I’m a culturally Catholic agnostic, one of the millions of confirmed former papists who likes Christmas hymns but thinks we could do without the whole Jesus thing. Seventeen years (!) of Catholic education have left me still uncomfortable taking the name of the Lord in vain (gosh dammit) but I’m pretty certain I’m going to dissolve into a cloud of star dust and that my actions on this earth have no bearing on that eventually. I’m very cool with that outcome.
So I put “agnostic” on my dating profile and pretend to myself that religion doesn’t matter. I’ll marry an athiest, a former Catholic like myself, a Jew, a Muslim, whatever. I’m open. I’m modern. That’s not really true, though. I keep butting up against walls that prove that, even for someone who doesn’t follow a faith, religion does matter. I dated an athiest who explained that he’d want to get married in the Catholic church, for the sake of his family. I have lapsed Catholic friends who’ve done the same thing, citing tradition and values and grandmothers and aesthetics and relationships with priests and “who cares, it’s just a service, it’s not really for the couple getting married.” I guess, but the thought of entering into a lifelong commitment with someone as part of a mass I feel fraudulent participating in makes me queasy. I mean, getting married in the Church is a big deal. It’s not like a hall you can rent. It’s a sacrament. That moment, with that guy, felt like a deal breaker. We ended up splitting up for other reasons, but the tension was there. These walls can also present themselves between two people who ostensibly have the same feelings about God. A boyfriend of mine was culturally Jewish with the same basic feelings about organized faith and practice. In spite of these ties, though, we’d have moments of discord fueled by religion. “You can’t say anything against circumcision without being anti-Semitic,” he’d tell me, as though daring me to try. I’d find myself incredibly defensive about his derisive comments about Christians, feeling forced to stand with a team whose beliefs I didn’t share simply because it hurt to hear them mocked. “That’s my family,” I wept after a particularly spiteful diatribe. “Stop it.” Why did we both feel the need to take sides? What about star dust and the impossibility of defining the infinite? I dated a practicing Muslim for a while years ago, and while he didn’t feel the need to tear down my childhood faith to highlight our differences we never reached a level of comfort. He couldn’t drink with me, and I had no interest in joining him for a smoke with his friends. I’ve dated other smokers/non-drinkers since then and it hasn’t bothered me to the same extent. Something about him abstaining because of his view of God made me like him less. I wish I felt a connection to a personal, anthropomorphic God. I pray from time to time, but it’s a sort of ritual, like when I see the clock display 11:11. I believe in the power of prayer, but mostly as a practice of mindfulness. Someone is listening, it’s just a kinder, more patient version of myself. Ugh, I sound like the worst, don’t I? I have a strong urge to spend a day high on ayahuasca, which I’ve heard can open a channel of spirituality and which I’ve also heard makes you vomit and shit. I have felt drawn to Judaism for much of my life, ever since meeting Ayla, my Jewish childhood best friend. I have always loved that a person can be agnostic, atheist, religious, super-religious, 20-children-having-Orthodox-men-don’t-sit-next-to-women and define themselves by the same niche group. I remember wondering if I could work up the courage to go into a temple back in high school, which I still felt an intense desire for God but could not connect to the hoard of saints I was supposed to turn to in moments of crisis. I remember staring at a painting of a council of saints and thinking, “how am I supposed to connect to that? Where is God in this hoard of old men and virgins?”
step to becoming a saint for a man: have a beard, get murdered. woman: never have sex, get murdered.