Join My Church...Or Don't. I Don't Care.

I was raised without any religion.  People frequently mistake that for being raised atheist.  In truth, I was once guilty of the same assumption.  Until I entered my mid-20s, I always considered myself and my family members to be atheist (except for the brief time period when my sister joined the Church of Latter Day Saints...perhaps I will revisit that topic at a later date).  It wasn't until I met a true, "practicing" atheist that I realized I'm not an atheist.  True atheists care way more than I do about religion.

After realizing I wasn't actually atheist, I thought maybe I could better be characterized as agnostic.  However, it wasn't until after I had a wonderful conversation with a young man on a plane that I realized my true religious calling.  The conversation went something like this:

Boy On Plane:  Are you Catholic?

Me (removing ear bud):  [Internally:  Goddammit, can't you see the headphones and the book?  I don't want to talk to you!]  Excuse me?

BOP:  Are you Catholic?

Me:  No.  Are you?

BOP:  Yes.  What are you?

Me:  Uhh.  I guess I'm agnostic.  Do you know what that is?

BOP:  I think so.  That means you just don't care, right?

BEAUTIFUL.  I love it.  Although I realize that's not what agnostic means,  the kid's statement perfectly categorized my religious philosophy.  Following that conversation, and after careful consideration of the history, practices, and beliefs of various religions, I determined that no current religious doctrine applied to me.  Therefore, I created my own, brand spanking new religion.  It is called the IDK & IDC religion.  You are welcome to join.

[Please forgive me for the use of text speak.  It just seemed so fitting when naming this religion.]

See, the thing is, folks - I'm busy.  I'm a busy woman.  Over the past 12 years I've worked and volunteered in the domestic violence, child welfare, animal rights, and juvenile probation fields.  I've worked with people living in poverty, coping with mental illness, transitioning out of prison, and trying to overcome addictions.  And I really don't have the time or energy to think about what grand master spiritual dude(s)/dudette(s) is/are overseeing all of this or what's going to happen after I go extinct.  I've got shit to do!  Like, NOW, while I'm ALIVE.

Also, like all people, I have been heavily influenced by my upbringing, which went something like this:

Little Me:  Dad, do you believe in God?

Dad (grimacing):  Fuck no.  [Remembers child's age.]  Um...I mean, no.

Little Me:  Why not?

Dad:  Because God doesn't exist.  And organized religion is the scourge of the earth.  More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other cause.

Yup!  That's my dad!  The funny thing is that I had only planned to ask that preliminary question as a precursor to this follow-up question:  "How can God be my father if you're my father?"  That's what I was actually wondering.  But my dad's response made that second question just go flying out the window as I ran to the dictionary to look up the word "scourge."

When I was 8 years old, I had another sobering conversation with my dad.  I had said something about suicide - nothing about killing myself, but just some random comment about suicide.  And here is what my dad said:  "Life may be shit, kid, but death is nothing."  That, in a nutshell, was my dad's teachings about the afterlife.

When I was about ten, my mom became a little worried about her children's lack of exposure to any religious experiences or knowledge.  To test whether or not this concern was valid, she asked me if I knew what the Golden Rule was, and I said, "If you take something out, put it away."  At that point I think my mom grew concerned that her daughters might end up in Hell, if there was such a place, so she decided to do an intervention in the form of having my sister and me memorize the Lord's Prayer, which we did, although we had no idea what the fuck we were saying.  "Hallow-ed be a what now?"  It's hard to go from 0 to 60, religiously speaking, in a matter of hours.  But we learned the prayer, which I'm grateful for, because now I can somewhat capably fake my way through the majority of Christian ceremonies.

And now, since I can't think of how to end this post, I'm going to tell another story about a childhood conversation between my mom & me.  It took place around the same time as the last couple of stories, so I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old.  My mom wanted to tell me this joke:

Q:  What's 99.44% evil?

A:  Poison Ivory

However, she didn't know if I was aware of Ivory Soap's ad campaign, which claims that Ivory Soap is 99.44% pure.  She wanted to find that out before telling me the joke, so the following conversation occurred:

Mom:  Do you know what's 99.44% pure?

Me:  I don't know.  Cocaine?

Oh, my poor mom.  But don't blame me, folks.  Blame D.A.R.E.  That program taught us WAY too much about drugs.