Stream of Consciousness I

I wish I could have been one of those people who thought about God every now and then but otherwise just went about their business. It may be hard to believe (hard to comprehend) but I pretty much am one of those people now. Talking about what I believe and thinking through it feel like things I should do now, but if it were up to me I’d just be.

The universe is really big, but so is this small world. There’s so much bigness in everywhere, every tiny nook and cranny and wide open space. I get lost in the concepts, the ideas, the things to learn . . .

Right now I’m being compelled to pick up the million hobbies my dad had as I try to get my mom’s house in order now that he’s gone. There is stuff to get rid of and stuff to keep, and keeping almost anything requires me to learn how to keep it. There are a million plants, so I need to learn to garden a bit. There’s a working(ish) fountain with a water pump and a giant reservoir . . . keep and learn or sell in ignorance? Fixing leaky faucets (or putting up with leaky faucets), fixing clocks (or two hundred clocks for sale!), reseeding the lawn (or just have a growing contest and see what vegetation wins), figuring out the recording equipment again (or . . . stay quiet).

There are a hundred Bibles, too. What do you do with a hundred old Bibles?

You’d think spending so much time at my parents’ house in my dad’s stuff and in the home I grew up in would resurrect that constant inner monologue with God that nagged me in perpetuity for the first 2/3 of my life, but you know what? It’s not there.

I write this stuff to reach out to whatever part of the old me might be residing in the current you. But I have to tell you, not having God in my life doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I don’t miss it. I see life all around me. I see people trying to find meaning in the ways that mean most to them, and I don’t think they’re kidding themselves. I don’t think it’s cute. I don’t look down on the practice of believing in God. I just don’t see it anymore. It’s like that moment when you stop watching a TV show that’s still airing new episodes or you no longer follow a sports team or you put down a book you lose all desire to finish.

The desire to be a part of the world that believes in and worships God is Season 9 of Scrubs. It’s the Chicago Blackhawks. It’s the 3-cheese nachos at Qdoba. It’s just not for me anymore, no hate to anyone keeping the faith.

I always envied the people who weren’t infected with faith that needed to be true to the fullest logical completion of its ideals. It always annoyed the hell out of me when people would ask, Where do you draw the line? about concepts of faith. There shouldn’t be a line—faith shouldn’t have a boundary around it at which point you say it would be crazy to do what God asks of you. The phrase religious extremists to me was just another way to describe someone who actually believes what they say they believe.

At some point you realize, I either need to believe this all the way or not believe it at all. Believing something up to a certain point seems so ridiculous. It’s faith in a movie. Believe until your internal director yells Cut!

Practically, giving up believing has been extremely difficult and fraught with conflict and complications—but inside my heart, mind, body, and soul? Easy af. It’s the disconnect between me and the people who had been in my life that has been the most difficult, but not the faith. The faith part was a breeze.

Getting it out of my head, though, that’s where deconstruction has had to come in and clean up the mess. I still don’t think I’m halfway through the psychological and emotional muck of that process. In that sense, this process of working out my thoughts and views and revelations helps me now and hopefully you as well as you move farther from whatever breaking-off point you may have with respect to a part of your life you’d rather leave behind.

The circumstances of life are much more difficult today than they’ve ever been, frankly. But I’ve never had more peace about my place in it than I do today.

I do wish I had learned much, much earlier how to have peace about my place in the messiness of life. If that’s something I can help you find, I will consider this rambling a raving success.