Frivology

Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions.
- Frater Ravus

For nearly the first decade of my life, I lived in Orange County, California. This being the late 70s / early 80s, there were still vast stretches of Orange County that contained absolutely nothing but orange groves. The earliest memories I have about God come from those orange groves. Every Sunday morning, we would all get up and go through a circus of dressing nicely before we’d all pile into the car and drive through acres and acres of beautiful orange groves to get to church. We were Presbyterians and we went to a church that didn’t have it’s own physical building. We actually went to several different places, and my “Busy Bees” classes (now called GEMS - Girls Everywhere Meeting the Savior) were held in someone else’s church.

I’ve always been a bit of the quiet, introspective nerd. My parents often remarked to people how I was always very quiet and could keep to myself for hours on end. They also told them how I always wanted to puzzle out how things worked. I could literally spend hours doing nothing but playing with bubbles, watching how they formed different shapes when you piled one on top of the other, and I was completely enamored with the natural world around me, doing everything from capturing pill (or potato) bugs to marvel at how they would curl up in my hands to dissecting snails to see what was inside of them. Thus, early on, I became a problem for my Sunday School teachers and Busy Bees councilors.

I found out quickly that it was considered impolite to ask questions during Sunday School, especially when the teacher couldn’t answer them. I wanted to know things like why Jesus was white if there are so many other colors of people in the world and if Christianity is the one, true way, then why are there so many other religions? Are all those people really going to hell? Plus, well, there were the pesky ones… how did Noah really fit two of all creatures on the ark? My mom used a combination of science and common sense to answer most of the questions, which immediately marked her as the best person to ask them. For instance, her answer to the ‘many different colors’ question was based in some science. She noted that it was thought that the color of a human’s skin changed based upon their time in a particular place - it was all environmental, and that the pictures of Jesus we had were just a representation. Jesus represents all races of people and therefore should have no color.

She always seemed to have an answer that satisfied me for some time. Of all of the different religions, she actually took a rather progressive stand. She believed that really we all worshipped the same sort of deity, but in different ways and, in the end, we’d all go to the same place. A bit of a departure from what we were taught at church, but still … satisfying to me at least. Even then, though, little inconsistencies always continued to bother me. I get the same feeling when I’m watching a movie and a gigantic plot hole shows up. My ability to suspend my disbelief evaporates and it’s no fun anymore. The same thing happened to me in regards to religion. No matter how hard I tried to stitch everything together, big holes in the plot would start appearing, and growing.

My grandfather died when I was eight of pancreatic cancer. Before he died, though, there was a prolonged period of time that he was suffering. My mother did a lot of the work carting around grandma and grandpa and being there for everything she could. I went along most of the time and had the unfortunate experience of watching my grandfather die, a man I loved very much. A few months before he died, we placed him in a nursing home. Mom would take me by the hand through those halls and she’d always let all of the elderly people fawn over me. They were all terribly lonely, and she felt that she was doing them a service to let them see me. It made me, a naturally shy kid, very uncomfortable. To this day, the smell of those places sends me right back to that part of my life.

As I look back on my life, I’m not convinced what I remember is all together true. I know that grandpa and grandma did not go to church. I know that for some time, he had not “talked to God”, whatever that meant. I know that when he was on his deathbed, our pastor came to talk to him. I’ve thought, all this time, that he did so to come back to God and clear up any last details and confessions before he died. However, a few years ago, my aunt told me that even before he was in the nursing home he was talking about there being tiny elves in his room all the time, all over the place doing nothing but copulating. This leads me to believe that grandpa may not have been sane enough to really ‘ask’ for any pastor to come and see him, and that leaves me with one big question … was my grandfather the first atheist I ever knew?

When grandpa died, I was crushed. It’s hard for me to explain just how much I adored my grandfather. He always smelled of cherry pipe smoke, and he was always willing to talk to me about just about anything. He was also not so bad at playing Pac-Man on the Atari and he let me sit in his lap in his rocking chair. I don’t think anyone in my family to this day understands the connection I had with my grandfather. My mother gave all of his things to my little brother, who was only two at the time and can’t even remember him. Grandpa and I collected coins together, went to the circus, and he never ever told me to go away when I hovered around his chess games. It was impossible for me to comprehend, as an eight year old, just what it meant to lose someone. Forever. Because, even then, even with all the people claiming there was a thereafter, I didn’t believe it.

While all the adults were doing their adult grieving, everyone forgot about me. I was eight and going through a very tough time. I remember sitting, on my perfectly made bed in my perfectly clean room, staring out the window and thinking about what it would be like to simply cease to exist. Not go to heaven, not go to hell, just … *poof*. You’re here one moment and the next… you’re gone. I would concentrate very, very hard… not let any thought come into my head, not imagine any connections to my family or the room or anything else. If I thought about it hard enough, I could, literally, think myself out of existence… and that was pretty damned scary. I figured then and there that there had to be a thereafter… if only so I could see my grandfather again.

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