Are You There God?

I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I tossed and turned for a few hours before finally admitting defeat at around 4:30 this morning. I got up and went downstairs for some breakfast. The house was lively, as my house generally is. My father likes to tell me "it’s always a party at chez Zelnick," which spurs my exhausted "oh dad, just because you let homeless people live here, doesn’t make it a party."

As the insomniac that he is, he was already up and making bagels from scratch when I entered the kitchen. My brother and a few of his friends, who may or may not be living here at the moment, were in the basement "making music" which in this house is code for smoking pot. Most people’s houses are quiet at 5am. Not mine. In the very dawn of morning, the whack-jobs roam free, filling the world with its daily dose of crazy before the normal humans awake to greet the day. That seems to be the purpose of the Zelnick household.

In an attempt to drown some of this out, I turned on the TV. Keep in mind that I don’t have cable, and so at 5am all there is to watch is the news, the Spanish channel, and televised sermons on the WB. I’ve only been to a church service three times in my life. Once with a friend down the shore, once in Ireland on a trip with my mom (although it was more about seeing the architecture than hearing the sermon), and once at the Vatican (again, architecture). Through each of these sermons, I spent more time staring at the stain glass windows and people around me than I did listening to any of the messages being conveyed. To be honest, religion has always scared me.

I was not raised to be an atheist, but I was raised to question (and generally reject) anything organized and conventional, anything that took an authoritative stance. Political opinions took first place on my list of things to protest, followed closely by religion, although the two overlap everywhere and are hard to strictly categorize. Having the power fighting parents I have, I steered clear of organized religion with the belief that it was the best way to murder independence. I just couldn’t understand how or why anyone could be religious, and what shames me now, is that I never wanted to understand it, nor did I want to recognize it’s influence on my life.

It’s only recently that I’ve become completely enthralled by religion. It’s amazing how something that I’ve so emphatically avoided and ignored could be ruling my life the way that it does. Religion is everywhere. I suppose I’ve come to give it the broadest definition I can, but it is impossible to live a religion free life just as it is impossible to live in a color blind world. I think in an attempt to raise me as a free spirited liberal, my parents neglected to teach me the other side of things. I think they were hoping the liberal utopia they had created in their minds could eradicated reality.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret growing up without practicing a specific religion, I just wonder how I’d be different if I had. Part of me wants so desperately to understand that draw to religious practices. Do people really enjoy going to church and synagogue? Do they feel closer to God that way? Do they really believe in their heart of hearts that the bible is the ultimate truth? That their way of life is the superior way? I don’t ask these questions accusingly, I ask them curiously. I just want to understand.

I believe in God, probably more and more as I grow older. I feel connected to things on a spiritual level. I believe that life is a gift I think that things happen for a reason and that we’re each blessed with purpose, specific or not, just general purpose. I still have so many questions though, most of which have no black and white answers. But that’s the beauty of religion. It’s not black and white. It’s not as cult- like as I thought it was for so many years. If I chose to define religion as a system of beliefs, than my life, my thoughts, my world becomes my own religion. My religion evolves more each day.

I have so much more I want to say about this, but have to go to work. I’ll write more later. For now, I’m off to thank God for this beautiful morning, for this beautiful life.