Caught Mid-Leap

Someone mentioned to me that I don't talk about G-d very much on the blog. The person who brought it up was just making an observation, but I thought I would try to write a post about me and G-d and our rather odd relationship. I've talked about it a couple of times, but not recently. But maybe I will now since, you know, I don't have anything foster care related to talk about out.

Neither of my parents are religious. My father is probably atheist. My mother, well, I don't know what she believes. She took us to a church for a few years after she and my father got divorced. That would have been somewhere in the 3rd-5th grade years for me.

My counselor talked to me once about all the "foster parents" I had had; adults who I recruited to parent me in one way or another. Many of them I found through the church. When I was in high school I started going to a Lutheran church. I fell in love with the liturgy. I went to a Lutheran college and was active with the religious activities there.

So from 14 to 22 I hung out with intellectual, liberal Lutherans. I was one.

After college I went to graduate school and grew increasingly uncomfortable with faith, with the whole G-d thing. I felt like I couldn't answer important questions and that if I couldn't answer them then it was somehow hypocritical for me to be in church.

I missed it though. I tried different things. For a while I went to a silent Quacker service, but when I moved to where I live now that was not an option. I thought about converting to a religion where belief was less important than practice, but I never could bring myself to do that. I have no problem with conversion in itself, but I felt like I couldn't pull it off. I would always be a Christian girl trying to be Jewish or Buddhist or whatever. My relationship with my faith is somewhat like my relationship with my country. I may disagree with it deeply and wholeheartedly. If I felt free to pick any one I wanted, I probably wouldn't pick the one I'm in. I certainly don't think it has a better claim to truth than any of the others. On the other hand, it's mine. Or I am its. I'm allowed to say what parts of it are important and valuable and what parts are silly. I'm allowed to say what I think is purely symbolic. If I jumped ship and joined someone else I would have to be all humble and let other people tell me what was important.

AND I would have to choose one of all the alternatives, and that would be really tough.

So I never converted to anything.

My husband had never stopped attending church. I learned from my sister that he continued going to the Lutheran church because he figured I would want to come back some day and that was where I would want to be. Turns out he was right. When Andrew was four and I was thirty, Andrew was in the Christmas pagent. I went to the service.

I cried. I missed the liturgy, the candles, the hymns so much. It was a deep ache. I wanted to come back. But I wasn't sure I believed in anything.

So G-d and me and a little talk. G-d said, "Come back." I said, "But I don't think I believe in you." And G-d said, "Come back anyway." And I did.

And things have changed little over the years. For a while I wondered if I believed in G-d like I believed in Santa Claus -- as a symbol for something. I have also wondered if I believe in G-d like I believe in my marriage. Maybe G-d is something that exists because we believe; something real but something that wouldn't be real if we didn't believe in it.

I don't know exactly what I do believe. I do know that I do not believe in a being who has everything planned out. I certainly do not believe in a being who has the suffering of children part of a plan for the greater good. If I did believe in such a being I would believe it was my moral obligation to fight it. And if such a being threatened to send me to a fiery torment because I fought, I would take that as confirmation of the being's basic evil nature. So that is one thing that is off the list.

In general though I find both belief and non-belief impossible to quite pull off. Neither position is comfortable. I am stuck half-way in the leap of faith.

But G-d doesn't seem to mind too much. Sometimes, like when we decided to ask to be Carl's parents, I have felt very much like G-d was pushing me to do something.

It's like that sometimes. G-d says, "Yondalla, I want you to do this thing."

And I say, "You know, I don't really believe in you."

And G-d seems to sigh and say, "I know. Do it anyway."