1931: THE CAT WHO WENT TO HEAVEN by Elizabeth Coatsworth with illustrations by Lynd Ward

Once upon a time, far away in Japan, a poor young artist sat alone in his little house, waiting for dinner.

If one had to choose the worst writer on religion in the history of human civilization, one would have to account for all of the terrible people over the millennia who twisted religious teachings to sow division, who used religion to foment hatred and violence, who lied about religion to enrich themselves by perverting what others used honestly to navigate a cruel world, and after considering all of those people, one would have to finally choose “the main guy on How I Met Your Mother.” 

I don't know how many people know this, but Josh Radnor, who played Ted on HIMYM for nine years, working on a soundstage where his job was to react to Neil Patrick Harris saying "I hope I get to assault some women tonight!" (the show has aged very poorly, even if you ignore its historically bad final episode), fancies himself something of an amateur theologian. He maintained an email newsletter on topics of faith and religion called [sighs heavily] “Museletter”, for years.

Radnor, a man who has somehow built his career into "just like Zach Braff but fifteen percent worse", also fancies himself a music writer on the side and is also terrible at that - his retrospective on Damien Rice's debut album sets a new standard for over-writing, and that standard was already very high in the world of music reviews - but his most hilariously appalling piece of writing, one that merits a straight-up roasting for the first half of my essay, was an April 2020 piece about how deep down all religions are, like, good, you know?

The piece, titled "Jesus the Lighthouse", ran on the website of the interfaith "Center for Action and Contemplation"¹, and begins like this [line breaks sic]:

"I am Jewish.

I also love Jesus.

This has not been uncomplicated for me."

I will not pretend to be an expert on essay writing, but my personal Strunk and White-type manual would open with this passage and the simple annotation "do not write like this" (or, adapting Radnor's use of litotes, "this writing does not un-blow to me"). And perhaps I'd include the additional annotation "do not write like this and then immediately follow it with an insane generalization about two different major world religions that you just pulled out of your butt":

"Jews have a fascinating relationship to Jesus. By “fascinating,” I mean that we act like he never really happened."

What the hell are you talking about? The relationship of Jesus to Judaism is, indeed, fascinating, because it's been the subject of literal thousands of years of theological debate in Jewish faith and scholarship, which you can figure out if you look at Wikipedia for ten seconds. As we're going to see, Radnor has a lot of extremely ahistorical thoughts, but for the first half of the piece, it at least seems like his heart is in the right place. The overall thesis of the piece initially appears to be this:

"Judaism is the tradition into which I was born, the one that served to define and shape my worldview more than any other. I could never undo any of that, nor do I wish to. But my spiritual appetite is omnivorous. Theological monogamy feels antithetical to my nature somehow. If something stirs my heart, I run with it, no matter the tradition from which it emerged."

Using "theological" and "monogamy" and "antithetical" all in the same sentence is annoying, especially when it immediately follows yet another four-syllable word in the previous sentence, but so far, this is fine. It's fine. I get it. You seek out stuff in other religions and sometimes it's interesting. You sound like a high school sophomore who just discovered the Tao Te Ching², but what you're saying isn't objectionable. Let's read on:

"Not to paint with too broad a brush, but it seems to me that different religions excel at different things."

Okay, Ted Mosby from CBS's Monday night lineup 2005-2014, now I have to stop you. This feels like you're going to start painting with too broad a brush in the sentences that immediately follow:

"Buddhists—again, broadly speaking—are very good with karma, suffering, liberation, and impermanence. Jews are wonderful with text, debate, doubt, question, and education; Christians with forgiveness, mercy, and grace. Hindus are uniquely skilled at mapping the varieties of divine expression."

What does this mean? What is this? "Buddhists are good with karma." "Jews are wonderful with text." "Christians are good with forgiveness." Good at teaching it? The content of the teaching itself is good? Good at practicing it? Good at incorporating it into the formal church structure? Are you aware that there is more than one denomination of each of these religions and that those can be pretty different from each other (do you have very many generalizations of Christianity that apply to both Southern Baptists and Quakers)? What do you mean when you say your own religion is wonderful with text? It has good text? It teaches textual analysis well? It has teachings on the nature of text and typeface? You literally say Judaism is "wonderful with question", which I think is a phrase the aliens tried to say to Amy Adams in Arrival. Oh, and there's one more religion you cover at the end of this paragraph:

"Islam means surrender and we can assume Muslims have much to teach us about this spiritually vital principle."

It's truly an incredible feat of writing to say "I've figured out all of the religions" and "I've never met or spoken to a Muslim person in my life, but Webster's dictionary defines…" in the same paragraph. But Radnor is about to throw a plot twist at us: the thesis of the piece is not anything that has to do with religion, it's the sentence he uses to open the second half of the essay:

"I began working with the Amazonian plant medicine ayahuasca back in 2007."

Ah, okay. It's all clicking into place now. The second half of Radnor’s piece is a detailed description of a time he tripped on ayahuasca and hallucinated Jesus’ crucifixion, but later found that his body was filled by a ball of light which he knew to be Jesus and which he describes as “Christic” (a far worse word than “Museletter”) and that is why he is a not-uncomplicated Jewish man who loves Jesus. 

It’s easy to draw a simple conclusion from all of this: Josh Radnor is not a Talmudic scholar, he's an actor who does drugs. He's allowed to be an actor who does drugs, sure, but that makes his writing less "insightful" and more "a guy just going 'whoa, dude'".  The fact that his writing shows up on various religion blogs is a little baffling, but far more easy to attribute to “he was a famous person who was on a popular TV show for nine years” than it is to attribute to “he has anything valuable to say”. 

Anyways, I have to write about Buddhism for the rest of the essay, and I probably won't be great at it, but I'll definitely be better than Josh Radnor is.

---

Let's clear this up right away: the title cat in 1931 Newbery medalist The Cat Who Went To Heaven does not go to heaven, the book has an extremely misleading title. The cat reaches Nirvana through the Noble Eightfold Path, because this 60-page story is a Buddhist fable set in Japan. And let's clear this up, too: a cat reaching Nirvana is a very tall order, because according to this book, cats are not only bad Buddhists, they are literally the worst animals ever created when seen through the lens of Buddhism. Now, if you’ve ever had to spend extended periods of time with a housecat, you may already be aware that they do not possess the selflessness and material detachment that many associate with Buddhist practices. But even the jacket copy of The Cat Who Went To Heaven is quick to point out that cats, theologically speaking, are bastards:

“Commissioned to paint the death of the lord Buddha for the village temple, the artist lovingly entered on his scroll of silk the animals who came to receive the blessing of the dying Buddha. The little cat sat patiently by, seeming to implore that she too be included. At last, the compassionate artist - knowing well that the cat alone of all the animals had refused to accept the teachings of Buddha - took up his brush and drew a cat, and thus brought about a Buddhist miracle.”

Yes, not only can cats be annoying, but they alone of all of the animals refused to accept the teachings of Buddha. Every single other animal - I assume that this includes now-extinct and possibly even mythological creatures - listened to the Buddha and said “yes, that sounds good, I too hope to escape this painful cycle of death and rebirth”, and the cat was like “sorry I missed that I was sitting right on top of an important document somebody needed and refusing to budge even an inch.” I was not aware of how extreme the Buddhist theology towards cats actually is, and it is incredible. And the hatred of cats begins immediately in the story, which details the plight of an out-of-work painter in Japan who is basically starving to death when his housekeeper takes in a stray cat:

“‘A cat? A cat?’ He cried. ‘Have you gone mad? Here we are starving and you must bring home a goblin, a goblin to share the little we have, and perhaps to suck our blood at night! Yes! It will be fine to wake up in the dark and feel teeth at our throats and look into eyes as big as lanterns! But perhaps you are right! Perhaps we are so miserable it would be a good thing to have us die at once, and be carried over the ridgepoles in the jaws of a devil!’”

This may strike you as a gross overreaction to an act that was meant as a kind gesture and would be very easy to reverse. But that would be because you’ve never slept on your in-laws’ couch while their cat has repeatedly wandered into the living room to tenderize your face with her paws. Still, the cat starts to ingratiate himself to the artist, eventually showing mercy by catching a bird and setting it free instead of eating it:

“‘What mercy!’ cried the artist, and tears came into his eyes. Well he knew his cat must be hungry and well he knew what hunger felt like. ‘I am ashamed when I think that I called such a cat a goblin,’ he thought. ‘Why, she is more virtuous than a priest’.”

Immediately after saying this, the artist is visited by his actual priests at the local temple, who commission him to paint a tapestry of Buddha and finally get his big break. As the chapters unfold, the artist visualizes - without the aid of ayahuasca - the Buddha’s various animal incarnations and adventures as those animals as he adds them to the tapestry, which depicts Buddha blessing all of the different animals on his deathbed before finally reaching Nirvana. Through these exercises, we are introduced to a Buddha who is self-giving and brave and gentle and compassionate, like the elephant or the snail or the swan or the horse or many other animals. But that darn cat (that DAMNED cat) is staring over the artist’s shoulder the whole time as he puts the tapestry together, and the artist is left with a tough choice. As we’ve already established, cats are apparently trapped forever in samsara due to their arrogant refusal to accept the Buddha’s teachings. So a tapestry of the Buddha blessing all of the animals would never include a cat among those being blessed, would be considered heterodox, and would cost the artist not only his big break that’s going to allow him to feed himself, but also damn him as well. But, on the other hand, the artist has grown to kind of like the cat and the cat seems to really want this.

So guess what: the cat goes in the tapestry, which it turns out was what the cat always wanted, because immediately after the cat sees herself in the tapestry, she dies, “too happy to live another minute”. And while the priests originally berate the artist for so desecrating the tapestry, a miracle happens where, overnight, the cat literally moves in the painting to sit upon the lap of the Buddha, who moves his hand in the painting and now rests it on the cat in a gesture of blessing. The priests are struck dumb by the change in the painting, accept it into the temple, and the artist is set for life, thanks to the Buddha’s mercy and willingness to work an artistic miracle.

If you were a child and this were your first introduction to Buddhism, it would probably be fine. You’d learn that Buddhism was not about power or domination or riches, but about humility and gentleness, and you’d learn it through a story that celebrated nature and simplicity and had some nice illustrations. It would be very simple, but it would be pleasant and respectful, and it would be way better than a television actor’s explanation of a religion that is “broadly speaking, very good with karma, suffering, liberation, and impermanence.”

Newburied is a series by Tony Ginocchio on the history of the Newbery Medal and a whole bunch of other stuff related to it. You can subscribe via Substack to get future installments sent to your inbox directly. The next installment will cover the 1971 medalist, The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars.

1. Shouts out to my buddy Dylan for pointing me to this particular article, he also has a very funny newsletter you can read here.

2. There's no need to dwell on why I would know what "high school sophomore who just discovered the Tao Te Ching" sounds like, or whether I was once that sophomore.