Unraveling Religion

The other day I taught my friend how to pray the Christian way.  How you clasp your hands, bow your head; if you’re in a group, how you join together.  He’s so Not In The Know about these sorts of things; he doesn’t come from that type of family, nor have I gotten any indication that that’s a life he’s seeking.  —For this, I am intensely jealous.

I was not raised very religious either, but I am surrounded by it.  [REDACTED] Protestant, [REDACTED] Catholic, [REDACTED] Orthodox—any Christianity you want, I have!  And they’re all varying degrees of ‘active,’ if that’s the right term.  One is inseparable from faith, but does not act in The Church anymore due to Reasons (which I do not know), yet still seeks a spiritual community in a different form.  Another, the belief is not overt, nor is there any faith in the church—look at all their abuses; disillusionment, she says—but in times of need, even idleness, you must have Something to believe in.  Another, new but married to the church, life decisions driven by faith.  There’s always a religious tension underlying the house.

So I’ve thought about Christianity a lot.  I find a lot of things in it beautiful.  How much Ruth loved Naomi, how much Adam loved Eve, how much Jesus loves man.  Think of that?  To live a life in dying.  Wow.

It’s an idea I find very powerful, Jesus, because I do not believe we were born to die.  It’s a coward’s notion, to say that life only has meaning because there is an end.  Is not the joy of living living?  I would live forever if I could, because there is so much more to experience.  More people to meet, places to see, books to read, art to create, life to live.  It’s our burden to die, an inconvenient footnote at the end of a grand life, rather than the glorious end to a faded story.  Jesus was the only one born whose death served a second purpose.  That’s martyrdom, isn’t it?  To give up the one good thing about living—living—to better the lives of every other.  Self-sacrificial love, one I hope to emulate and embody.  He smelt the fresh wood as carpenters do, felt the wood keening beneath his palms.  Truly, He is beautiful.

So why am I not Christian?  I am not averse to religion; I am like a dog, would be dutiful, servile, faithful to ritual, if only given the chance.  I think it’d fulfill me a lot, ritual devotion.  Christians and their churches, Muslims and their prayers.  I’ve actually read a lot about Islam, been enticed by it senselessly.  I would convert, if only I didn’t have too big qualms with two foundational aspects of the religion.  But I do not believe in the mild, in converting and not believing to the utmost, so I won’t, and I didn’t.  But my two big issues—philosophy on language and [REDACTED]—don’t exist in Christianity.  Actually, Christianity is better for it.  In the scattered books, there’s all sorts of ambiguity, gaps to devise meaning, lofty interpretations and uncertainties.  A perfect work, really.

So really, why am I not Christian?  Every way that religion has been sold to me, it’s been presented in fear.  I only feel the urge to pray once I am worried or fearful—in times of need, I need something to believe in.  And when the preacher moves me, it is under the great weight that is my inherent sin.  And if I give up, detach myself from this religion I’ve never practiced after half-halfheartedly considering to for so long, I damn myself.

I think of that one quote.  Where the Native is speaking with the Preacher and asks, if he had known nothing of God, would he go to hell?  The priest says no, of course not.  And the native asks, forlorn: “why did you tell me?”

I don’t believe in the mild.  I don’t want to believe in a religion only when I fear, like a shaking 8 year old left out in the cold.  I want to believe, Fully,  in a religion that makes me happy.  That’s what I’m trying to do.

I am latina, know where I come from.  I look to those gods, the Gods of My Ancestors—mine aren’t Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, but I find those three beautiful too—but they are gods I have very little information about.  But maybe they’ll tell me something.

For a while, years ago, before I had all these mushy thoughts, I felt pulled towards Helios; I’ve always loved the sun, been a summer person, adored the tan and gleaned the heat.  He called to me; I didn’t answer (I was still too fearful then).  I’ve always loved fire, it’s a motif in my artwork, informs my favorite colors, is always “my element” in those dumb personality quizzes.  I don’t have a favorite flower, none quite inspire my passion, but if I did it’d be a sunflower.  That’s who I am: perpetually facing the sun.  So looking back, at the gods demanded by my blood, Kurikaweri makes perfect sense.  Much more sense than Helios, if I am to be so rude.

I’ve thought about putting up an altar, praying, worshiping to my ancestral gods and my ancestors.  I haven’t; I feel like it’s something I’d enjoy, help me develop my thoughts on religion further, but ultimately unnecessary.  But how can I worship without worshiping?  My thoughts aren’t concrete enough to be faith yet, how is this nothingness enough?

I do not give up on religion because I do believe in the world.  When I die, my body becomes the grass, which feeds the animals and the trees.  Then, my people will eat of my animals and eat of the fruits of my trees, will cloak themselves in my hides and shelter themselves under roofs of my wood.  Then, they will die and join me, like how I joined my ancestors in the ground.  In every act of existing, whether living or dead, we are living and dying in each other.  We are always eating each other, breathing each other, phasing in and out of each other, whirling dervishes.  The birds are chirping, the trees are whistling, the sun is shining—what’s not divine about that?

Mere existence is enough for me.  Tattooed in my crackling heart, omnipresent in my distracted mind, a citation I latched onto, is a quote from wise Ohiyesa: “every act of [the Indian’s] life is, in a very real sense, a religious act.”  I need not worship, need not pray, need not keel to experience The Divine.  I only need to live.  And, if I am to honor our world, I need to live good.  Live honorably.