and the curtain finally rises

last week as part of an exercise in my anthropology class we had to ask each other question that we thought were essential to discovering someones culture. this girl asked me "what are your religious beliefs?" that really threw me for a loop. i've spent three years grappling with and fighting against any labels of my spiritual beliefs and had finally come to a somewhat comfortable conclusion that i am no longer a christian. but having to actually say it to someone, who doesn't even know me or care about the answer, was very difficult for some reason. saying anything out loud to another human being makes it real. and maybe i'm still not sure what i believe. i know that i'm not in the same place i was when i graduated from my conservative christian high school. i'm most assuredly not in the same place as i was at my horrifically conservative christian college, which i had to leave after one year because i began to loath christians altogether. and now what? what is my faith now? searching? apathetic? atheist? agnostic? what if i don't want to tell anyone what my faith is? it seems personal. and i have discovered that i don't like telling complete strangers something that i am so undecided about. that must be it.

for years i've been debating with myself about telling old friends about my new direction. i have been constantly afraid of judgement and also with disappointing anyone. no one wants to hear about a friend "falling away," "getting lost," "needing prayer" as i remember we thought about it back then. when i was sixteen i remember praying every day for a summer and beyond for my friend in the states to "come back to Jesus." i thought that i would keep doing for this as long as it took, until we were both 50 years old. what conviction i had. what dedication.

maybe part of me didn't want to tell anyone because in the back of my mind i thought i would be able to quickly resolve my doubts and "come back to Jesus" before anyone had to know i'd been gone. well, i've realized it doesn't work that way. struggling over faith is not a quick and easy fix. i've come to accept that it may be many more years before i come to a solid conclusion. and even after i conclude, i will probably change my mind again. we are fickle creatures, us humans.

and so i say this, with apprehension: i don't know what i believe. i don't believe in God the same way i used to, and maybe i don't believe in him at all. i think i might, but i have more "searching" to do. and this no promise. i am fully grounded in this belief: life is full of crazy shit and we all cope with it in our own ways. and we are all selfish in the end. even believing in God is selfish. we are out to do what makes us happy and what we think is right. we are trapped in our own bodies, in our own heads. in the end, i can only change myself.

i leave you with this thought, said by a very wise and very gay man:

"Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked."
-Quentin Crisp