This is just a divergent thing i thought about the other day. i suppose it reveals a bit more into who i am as a person, but it is neither essential or important, but i do believe that it is all the little things that make up the greater understanding.
the other night i ate dinner with my sister, her boyfriend, and my brother. And i only bring this up to talk about something else. When the food arrived i started to eat it, of course waiting until everyone’s meals were delivered. But as the food was making its way up to my mouth, i noticed that my brother had started saying grace, and then my sister’s boyfriend started in some silent prayer. My sister just waited until they were done. I sat with food in a mid hover between the table and the open orifice on my face. then they finished and the meal started.
We were raised roman catholic. When i was young, i was an alter boy. and no, there were no insidious or scandalous stories for me to tell you. It was all very normal. We went to church every sunday while i was growing up. we were not the christmas/easter church goers. my siblings and i attended CCD, a sort of sunday school that did not take place on sundays, and we went through most of the sacraments. These relationships have all altered over some course of time for most of us. We were a church going family, so much so that my mom and sisters used to stay after church and hand out donated donuts, while i would eat the donuts and drink lots of juice or lemonade. My older sister became one of the christmas/easter church people. My mom and my brother still go religiously (har har) every sunday. And my other sister recently converted to a christian or baptist or born-again, not quite sure which one or what the difference even is. I became amoral.
I stopped going to church shortly after being confirmed. confirmation is a sacrament, that before me used to be included with baptism, in which you reaffirm your pact with god and the church. So whereas my older sister was confirmed as a baby, I on the other hand went through it at the age of 16. Because of my experience as an alter boy, i was well versed with how mass was recited. the words became like a song to me, and the actions involved became so ingrained. It was in an old traditional style mass, so there was kneeling and standing and sitting and ringing bells during the blessing of the eucharist, and the formal procession, and everything else. But i knew the words of the mass, and as i got older i started thinking less about just reciting them and more what they actually mean. And i had no problem with religion. i have no problem with religion right now either. i have a problem with zealots spouting and enacting their beliefs onto others, but that’s just a general principle. But i got lazy and uninterested. so i slowly stopped going and my mom slowly stopped telling me to go. There had never been any sort of argument from my mom when i stopped going. in fact she never asked why, or pressed the issue. it just sort of dissolved.
I am ambiguous when it comes to morality. I am not moral or immoral, i just am. But i understand what the church has taught me. i understand what it means to be a good person, and how to do those things. I get the thematic overtones of religion. be a good person. be kind. be selfless. I get it. but i am selfish. i do things for me. and in the most roundabout way, everything i do and know is an extension of me. How could it not be? it isn’t about your comprehension of a relationship you have. it is my comprehension of a relationship you have. everything centers around me. it is a matter of perspective. i have no other way to see things except through my own eyes. and this means that i can’t see it from another vantage. i can pretend to do it. i can imagine what it would be like, but that is becomes about me again.
so i am selfish. i want things. i do things. everything in this world of mine is mine in the way that it effects me. I’m good to people because it makes me feel a certain way. sure it might make them happy, but in the end, i derive happiness from their happiness. this works in other ways too, but that is an easy example. i don’t have kids. people that have children don’t think this way. maybe when i do have children my thoughts will change. i am aware that the way i think and feel right now will definitely alter its course as i get older, and as different things enter and leave my life.
i understand the church. i get what it does. but i don’t know that i have a relationship with it, just a comprehension. that’s why i don’t go. that’s why i don’t practice. i could go and pretend and recite and act the way i am supposed to in church, but it’s not real. there’s nothing there. i don’t know if i still believe in god. i think that there is something greater than me, that for as amazing as i think i am, i feel that there is more to this world than what i am and what i have seen. but is that god? not in any conventional sense.
my sister and i had a conversation about this a while back. she thought that it was sad that i had lost my faith. she said that she would pray for me. i was indifferent to it. I told her that i understand what church is supposed to teach, that my capacity of belief in the human spirit still exists, in the desire for nothingness as being an ultimate level of achievement, and that i feel i don’t need to follow something so literally because in the end it is about my perspective and my context. she didn’t agree with me. I don’t feel like i’m missing anything, that i’ve overlooked anything, having been on both sides(sort of).
i believe in love. and hate. i don’t know what happens when i die. i decompose and rot and all that. in my heart, i want to fade away into nothingness. i want to just not function anymore, and become a part of the ether. in this world, this living place, full of function and activity and stimulation, i want to believe that the end really could be an end. that it could just let me go and let me never have to feel or think or be. that sounds grand. and i know that i’ll remain in the people who’s lives i’ve touched and shared with. that people will love me after i’ve gone. i know this because i have this in my heart. and that is real. love is real. my feelings right now are real. that’s all i have. that’s all i have to offer. i don’t know anything else.
