over the cliff

When I was a little girl we used to drive back and forth from New Orleans, LA and New Bern, NC a lot. That’s a long drive. And for a little kid, 16 hours in the back of a station wagon isn’t exactly the ideal way to spend the day. Eventually I would have the sequence of Jimmy Buffett songs memorized and I was forced to find other ways to entertain myself.

So I made up games with God.

“If I don’t see a telephone pole within the next 30 seconds, I won’t believe in you anymore.”

That’s the only condition I can remember making, but I’m sure there were more. If God exists, and she has a sense of humor, I imagine that when I arrive at the Pearly Gates it’ll be a maze of telephone poles.

Over the years we didn’t go to Church often. I used to fuss and scream about going. Not because of the hour and half long service, but because of Sunday school. I was painfully shy and didn’t like periodically being put in a classroom with a bunch of strangers. My brother and I did the choir thing, I was an acolyte, I went to Christmas Eve Mass with my grandmother a few years, and I went to an Episcopalian school.

The best thing I can say about religion is I’m baptized Catholic, confirmed Episcopalian, which makes me an Episcolic. If I convert to Judaism, I can be Episcolicewish. Say it, it’s fun.

I don’t even remember when I stopped believing in God. I do know that I never stopped hoping that she exists. I suppose I still cling to that hope because of my fascination with Catholicism. The rosaries, the cathedrals, the fact that they used to conduct services in Latin. I also adore old Episcopalian church music. Maginuncs, In Paradisums, Ave Marias, love them. My school’s choir went to England and we sang Evensongs in numerous places all around the country. St. Alban’s was my favorite. Barry Rose was the conductor, he was also the conductor at Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding. And he got so excited that he knocked over one of the lamps they have lining the pews for the choir.

I think I started writing this because I wanted to figure out how I became Agnostic. I suppose that’s the way. I ambled.

Faith just doesn’t do it for me anymore. Faith isn’t proof. It’s a delusion bolstered by other delusions. They work themselves into a barricade against reason and logic, trigger chemical reactions in the brain to make you see signs where there aren’t signs.

So I discount faith. What does that leave me? I’m not a scientist. I could’ve been one. I loved Physics and Chemistry. I actually also loved Math but I wasn’t very good at it in college. That’s not true. When I actually worked at it, I was good. I was just lazy too. If it didn’t come easy, I didn’t want to mess with it.

So I have to rely on what other people say, use their proof. No one has proved God exists. No one has proved God doesn’t exist. Everything’s a theory.

I also don’t like coincidence. I love seeing signs, I love serendipity. To give up my hope in mysticism, that’d be awful. I won’t be a sheep in a pew, swallowing the words of someone who’s encouraging cannibalism (the blood and body of Christ? And shouldn’t the son of God taste better?) but I also won’t give up hope for something bigger than the universe.

If you believe in telephone poles clap your hands.