Exchange of Realities

Another post for this month’s RPG Blog Carnival.  A little religion goes a long way.

The first thing most people think about religion in speculative fiction (…okay, after they review the whole “Church is evil” cliché and the holy objects vs. creatures of evil thing—but really, what more do we need to do with those?) is the ceremonies. Chanting in esoteric languages, prayers that involve the full congregation, the occasional case of divine intervention—or when the church is one of those cliché hoaxes, bells and whistles that veil the mundane in glory—we see them. We know them. We enjoy them, more so as they seem more exotic or more real.

But if we want these services to be real, why are we only looking at one side of the altar? Most of these scenes are written focusing on the priest(s), occasionally interspersed with bumbling acolytes. Personal experience, however, tells me that there’s a lot more going on than just the usual smells and bells, and that even participation isn’t necessarily limited to the clergy. There are a lot more people in the pews or equivalent thereof than there are up front, after all.

Remember, for instance, that there’s a difference between cleric work and clerical work; what makes you think the people conducting the services are necessarily the ones handling the more secular portions of administration? People in the congregation might be coordinating feeding their fellow worshipers, or maintenance of the places where the ceremonies take place. In my church alone, you’ve got the people who coordinate coffee hour, the president of the vestry, the choir director, the knot of ladies who handle the nursery and Sunday school, the coordinator of the acolytes, the coordinator of the lectors/chalice bearers…. and that’s just what I can think of without looking at the almanac. Even if you don’t plan on figuring them out as characters, these people can be living scenery, hard at work at their respective projects or rushing about before services because someone’s gone AWOL.

And then there’s everyone else. There’s usually a lot of everyone else: there’s a sense in which the services are put on just as much for them as for the god(s). Imagine the grandson of one of the clergy doing poi tricks with the thurible during a particularly incense-heavy service. Or another’s husband doing his best (and probably a bit too much) to keep their daughter in line. Maybe there’s a visiting family, speaking about five words of the language but fully understanding “welcome”. An older woman in the choir, eighty-some but with more energy than most of those around her, pumping her fist near the ends of the livelier hymns; a boy puffing up the stairs to the loft on an errand, blurting out “How do you guys climb up these things?” so loudly that you could probably hear it from behind the altar. Or that fellow in the next to back row, who shakes hands with those processing once they’ve gotten past the point where they need to walk in step.

Even on the living scenery level, little things like this can create an illusion of depth and life to the service and the world in a way that even the most detailed of ceremonies can only hint at—and once you’ve established that it exists in some places, its absence in others can be just as much an indication of how they work. Coming up with it can be an excellent source of backstories and new characters. But you know the best part? It transcends medium, even genre—as long as there is religion, so there will be people and moments like this scattered almost everywhere. Use them.