Interest, research, disappointment: this is my cycle. I hear a name, see a picture, watching a movie and I begin to learn as much as I can. I saturate my life with it. Then I come to the edge, I find the seam and can peel away the shiny, soft and beautiful veneer to show the sticky, dirty and hidden understructure. This has happened to the joy of Christmas, Magic Tricks, Harry Potter, Love, Sex and Religion. If it’s good this is the order.
Love, Sex and TV shows are simple. Pilot/first date: amazing. The first season I’m obsessed, I need that second good night kiss. And then the plot holes pile up, or I discover the other person likes vegan and gluten free “desserts.” Before long I’m bored, jaded and arguing with them over the plot holes in the TV shows we used to love. Then the love affair is over. In the 6th grade I went through this cycle.
I had started at a middle school. I was 12 and well on my way to becoming an adult, in my own eyes at least. Then something terrible happened, I discovered God. Everything made sense, everything happened for a reason. I was a soldier of faith on my voyage to heaven.
My Dad (now 10 years later a devout Gaia loving Pagan) attempted to passive aggressively tutor me, and steer me though religion. No longer practicing Christianity at all, but not ready to go against everything he had grown up with he was now jaded, bored and trying to convince me that the book was not a “literal world of god.” Lower-case “G.”
Being in the 6th grade, student guidebook in hand I couldn’t understand how written rules that were clearly rules weren’t rules. When did rules become suggestions? Was it time? Maturity? These were concepts so far beyond a 12 year-old’s (who has experienced neither time nor maturity) intellect I simply asked, “why not?”
“What language does god speak?” I thought he was asking me this just to be rhetorical or to play with my head.
“All of them…? I guess?”
“Does he talk like you and me?”
“Doesn’t he talk all bible-y?”
“Bible-y?” My Dad now thought I was making rhetorical statements to play with his head. Or an idiot.
“Like, ‘Thou shall,’ ‘Does thy,’ ‘Doth yee?’”
When I was 12, I first realized there was a God, and I was going to Hell. I had become aware of my destiny and was now somewhat concerned with my identity. I discovered the center of my universe, my Alpha and Omega, the reason I was put on this Earth. Ben. I was a 12 year old faggot living in the Bible-Belt. My religion and identity were fundamentally at war. I was armed with definitive rules from the school saying “thou shall not cheat,” and the Bible telling me “persons who impede on other’s lives will face the following disciplinary actions…” Rules are rules.
Being a homo in the Bible-Belt left me with few options. Mom and Dad? I should have known better but at the time I was scared. Mom had been raised Catholic and Dad had been raised mean. A pastor at Church? Absolutely not. I would end up at a reform camp. People would be “praying for,” me. I would be Baptized and cleansed. People would chant, cry and speak in tongues squeezing my arm, grabbing my forehead and rubbing my back in an attempt to purge me of my demons and maladies. I might even be exorcized. A boy in my youth group two years older than me had dyed his hair. He was telling people he was overcome by a demon. For his choice of hair color. And I wanted to live happily ever after with Ben, or whatever “fags” did. I wasn’t sure. Again, 12 and in the Bible-Belt.
School was also not an option. My school’s PTA was trying to ban Harry Potter. The 4th book had just come out, only one person had died in the books and the whole “savior” plot device hadn’t been introduced yet. And the Jarrett Middle School PTA was already trying to ban them.
I struggled with it. I was confused. Was I just not praying hard enough? Had I not read the bible right? Maybe I was too new to the whole “church” thing to be calling in favors. Maybe I would wake up on December 25th and be a normal 12 year old. Maybe that was the true meaning of Christmas and I could now smile and nod when people told small children the story of Mary and Joseph in the manger and I could think to myself, “that’s right, the ultimate gift is salvation.” At this point in my life the only gay person I knew was my Mom’s best friend. He was fat, balding, wore ugly shoes and he was friends with people like my Mom, I didn’t want to grow up to be him. I wanted to be my youth pastor. Who was tall, had piercing blue eyes, an amazing smile and long legs that supported the most amazing ass I had ever seen. I was back sliding away from “good Christian ways every day.”
Eventually we stopped going to Church. There is a long, complicated sob story that isn’t amusing, funny or pleasant to thing about in anyway so it will be omitted. 2 years later my Mom was divorced from her Holy Roller, Evangelical second husband. He told us all “this house has a demon in it, we have to pray for our safety,” and drove around town with the bumper sticker, “In event of Rapture: This car will be unattended.” We were now living in Washington. My hair was purple and I was an angry atheist with a chip on my shoulder.
A year later I came out, to little shock, amazement or fanfare.
***
My Mom is now a lazy Catholic who is unsure of her relationship with god. Lowercase “g.” She goes to church every 3rd Christmas Eve, on Palm and Easter Sunday if she wakes up early enough and we forgot to buy champagne for mimosas. She collects rosaries, but I have yet to see her use them or open a Bible in the last 10 years. My Dad, now less mean is a proud Pagan who practices psychology (which he calls a medicine of semi-logical-semi-science) and does $30 Tarot card readings. Looking back I could have told them I thought I was gay in the 6th grade and probably could have gotten the glittery purple binder I wanted and transferred to a magnet school for arts or something.
Now as a 22 year old I am just as confused. I find myself in the antithesis of the Bible-Belt. Instead of zealots and Evangelicals I find myself surrounded on all sides by immature and indigent children with no understanding of religion or the world outside their Gomorrah. They don’t know passages or scripture unless it’s been weaponnized by Bill Maher, Pen & Teller or Stephen Colbert. They only know Sunday school stories. They move bibles to the fiction section because they think they’re original and different. The modern “atheist,” claims to be spiritual but not religious but they don’t know what they’re spiritually connected to. They only know what’s wrong with Christianity, they don’t know how to spell Quran and again crucify the masses for the fundamental minorities. They think Buddha was one man and that Confucius writes strictly for fortune cookies.
I don’t view myself as religious. Or spiritual. And by no means do I want to lump myself in with the caustically abrasive atheist. The King James Bible has become a book of morality plays. The literature is so strong it survived thousands of years and dozens of translations, edits and revisions. Yet the underlining message is still there. Be good and good things will come to you. You just need to be patient.
I also find myself spending hours reading about the mythos and history of “pagan” religions. My Dad teaches me what his protestant and racist mother called “farmer’s knowledge,” but in actuality is old pagan teachings. He tells me small anecdotes about the moon and the tides and the constellations that blur the line between logical put-it-in-a-text-book science and something bigger. This is where I become my 12 year-old self again; logic, reason and possibility in one hand, probability, hope and curiosity in another.
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