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.