being religious

Lately it seems the only thing to do is be wrapped up in my thoughts. They haven't been the kind of thoughts to share, or maybe they're just becoming harder to put into words. In spite of that, because of that, I have to try.

Autumn is just beginning and the leaves are starting to fall and for some reason it feels more like something is being born than dying. Something I thought did die. Last year I found myself heading towards the thing I'd feared for a long time--the loss of any kind of belief in God, and the numbness of no longer caring. By the time I walked down the aisle at graduation, I was convinced it was gone, the only thing left was to get used to the fact, and feeling nothing about it was both a relief and the biggest disappointment of my life. That was the part that saddened me. I couldn't pick up a book on theology, couldn't stand to read the words. They wouldn't sink in. They didn't mean anything, didn't make any sense. Ending my college career was a relief. No longer would I have to strain to write papers that would have some kind of integrity without really giving away the full truth. And what even was the full truth? I didn't believe, and I didn't not believe. I was tired of wrestling with my questions, and with the conception people had of me, and how it didn't match what I knew of myself. The only thing I knew was that I didn't know anything. I couldn't prove God, even to myself. I couldn't be certain. I was tired of trying.

And still I couldn't leave. Still I was drawn to church, and sat in stillness, and wrote prayers to whoever was or wasn't listening. And knew that church was the only place I was fully honest. My feet carried me to communion, and I took my questions in hand and ate. It wasn't a choice. It was a realization that there was nothing else for me to do. And when I couldn't read Christian theology, I read Hindu scriptures and the Tao te Ching and Life of Pi and realized that I was still thinking about God, about Ultimate Reality and what it means to be human, all the time, all the time, and I didn't want to do anything else.

I'm not sure if I can call myself a Christian. But can I really call myself anything else? Two days ago I sat on a pew and listened to a liturgy and knew that my present is the sum of my past, and Christianity is the only religion I have known. It is my native tongue, and however I seek God now, I can't turn my back on the thing that has taught me to think about God at all, has given me what small experiences I have had that I have dared to call sacred. It is hard to stand on the inside of something, to have known it for so long, to see its faults and the things you wish you could change or erase. It is hard to finally admit that the tradition you have known didn't fall out of the sky, that it was made by human beings who didn't know much more than you and who all had deep and regrettable faults and sometimes did unimaginably cruel things. It is hard to accept that we are really just groping in the dark and the darkness itself is inside of us. And yet. I find myself flummoxed by the mystery that surrounds me and the human desire to express what we cannot explain, and I have to give it my attention. I have to take it seriously, look at it fully, knowing I don't know. And I need the community of people trying to do the same. I believe in the thing I have no adequate words for and no rational understanding of. I can't stop myself, can't beat it out of myself, and the only thing to do is be grateful that I am not the only one.

"After mystery comes suspense. After suspense, comes romance."

Today was my first day as the new shopgirl at Epilogue books, People's Pick for the Best Independent Bookstore in Seattle. They offered me the job on Monday, but I was pretty sure I had it in the bag right after my interview on Thursday, and I thought long and hard about it until Tuesday, then impulsively called and said yes.
Because, really, chances like this are limited to a very short period of your life. By which I mean, when I'm thirty, there's no way I could take a 30-hour job at 8.50 an hour with the blithe thought that if worse comes to worst, my parents could help me pay rent. Part of me thinks I should feel more ashamed of refusing to join the real world, now that I have four-years of private college under my belt. But, hey, I still don't have a degree, so what's the problem?

I think what pushed me over the edge, to say yes, to jump into the future of being as poor as ever, was the interview I had yesterday for an "Executive Assistant" position. During the two minutes I waited in the reception area, three different people asked if I wanted coffee, and one even said, "Are you sure?" In the interview, they started pulling out those questions, that we all hate, that even interviewers probably hate, that come straight out of a circle of hell, I'm pretty sure. "Describe a time when a challenging situation arose and you implemented a solution." That's actually the only one I can remember, they were so boring. The kicker was when they asked what my restaurant manager would say about me if they called him, and after an awkward pause I decided to just come out and say it: "Well, actually, he died." More awkward pausing. But however well and badly the interview went, and in this case I really couldn't say which it was, I realized something. Even if it was a "gateway" job at a well-known and well-to-do company, I couldn't respect it at all. It would be the kind of place where I would look around me and think, "Why are all my coworkers throwing themselves into careers here, spending even their Saturdays doing things that just, well, things that the world might be better off without?" And on top of that, putting so much effort into projecting the image of "professional" - wearing uncomfortable and boring clothes, making forced chit-chat, never using profanity, never showing personality. I don't know how to explain this fully, but there was an absence of...reality, somehow. It just bothers me when things seem forced. It seemed like the kind of place where nothing spontaneous ever happens.

And something spontaneous did happen, the second I walked into the bookstore. It felt like the right place to be. The suspense of not being employed is over. Let the romance, of having the job every Seattleite wants, begin.

in gratitude to my failure

It's 3:44 in the morning.

It's hard to believe that it's been over four months since I Fell Apart, since every plan I made fell through and I found myself incapable of doing what I had told everyone I would do. I came to the point of letting go. I was going to leave Seattle. I didn't. I was going to start a life in the Real World, with a job and responsibilities. I couldn't.

I stayed. I stopped. I lay still.

And now, all I can do is remember all the times in these past few months where I have been flabbergasted by the people who surround me, sometimes people I've known since the beginning of college, but I'm just now starting to know them. Or people I'm just starting to befriend now, and I should have done so years ago.
And why has it taken me so damn long?

Something happened when I graduated. I stopped fearing being honest. I gave up on maintaining appearances. And mostly, I've had to learn to be honest and to give up image-control with...myself.
In high school, I used to make lists of things I wanted to do. In college, I started making lists of what I wanted to be.
Now, I've stopped writing lists at all.

Because there's no one to impress anymore. There's nothing to distract me from facing myself. There's no place to run. There's nothing to chase.

In the stillness and the darkness, when all things cease and there is nothing urgent to do, when there is only time and no restrictions on how to use it, Truth starts seeping up from the ground. If you just stay still, low to the earth, it fills your hand.