The bulk of my family, on both sides, is Catholic. My mother's side is Italian: the people who invented Catholicism to market the tyranny of the state to the Christian rabble. And my father's side being Filipino: people who had Catholicism rammed down their throats by the marauding Spanish who invaded the archipelago some 500 odd years ago. Miraculously, I can count the number of times I've been to church on my hands; and they're all weddings, baptisms and funerals. Almost everyone in my family pays some kind of lip service to their religion. They're just normal people, not fanatics; which means living out the casual hypocrisy of being religious and having a mainstream life. It must be a weird situation.

Most of the "spiritual" nuisances I've experienced haven't been to do with Christianity, but that vague new-agey shit.

My father rings a Chinese singing bowl and literally prays, demands even, that he win the state lottery. He's established himself as a kind of guru, so people ask him for medical and spiritual advice. His answer will always be whatever random thing he'd heard last. If someone told him about a book that said avocado leaves are good for something, and they talk to him about it in passing, he'll later recommend, with grave certainty, that it's what you need to cure your toothache... or athlete's foot... or acne... or haunting. I haven't had the heart to "seed" him with bullshit advice to give the mofos who ask him dumb shit.

My cousin keeps a folder on her hard drive devoted entirely to photos of "orbs." Yes, little specks of dust, captured out of focus because they're on or close to the lens, and illuminated by the camera flash, are of great significance to her. She also had to be escorted to the bathroom at an L.A. church, because she "sensed" something about one of the walls and it scared her. She told me she had to quit playing Dungeons and Dragons when she was a preteen because it was getting "too real."