Have A Little Faith

I am an atheist.

Years ago I found myself at a crossroad between religion and rationality. I thought about all of the times that I wondered about my existence in this world. It wasn't a short process at all. I had to take in all of the experiences in my life and weigh them against scriptural doctrine. I observed cultural differences with their different deities and practices and attempted to emulate them into my own world in order to achieve true spiritual nirvana. I thought that I could incorporate teachings and beliefs into one amalgamation and it would lead me to a kind of peace and understanding. I wanted to have a divine connection. The more I tried, the more it stopped being visual. Instead of following a light, I found myself chasing another story.

 I never thought of the hereafter as somewhere that I was destined for. Whether it be heaven or hell, or purgatory and its many functional levels, I never thought of myself, my soul, ascending/descending to another spiritual plane. My collective conscious wasn't concerned with dealing with the world beyond, so much as it was about dealing with the here and now. I was born into a world filled with questions, a world that offered so many choices to live by and only one model to adhere to. It was okay that I wanted to live my life and be who I wanted to be, just as long as it fit into a preordained, prepackaged, set of ideas that I had no control over. As I got older, I wasn't willing to accept that I didn't have power over my own life and free will.

There was a church in my neighborhood that I used to go to when I was a little boy. It was the church that my Mom and my biological father got married in. I loved Hi-Way Baptist church! I was involved in Sunday school and I would sit in the back pews in the big church listening to the sermon. I was awestruck. I would try to sing along with the rest of the church whenever they opened up their hymnal books. I felt like I was the embodiment of all the children singing "Jesus loves the little children" and it brought a smile to my face. Whenever the church would have a potluck, they would put up giant tents and tables for the neighborhood to enjoy. It was how I came to know what a community was. I liked being around young and old people then. It was something that I thought I would always be a part of.

I have never been baptized. I always had an idea of what it meant to be baptized, but I never really understood what it actually meant to have my sins washed away. Whenever someone was being baptized in the church, I sat and thought about how lucky the person being baptized was. But my thoughts were in the wrong place. I only thought that they were lucky because they got to go swimming in church while the rest of us had to wear uncomfortable clothes and sit in the same position for an hour or so. Being baptized to me meant that someone would dunk my head underwater, then the entire congregation would start singing songs. I wanted to be dunked in the water exactly the way that everyone else was being dunked.

I have a few memories from those good ole days. I wanted to be a good boy and I wanted to do the things that were expected of me so that I would be rewarded. I still have the bible that was given to me when I was in Sunday school. I remember that I had to memorize passages from the bible in order to earn one of my very own. John 3:16 is probably the only one that I can really remember to this day. I think back to that time and I recall that I wanted so much to have a bible, but I didn't know what I wanted it for. I couldn't comprehend why I was compelled to have it, but I memorized and recited those passages until I had them down. It was a small achievement for a small boy.

I was active in an AWANA program during this time in my life. In case you are not aware of https://www.awana.org/ check out the link. It is a program geared toward ministering children. The programs were so much fun. I got to wear a vest. I got to interact with other kids in my neighborhood. I started off as a Spark and had all kinds of activities to keep me occupied. I loved the Sparks! We had cute little vests. We would do faith based "schoolwork" and read from the bible. The program had an incentive program that allowed me to get crowns, that were like badges, and in each crown I could get a jewel for reaching an accomplishment. The sparkle of the bejeweled crowns made me work hard so that I could get a jeweled crown. I desired the reward, not the lesson.

I have always been kind of a freak about the holidays. I blame it on having to play an angel in the church Christmas play. I think that every small church does a nativity play for their parishioners during Christmas time. One year, I got to play an angel. Actually, most of us Sparks got to be little angels. We learned the words to Silent Night. The adults in charge of us prepared our costumes and made sure that we were all in sync with the direction of the play. I remember making my halo with some wire and gold garland. I thought of myself as this magical, celestial being dressed in all white and singing praise to the baby Jesus. It was definitely how things were done back in those days. And I didn't know any better.

 There was a point in time when my Mom came to disagree with the teachings that I was getting from the Baptist church. I can never really remember the exact reason why, but when I was 8 or 9, we switched from Baptist to Catholicism. My Mom got this job in Mesa and she moved her children to a whole new neighborhood on the other side of town. I never knew what a Catholic was. I was even more confused about things, when the neighborhood I grew up in had a very high Mormon population. My first visit to Queen of Peace in Mesa brought me to a whole new level of indoctrination in the church. Walking into the cathedral meant more to parishioners than it did for Baptists. these guys dipped their hands in and splashed their faces with water. The childrens programs weren't geared for fun like they were with Awana's program. I was starting to get the impression that the God of the Catholics was mean and vengeful. The Priests and Nuns were unfriendly and not very compassionate. I was in a weird little world that caused my poor little head to be confused about this new God.

Catholics are strange. The blood of Christ, the body of Christ, everything about Catholicism revolved around consuming parts of Christ for purification. We blessed the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We said prayers to Mother Mary. We prayed for absolution. We prayed for protection. We lit candles for Saints and said more prayers. We spoke in tongues and made the sign of the cross in a specific direction. There were so many parts of being Catholic that I didn't understand. I had to attend Religious Education classes in preparation for a confirmation that I never got to experience. Most Catholics go through a confirmation and then a communion as part of their inclusion into the church. Once again, part of the process includes baptism. I was growing physically and mentally/intellectually during these years and I was constantly questioning the things that were being presented to me. I was very much aware of the churches stance on gays and lesbians. Everything was always hellfire and brimstone unless you followed the word of the Lord to the tee. This kind of belief system was geared more toward fear and servitude rather than love and acceptance. It was really hard for me to connect with it.

On another note, the cathedral and the art that is presented in the Catholic religion is exquisite. So much of the Catholic religion is about presentation. Catholics love to keep up with appearances.  Everything is immaculate and pristine. Ornate and Gothic crucifixions hang throughout the church. Everyone carries their religion around like a sorrow. Life is a trial and there are no instant rewards. The darkness that surrounded their faith didn't help to foster my desire to follow.

If Catholics were weird to me, Mormons were out of this world strange. The neighborhood that I grew up in had a clear divide that separated the Hispanic community and the predominantly white community. The Mormon kids, the ones I grew up with and went to school with, did things differently. They couldn't drink soda. They couldn't go outside on Sunday. They had magic underwear and believed that Jesus came to America to preach the word of God to the Native Americans. It made me shake my head with disbelief every time one of my friends would tell me about their Book of Jesus Christ. The Mormon religion and stories filled my head with stories that seemed so out of this world that I couldn't understand how folks could let themselves be duped into believing such things. I eventually learned how to say 'to each his own" and let it be. Even now, whenever I see them building yet another Temple, I shrug my shoulders and let it be.

I got older and my relationship with what I believed to be God had changed. I felt guilt. I still wanted rewards, but I felt guilt. The words from a Preacher echoed in my head "all homosexuals will burn in hell" and I didn't know how to reconcile the god of my childhood with the god of my adulthood. I came to know "thoughts and prayers" as a lazy way to console a wayward heart. For a time, I thought that God was answering the prayers I never made out loud. I felt a life lived, easy or hard, there were rewards for being the man that I thought I was supposed to be. At times it was a little hedonistic. I know that I took part in my fair share of sinning. I equated hard times with being disciplined and tried my best to live within the letter of my religious tenants. Then, the light that I had been imagining I had been following for so long, went out. Things got harder. Life was not giving me the reward that faith had been promising me. I got harder. And slowly, I stopped looking for that external reward.

My faith in god. My belief system. All things religious were challenged and I knew that I was on my way to something different from where I had been. It was harder to come out as an atheist than it was to come out as gay. A few years back I had a discussion with my Mom about it and she didn't believe that I was an atheist. She said "I have known TRUE atheists, and you're not one". I have had this type of exchange with her before, but I assured her that I was very much a non-believer. It didn't have anything to do with her God or their God or prehistoric gods, it was all gods. I wasn't angry at a god. I was tired of giving away my energy. I was exhausted from giving in to self-deprecating behavior in order to win a brownie point. It wasn't rational for me to continue to be something that I was not and believe in things that made no sense to me.

These days, I miss the community that religion promised. I miss midnight mass on Christmas Eve. I miss singing hymns and focusing my power into words of faith that move men and women to tears. It's hard to belong somewhere that you don't belong. I've read stories about men and women who have lost their faith. Lost. It seems so weird to say lost as if it were ever anything more than an idea that some of us held onto in order to feel whole. I never lost my faith, I let it go when I learned that there wasn't a supernatural force out there planning each detail of my life. I don't have a guardian angel. I don't believe that fate is determined from the moment I was conceived. I live in a life and a world that was created out of chaos. I listen to my inner voice and occasionally scoff at idea of Karma. I don't scoff too much though, because I don't want to ask for trouble from the universe. It's just another balancing act.

Being the man that I am, I still believe in ghosts or energy left behind. I enjoy reading horoscopes because they are incredibly comical. It's just like reading the fortune from a fortune cookie. My behavior and the readings of a horoscope are purely coincidental. I love holidays. I don't partake in them as much as I used to, because most holidays require some sort of religious affiliation. It's hard to stay connected with friends and family who are super religious. Their sense of community and family sometimes out-weighs familial bonds. Blood may be thicker than water, but the blood of Christ is thicker than that. Once you have made your exit from religion and all ITS splendor, there is a different world of outcasts that you quickly become associated with. And each outcast has their own opinion about how life should be lived. I don't care what people think of me. If they think that I am going to burn in a lake of fire, so be it. If they believe that I am going to purgatory, well then, I'll wander with the rest of the lost souls. To be excommunicated from everything in life is far worse than any eternal damnation that one person could wish upon my soul. I am not anti-religion or anti-god and I am not one of those who says you should be something or someone that you are not. I have come a long way from the boy who used to sing hallelujah every Sunday morning in church.

I wouldn't change a thing though.