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Sometimes I wonder what my experiences would be like if I had ever believed in God. If I had ever, even as a child, even for a moment, been filled with true belief in a higher power, how would that make my life different? I was not raised to be a believer in anything really, not God, not Santa, not the Democrats, not the Easter Bunny, not white people, not money. For better or for worse, I was taught to believe in the unwavering love of my family and my own intellect. Any other conditioning I received outside my home about God or religion never seemed to stick.
I guess I am not alone in my lack of belief. I have good friends who are atheists or ambiguously non-religious types, but they all seem to have come to these postures after their abandonment of an inherited belief. After some struggles or consciousness-raising or crisis, they eventually abandoned the idea of God or the religious practices of their youth. And even then, some have turned toward vague notions of Spirit or Nature or The Universe to fill that space that was left when they parted ways with the Almighty. They really believed. I never did, and if I did, I have no conscious recollection of that kind of faith.
Sure, I have gone through elaborate means in an attempt to be filled up by the spirit of religiosity throughout my life. Being occasionally overcome by a feeling of faithful deficiency, I have searched, if not for God per se, for my own faithful feeling. I have read holy books and histories. I’ve prayed in circles and alone, standing, sitting, kneeling, and in every direction. I have meditated, chanted, been blessed, washed and anointed, sweat, smoked, lit candles and incense, asked questions to the sky, called God’s name at orgasm, drummed, danced, taken up pagan ritual and had African priestesses throw cowries and summon deities all in an attempt to be swept off my feet by belief. I haven’t been. Even atheism seems a dogmatic position of denial that I refuse to adopt. Nothing sticks.
I want to believe in something other than the chattering of my own mind and the limits of my own body, but I can’t. I want instructions, a guidebook, a reason to be. Because on winter nights like this, when there is nothing but silent snow and the midnight sky glows an eerie mauve, I’d like to think that there is some meaning that I have yet to discover that will explain everything to me and fill me up.
