Little Moments

I just had a great moment at my son's school today. I volunteer in the school library on Thursday mornings, and I always stop by the playground as I'm leaving to say hello to my son and spend a moment with him. I usually check out a book to read to him when I'm in the library, and lately it's become a ritual that I sit and read to him on the playground before I go home for the day.

Today was a nasty weather day. It was cold and windy, and the wind was hurling little needles of rain at everything and everyone. I crouched down to show my son the book I'd checked out for him. He asked me to read it, and within moments I had a circle of 6-year-olds around me wanting to hear the story. They listened, talked about the pictures, laughed, and smiled shyly at me from under the hoods of their coats. I hammed up the story and made it as entertaining as possible, and I could feel how much the children were enjoying themselves. In that moment, I knew why I had gotten out of bed that morning.

I think I'll do that every week.

Round 2,000,000,000......and counting

And then there’s the question of faith in God. Unless you were raised by wolves, you’ve probably wrestled with this issue at some point in your life. Who knows – maybe even wolves struggle with it. I have had a life-long wrestling match with Faith. Sometimes it pins me and I submit, and sometimes I manage to throw it off and stand in my own corner for a while. Other times I tackle it completely.

Right now in my life, Faith and I are in opposite corners of the wrestling ring, eyeing each other. While in this stalemate, Reason has crept into my corner, and he is taunting Faith mercilessly. I was raised Roman Catholic, so Reason has a lot of ammunition for taunting.

Reason: “I mean REALLY Faith. Talking snakes? Burning bushes? A piece of bread that turns into a guy’s bloody body every week? Confession? Saints? A list of arbitrary rules we’re supposed to believe was written by God?”

The list of taunts is endless.

The sad part is, Faith really has no defense. He just stands there with his sad puppy eyes, silently imploring me to leap in his direction. But I haven’t been in a leaping mood lately.

And that’s the point, really. Faith really is a leap. You either choose to believe something, or you don’t. And if you stop to reason it out, you can stay in that stalemate forever. But after a lifetime of struggling, questioning, and changing religions, I have come to the conclusion that I don’t believe in any of it. I haven’t considered myself a Christian for a long time. To me, Christ, if he existed, was a fabulous prophet that was very spiritually gifted, and helped a lot of people. He was a radical free-thinker who came to change the minds and hearts of men. But I believe he was a man, and only a man. And while his mother probably was a good person, I doubt very strongly that God made her pregnant. I could go on, but you get the picture.

So I’m not Christian, but I’ve known that for a long time. The part that makes me sad is that recently, I find myself unable to believe in God. I just can’t. As I said, Faith and I are in a stalemate, and reason has the upper hand. I want to believe, and I still pray out of habit, but Faith and I just can’t see eye to eye lately. This puts me in a lonely place. I wouldn’t say I’m an atheist. Just agnostic. For now. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

After all, this wrestling match has been going on a long time, and there’s always the next round.

I’ll keep you posted on the scores.