She'd rather die than admit any link with voodoo because as she said many and many times, it is the worshipping of the devil. I cooked up little explanation: she is coming from one of those costal dynasties created by free black Brazilians returning to set up their own trade in slaves. These returnees must have come back with their syncretic religion of Christianity and African religions. Back here they got "re-christianised" or “de-Africanised” by French Roman Catholic missionaries and the second layer of meaning of the syncretic New World’s religions disappeared, leaving us with the weird kind of Catholicism my aunt practices. Funny twist of history really.
My aunt says she is a Christian, but it is very ironic that she would lack so completely what I think is the basis of Christianity: charity.
For my birthday she offered me a piece of cloth and ask her seamstress to make me a dress out of it. A couple of weeks later the seamstress came back with the dress and asked for her fee. I had to pay for my present.
My aunt resent me for staying with them for the duration of my stay here. No direct attacks, just a continuous stream of little humiliations. From not allowing me to dish my own food and counting herself the pieces of meat I’m allowed, to forbidding the maid to wash the plate I use to eat but letting her do the washing for every other member of the household, also forbidding the maid to wash my clothes or run my errands even though there are no such restrictions for the rest of the family. Sly remarks on my hair, my clothes, what I do and how I do it. I never say a thing.
I take a deep breath and think to myself: if Heaven is populated with Christians like her, please God let me go to Hell.