My Religion

I know next to nothing about religion. I don't even have a religion. I wasn't even really given a religion at birth. I'm not an atheist or anything, it's just that religion has never played much of a role in my life, and yet it seems to be what has shaped my life. I was born to my mother, Marilyn Ross, and my father Ed Poteet. They were hippies and I think that's excellent. Our house was simple but beautiful, always filled with flowers and music. I remember being young, spinning aimlessly around my living room as children of that age sometimes do, and being surrounded by the smell of lilacs and the sound of Bob Dylan, or the scent of roses and the vibrations of Beethoven, or the simple air of baby's breath and the sweet softness of the Beatles, or Judy Collins, of show-tunes, or Sinatra. That was what I knew from the time I was born up until about middle school when the education system started subliminally weaving religion into my life. I knew music and nature and simplicity and happiness. Religion was of no real import.Of course, that's not to say that my family and I didn't celebrate our share of holidays. In fact, that's basically the only thing I got out of religion as a kid; celebration. We celebrated Christmas, Hanukkah, Halloween, Passover, Easter, Yom Kippur; you name it, we celebrated it, but only in the Hallmark card, paper Mache decorations, over-sized plastic reindeer on our front lawn kind of way. Religious values not included. Christmas was about Santa and presents, Hanukkah was about dreidel, a menorah, and more presents, Easter was about a man in a giant bunny suit and a basket full of Peeps, and all the other holidays were pretty much about getting dressed up, eating a lot, or both. Sometimes we watched the Ten Commandments, or sang a traditional song around the menorah. I vaguely knew the biblical Christmas story, and was somehow or another eventually introduced to the improbable story of Adam and Eve, but aside from that, the bible, prayer, and god were all tucked away in very remote parts of my mind and existence. You see, my mother was raised Jewish, but as a kid she always wanted a Christmas tree, and even attempted to decorate her house with candy canes, which didn't fly too well with her mother, who in light of World War II, was so attached to Judaism, that she was even offended by the image of angels. Now my father was raised Christian. When I say Christian, try to imagine the perfect 1950s image of a blond haired, blue-eyed, fair skinned little boy, dressed in a sailor suit, who never so much as folded his napkin the wrong way at supper time. That was my father. He was the gentile of gentiles but as soon as the effects of the 60s kicked in, he just kind of forgot about the existence of religion altogether. So here's this feminist hippy Jew who's burning her bra at Cornell, and this meandering ex-christian hippy who's just kind of hitch-hiking through life and trying make some money for himself and eventually they find each other, marry, and decide to procreate. My mom being who she was, refused to give up her last name just because it was in some ancient rule book that a lady should do so, and my parents as a couple, being what they were, saw no reason why their children could not share both of their last names. Hence my not so complicated last name that no one can figure out simply because it's interrupted by a hyphen. So they could share last names, but what about religion? Well it seemed to work out perfectly that neither one of my parents really believed in their birth-given faiths, so they just decided: To hell with it! No religion! The kids can choose for themselves. But no one wants to give up an excuse to have a party, so they kept the holidays but ditched the prayers, worship, and all that other un-fun stuff. While my friends were at church on Sunday morning, I was eating a nice big pancake breakfast with my family, and listening to the radio. While my friends were stuck in religion class, I was playing with my Barbies or getting beat up by my brother. My friends had their communions, I was oblivious to the fact that such a thing even existed. My friends had confirmations, I had no idea what that was, nor did I care. My cousins had bar mitzvahs and bah mitzvahs and my brother and I didn't. We never went to church or synagogue, or temple or anything like that. The only times my family and I ever stepped foot inside a “House of God”, as others called them, were for weddings, funerals, and other family get-togethers that required them. I was glad for this, being that these "Houses of God" scared the shit out of me. They were always so big and intimidating, and the stained glass windows always obstructed the warmth of the natural sunlight. They were always so quiet and dark, and as far as churches went, I could not for the life of me understand the thought process behind hanging up giant images of the miserable looking man with the beard, who I later found out was bloody, lifeless, and nailed to that cross. All in all, these places scared me, so I avoided them as often as possible, which isn't that difficult when you don't have a religion. When the topic of religion did happen to come up, and people wanted to know what religion I was, I or my parents would tell people I was "half and half", meaning half-jewish, half-christian, but in reality, I wasn't. I just celebrated the holidays as if they were big birthday parties for everyone. Everyone was celebrating and celebrated. Everyone got food, everyone got a gift, and nobody treated it religiously or formally at all. To be quite honest, my lack of knowledge of god, prayer, religion, and the bible, was always something that I sort of prided myself on. I was not only free of religion classes and having other people's beliefs thrust upon me, but I also had the sense that this made me different from most people in a way that I was very fond of. It was my most treasured pride and joy that no god, no prayer, no book could define me. My lack of religion, and especially my ignorance of the bible, was something not many other people could attain. I am not the sort to define ignorance as a good thing, but from what I had observed, religion did nothing but tear people apart, and the bible did nothing but stop people from forming ideas of their own. Religion was the cause of ignorance, not the lack of it. I had experienced that ignorance first-hand when I came home from Disney World one year at the age of eight to find my house covered with the words "Fuck Jews" and "Go Home Jews" and tainted with swastikas and other symbols of hate. So up until I got a bit older, I considered my "ignorance" to be my greatest knowledge. After my mother died however, I was embittered and began to question everything. When I wanted to speak to her, I had no prayers to recite, and no church or temple in which to pray. I had no rules, no restrictions, no commandments; I had nothing to follow. Seeing my very convincing lost lamb impression, my Christian friend, Sarah, herded me to her youth group. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life. Everyone closed their eyes, and lifted their arms to the sky and praised Jesus! According to my mother's religion, Jesus was just some dude who spun the dreidel along with all the other jews, so why were they all praising him? Aside from that question, I had many others like, Why is it a sin for teens to have sex if they're safe about it? Why am I going to go to hell if I decide to have a lazy day? What is so poisonous about loving someone of the same sex? Why did all these people have the exact same opinions on these topics? Why did they all appear to be in some sort of a trance? Why did this place seem more like a cult than a church? and Where was the nearest door? Needless to say, I never went back to youth group, and I never became a christian.
After my questionable experience at youth group, I looked into my jewish roots to see if they provided me with any comfort, but upon discovering I would have had to give up many things, such as Hawaiian pizza, in order to remain kosher and devout, no comfort was found. I found that sacrifice was a key ingredient in most, if not all, religions. It didn't make sense to me. Why should I give up the things I enjoy in order to enrich my life or to be blessed or to be saved? It seemed completely counterintuitive. After looking into the more unorthodox religions, such as wicca, but finding these religions seemed either a bit too out there, or a bit too contrived, I gave up and declared myself an atheist. That lasted about a week, when I realized that not only was I was failing math and found myself praying to whatever it was out there to help me pass, but that atheism was quite the paradoxical entity being that this un-religion was a religion based on the fact that it provided a belief system to be followed, which is a simple one mainly stating that there is no god, still, it’s a belief system. I felt a totally lost, and felt that maybe my parents should have given me something to put my faith in when life got rough, as it often does. So I turned back for a brief period of time to Christianity. I didn't go to church or anything, but I planned to...eventually, and I discovered some christian rock bands that weren’t totally abysmal. I kind of dug some of Switchfoot's music and admired them for an unyielding faith that I could never even imagine attaining. Yet, I just could not convince myself to agree with this religion one hundred percent, and I simply wouldn't negotiate my morals for the sake of being able to plop myself in the midst of one particular sect. Aside from that, I often found that my childhood observations had been correct; religion often tore people apart. My friend Sarah and I were no longer friends, and even though it was seldom talked about, we both knew the underlying cause was our religious differences. So again, I ditched religion and chalked it up to my idea that there was something out there that I couldn't explain, some force or something, and though that something was probably just the forces of nature or the Universe or whatever you want to call it and not a sentient being, there was something; and to me, that's all there probably ever will be. Twenty years later it's still just nature and music and happiness. The simplicity is lost most of the time, because that's just how life is, but the happiness is still there. I remain proud of my lack of knowledge of prayer, god, formal religion, and the bible, and rather choose to celebrate the religion of life. However, as an English major, I am finding myself more and more frequently to be missing out on many of the points of great works of literature or poetry. So consider this; do I read the bible and destroy what I pride myself on, or do I remain ignorant to what, in the mind of an English professor, is just one of the many great works of literature? To be honest, it probably doesn't matter either way because a book is just a book, religion is what you make it, and mine is made out of life, love, nature, and happiness. Every day is a holy day, therefore everyday should be celebrated.