Something

I am going to write about something really controversial and totally not politically correct.  I've been struggling with this for years and have done lots and lots of reading and asked lots and lots of questions.  I feel like I have earned my very own degree in this area and even with all the facts that I've found, the idealogies I've pondered and questions from all the books I've devoured, I believe I am exactly where I was when I began.

Religion. The topic we were always told not to talk about for fear of insulting or pissing someone off. 

I have experience with hurting people's feelings when it comes to this subject.  Namely, my parents.  You see, waaaay back in 1991 - 1994 I was a born-again Christian.  The bible thumping, everyone is going to hell except for the people in MY church kind.  I was a scared kid whose world was turned around a few times and I was looking desperately for something to cling to.  In the meantime, I had hurt my parents' feelings and tried to tear their religion to tiny bits, stomped on the bits and then spit on them.  I was a jerk to be honest.  My parents, God bless them, forgave me.  They went to my 1992 wedding knowing full well that half of the people there believed as I did, even the minister who married Ken and I.  Oh, they would never have come right out and said, "Wow, you're Catholic?  Burn baby! Burn!"  But considering the antics and Bible quoting nuttiness that I had been pulling, they knew.  And yet, the moment was bigger than these people and there they were, right beside me. 

As time wore on, I fell away from my Christian friends and church.  I went to college and my new world that included all kinds of people and all sorts of religions soon had me questioning everything I had been taught.  I took a few classes and you can imagine my surprise when I learned how the Bible truly came to be, that whole gospels were left out for very political reasons.  That the Book that we read and studied and that I had led my life on was in fact just a book that a bunch of men wrote and other men had the final say as to what went and what stayed.  This fact, this tiny bit of information that was conveniently not discussed during my Bible studies, literally tore down all the walls I had so neatly placed around me.

I switched gears and started railing again the Christian Right.  The hate mongering, the fakery, and the lies.  I considered myself agnostic and poured all the energy I had dedicated to judging people as "Saved" and "Not Saved" into learning all the ways the Bible was wrong, is wrong.  So I went from being a self-righteous zealot into being a self-righteous asshole.   Not exactly "growth" is it?

In 2001 my marriage was basically over.  A few last ditch efforts to put some air back into the gasping, lifeless union were made, but June 2002 I moved out and on.  I was exactly who my old church said I would become if I fell away.  A sinner of epic proportions.  Divorced.  Adulter.  Even though I knew better and know better now, I struggle with letting all of it go. At that point in my life, I was given a book by Starhawk about the Goddess religions and Wicca.  And while I enjoyed reading it and found it fascinating, I knew it wasn't exactly for me.  It was too fancy, too fluffy, too... new age-y.  So, being the freak I am when it comes to learning, I bought about 12 more books about old religions.  I read about Druids, pagans, heathens, witchcraft, tarot, Buddhism, Norse gods and goddesses and basically anything that came before Christianity.

I still read about all of those things. I find it absolutely fascinating.  Druidry spoke to me the most, but it was more about the history and the place (Ireland, Scotland) and the reasons for worship.  In fact, the whole study of Druidry and Celtic Reconstructionism is just so huge it would take me decades to really get it all.  But still, somewhere deep inside, I couldn't shake the image of the cross.  I couldn't NOT believe in Jesus.  I couldn't let it go, not really.  I still can't.

Living with someone and sharing your life with a man who is a true athiest is eye opening.  He has been to church only a few times in his life.  He just sees us all as a crazy combination of cells, elements and maybe some sort of chemistry.  That when we die, we die.  No afterlife, so soul.  This is fine, but what troubles me is that he has no one to go to with all the crap that life likes to hand us.  I live by the mantra, "Let go, Let God."  The idea of not being able to give it all away, of not praying... it scares the daylights out of me. I live by it no matter who that God might be.  Because no matter what book I read, I always believed in something. 

And that right there, that difference between seeing someone struggle so much with hardship and seeing how my family and I deal with things, that is what this post is really about.  I need to give this something to my boys.  My daughters go to church with their dad and his family and while I certainly don't subscribe to those beliefs, I know that they are being given something.  I struggle very much with how to do this.  As much as I would love to raise my sons and my daughters with open minds, I know that in order to give that something to them, I need to get into a church somewhere.  Time is wasting.  I lack discipline and I'm lazy, so these hurdles are really hindering the process.

This struggle with religion and who or what to believe has left me with this idea:

Call it what you will, they are all the same God/Goddess/Buddha/Allah.  The paths we choose to bring us closer to whatever this supreme being is doesn't matter one bit.  Our tiny human brains could never begin to understand who or what this "being" really is. In fact, she may not be a "being" at all.  Energy?  Perhaps.  But if it doesn't matter what the path is, how do I raise my kids to find their own?  A ha!  There it is! 

I think a good place to start might be the little church not two miles from my house.  A church where everyone is welcome.  A church that is active and open to heathens like me.  I made a promise that this year would be the year of unfinished business.  That I would do all the things that I had been wanting to do but was too lazy, too sad, too distracted, too busy to start.  I'm thinking its time to really tackle this.  I can't raise my kids without having someone or something to lean on.  If I have learned anything its that life is full of the unplanned, unexpected, and unanticipated.  I couldn't have gotten through many things in my life were it not for the foundation of belief that my parents gave to me.  Maybe Jesus was on this earth and maybe he wasn't.  Maybe he was the Son of Godand maybe he wasn't.  In the end, does it matter?  Does it matter if I choose to believe in Him or not?  Can I remain true to my open-mindedness while attending a Christian church, even a UCC?

I guess I don't really know the answer to that.  I am pretty thankful though that I'm okay with not knowing and letting God help me figure it out.




"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."  Albert Einstein