Pretty Little Boxes (or...I Wish I Were an Atheist, but I Am Not)

... eventually i will write a blog about the unraveling sweater and the process of un-becoming a christian. I am sure many people assume I am just "backslidden" and wanted to chase after a life of debauchery and selfishness. (It really wasn't about that although i have certainly supped at the buffet of debauchery.) It was a slow process that took down tenet by tenet for me over the course of years. I desperately wanted to hang onto something.. anything.. that felt safe and familiar so that I wasn't out there bobbing in the sea alone and directionless.

What is it about us humans that we feel we need labels and boxes and titles to know who and what we are?

In the beginning when I had to finally admit to myself i believed nothing that would allow me to continue to call myself a "believer".

("Believer" is the term that people who follow God/Jesus but do not like to be labeled 'christians' due to the stigma and a lack of identifying with the horrific examples one sees in the media of what a christian is. "Believers" are people who focus on a "relationship" with God rather than an adherence to a religion... and yes.. there really is a big difference. Most believers I know are extremely good and conscientious people who care about making a difference in the world and not about shoving religion down anyone's throat.. don't boycott funerals or protest at abortion clinics or condemn homosexuals.. they just live their life trying to deepen their relationship with God)

... anyhow.. i had to come to grips that i was not a believer.

My plan was to develop into a religious observant Jewish woman.. but then I entered the Judaic Studies program at the U of O and experienced the Tanach (also known as the Old Testament) dismantled book by book by a biblical scholar who explained why the canon was a work of fiction. I was destroyed. I remember the moment. She was discussing the Book of Daniel that had always been one of my favorites.. and providing archaeological proof why it could not be true. Emotionally, I felt like i was lying on the floor bleeding and someone came up to me and began kicking my fractured ribs.

From that point forward I felt utterly lost. I remember going to visit that professor in her office and "coming out" to her about my past (she was visibly mortified and i vowed to never "come out" to another Jewish person again) and I plead with her. yes. I plead with her. "I don't know how to move forward as a Jew... if scripture is not true.. what do I hold onto? What is truth?" and looked at me as though i were absolutely insane and explained to me "Sheri this is not Christianity. Judaism is a Rabbinical religion based on Halacha and not on the irrefutibility of scripture" (or something close to that)

Regardless of your personal beliefs, the essence of what she was saying was simply, "Sheri, don't look for someone to make this easy for you. Nobody is going to hand you a pretty box with an instruction booklet."

So I wish I were an Atheist. And I tried to be. As a "religious person" i depended on the absolute truth of Scripture to be my life guide. With that gone, I felt aimless and had no idea what to anchor myself to. I am a truth person. I have no interest in fables or oral traditions that make life seem more fun. if it isn't truth, I want nothing to do with it, and i had no truth left.. just anecdotes of what i personally experienced. So I decided that I was done with God and moved forward.

.. except that while the outer part of me took this path, my "kishkes" kept calling out to a higher being. Kishkes... guts.. innards. I would face a situation and the believing Sheri would pray in that situation. The new Sheri was stumped. How do i approach this? Maybe it is a conditioned world view. I am willing to accept that. Regardless... I have accepted over the course of many years that, while identifying as an Atheist would feel more authentic to me (because I have no pretty box with instructions), the innermost parts of my cries out to a higher being against my will.

I want to clarify that I do not assume that being an Atheist is to "lack of God" anymore than being a woman is "lack of penis". I know there is depth and meaning behind the Being of Atheist that I simply am not schooled on. I do not want to offend Atheists by referring to them as people with a lack of something. I just realized that I am not one.

So i am not an Atheist. I don't know what i am. What i know I am is an excruciatingly honest person who identifies as a Truth Person. I struggle with observing rituals that have no adequate "Why" attached to them. I recognize the value of Tribal Ritual in and of itself and, for that, I very much want to pass on Jewish traditions to my children although I feel I have horribly failed at that.

I am a "Spiritual Person". I don't know what spirit or what that even means except that the ONLY thing I genuinely miss about the believer life is the deep connection i genuinely felt to a higher being. I miss feeling like my prayers were heard and considered. I miss worship. I miss worship a LOT. For a while I continued to pick worship songs that didn't have the word Jesus in them (and good luck with that.. there aren't many).. but I felt like a hypocrite. I miss that part of my life but I have no pretty little box to put it in. i am still searching. But (here comes the 80's cliche'..) "I still haven't found what I'm looking for".

It takes courage and poise to live a life outside a Pretty Little Box and feel confident that you are on the right track. I am working on it.

~and That's what she said...

I don't believe that I am an Atheist. I might be an Agnostic... but I am not sure...

.. but I've seen the light and I can say with full assurance from the wellsprings of where it is well with my soul... that i am not a christian.

Being Jewish is complicated. Explaining to non-Jews the intricasies of Judaism and Being Jewish is exhausting. I remember the first time I tried to do that. I must have been 8 or so. I was talking to my Italian Catholic next door neighbor babysitter and she asked me what my nationality/heritage was. "Jewish". She replied with a little exasperation, "NO. I am Catholic and you are Jewish. I am Italian. What are you?" "Jewish". That was the first of probably hundreds of exasperating discussions of the sort.

Being Jewish is both as easy as saying you are "American" and leaving it at that and also as complicated as what I imagine rocket science must be like to discuss. Like, I don't "get" science.

So I am coming out. Some of you that know me already know this at least to some degree and some of you had absolutely no idea and will be horrifically shocked. And some of you will be shocked to hear me talk about this in the past tense. I did used to be a Christian. I had one of those cliche' experiences and spent some adult years in the culture of what I call churchianity. And those of you who do know me know that I do nothing half way.

I did spend many many years working my way out. I liken it to a sweater with a loose thread. I was warm and cozy in this sweater until i noticed that pesky loose thread. WELL that can't be. I tugged at the loose thread and slowly the entire sweater was unraveled until it was nothing but a wavy heap of yarn at my feet.

That was many years ago. The loose thread preceded the end of my marriage and I spent the last several years while married questioning sacred cows and researching everything half to death. It was like discovering your best friend is a pathological liar. (er.. let's not go there...) I might have hung on for a few more years as i went through my divorce had I had those warm fuzzies people love christianity for, but instead I was shunned and disfellowshiped for leaving my husband and lost all but a small handful of friends who chose to love me for who I am regardless of what I did or didn't believe and did or didn't do.

I realize today that one of the reasons christianity attracted me way back then was because I needed experience and I am a "why" person. I used to ask in Hebrew School "why did God used to talk to people back then but He doesn't anymore?" I would go to synagogue and long for a deeper experience that moved me inside instead of reading the Hebrew prayers that I couldn't translate without looking to the left side translation page. I wanted something deeper and warm fuzzy and tangible. So along came those always-happy born agains who explained that i could be Jewish AND a christian and they would thank me for sharing my Messiah with them. Whaaaaa????

I am going to be honest here. I didn't believe any of it. Virgin birth.. god becoming man... resurrection... But I wanted the deep connection experience and i figured if i had to make myself believe the stories, I would in exchange for having some sort of connection to the Almighty. I rationalized it saying "COULD God have done those things if he wanted to? Well.. yes.. so then.. if he could have.. why not? Maybe he did?"

Assimilation works wonders. Eventually my doubts dissipated and I did fully embrace the culture and religion and participated actively. I was genuine it was a real experience and it met the need I had been looking for.

If only I had discovered Chabad at that time. My whole life would have taken a different turn. I had never met a fellow Jew who passionately loved God and had some sort of internal experience from it.

That is.. until I met Rivka Sari, Eliezer Braun and John Daly. And it changed my life. All my questions and loose threads were resolved and I was able to make peace with the fact that I was a passionate Jewish woman who could pursue my religion however I wanted to.. IF i wanted to...with passion and commitment or without.. my choice.. and I didn't need to worship a foreign triune triple decker god in order to do so. It took a few months to reconcile.. there is some significant brainwashing one goes through. I was now floating in the abyss with no assurance of anything in the hereafter.

I have revisited that past a few times in the almost ten years.. I have attended a church with a friend (to placate them..), visited someone performing at a church, an event at a church, and a few funerals... and I have to say I felt nothing. There were no "come hooooooommeeee" stirrings from within me. But HELL when i was living as a christian, I would watch a Ben Stiller movie and I would have DRAMATIC "come hooooooooommmme" stirrings about being Jewish. It would move me to tears. And so I did. I came home.

So now here I sit. I have a condioning world view that I learned from many years in churchianity that is hard to shake. I DID experience deep things when in that realm and I believe those things were real. I just don't believe they had anything to do with a christian god. I think there are universal principals and truths and mysteries that cross the sacred boundaries of World Religions and we placate ourselves by putting them into nice pretty boxes that feel comfy to us. I still have all the so called "giftings" I had as a christian. (yes, really) I never ever fit into church culture because I was so damned Jewish. And now I am not sure how to fit back into the religious world of Judaism. Christianity was such a cult like phenomenon to me that I can't bring myself to get involved heavily in the community of my own people. I want community, I want depth, I want meaning.. most of all I want tribal ritual to pass onto my kids, but I am afraid to get lost in religion again or under the influence of another charasmatic cult like leader.

So I am Jewish. And I am lucky that the word "Jewish" is such a nice big umbrella that requires so little explanation and I have a lot of room to figure out what I think and believe and hope for.

*Post Script: I genuinely don't mean any disprect to christians by this posting. I don't allow my kids to diss christianity anymore than I would permit any sort of bigotry or intolerance and I work hard to not disrespect your religion either. A lot of people who have known me in the last ten years did not know that I spent time in that religion significantly and there are a lot of people that haven't seen me in a long time that were not aware I had permanently left. I have very strong feelings about my experiences in the various forms of that realm that I might talk about. The good experiences and the cult like ones. If these sort of discussions will offend you to the point of not wanting to be in my life any further then I encourage you to either NOT read them, or simply leave my life. I am who I am and I only want people in my life who love me as I am right now.

And that's what SHE said..