Religion's role in my childhood
I haven't posted here in a while, but have been meaning to remedy that. I've also had this entry saved on my computer for a while, but often the timing didn't seem right for posting. I figure now's as good a time as any.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the lord my soul to take
My mother used to recite that with me every night at bedtime. We had a ritual: That poem, the alphabet, and fully spelling my first, middle, and last names. Then we said goodnight, shared a quick peck, and I went to bed.
It didn't occur to me until I was a teenager that the rhyme she had me recite was a prayer of sorts. I'd always repeated it so blindly, I never even thought about the words. I didn't notice the "lord" references, or any of that soul-talk. It was just like how you spell your name so automatically, you don't even think about it. She made it a habit, and I was good at being habitual.
The rhyme mattered to me for many years, as part of the ritual as a whole. My mother was not an affectionate person, though she would argue that. My sister and I got kisses at bedtime and before leaving for school, but we didn't hug or snuggle or hold hands. That prayer-poem was a part of a ritual that ended with one of the very few physical displays of affection I received in my day. So it meant a lot to me.
It doesn't surprise me, then, that the cessation of my affection for that poem coincided with increased distance between my mother and me. I'd started homeschooling, which served quite the opposite purpose that you might assume; my curriculum was self-taught, so my mother didn't interact in my lessons. She didn't allow me much time outside of the house (three times a week I was allowed an hour and a half to figure skate at the local ice rink; I wasn't allowed any other activities or social interactions), and even those occasional trips were always chaperoned, so she was always with me, if not interacting. There was no longer a reason for a goodbye kiss during my day, and my resentment towards her for my stunted social life led me to shun all kisses in general. I began to drastically change my schedule, staying up until 8 in the morning so I could sleep until the early afternoon and avoid her for as long as possible. We started to have frequent, ugly fights which always resulted in me unloading my growing hatred, and her telling me I was insane and should be locked in a mental institution.
I don't know how to feel when I hear that prayer now. A part of me feels a warmth for a fond childhood memory, whereas another part of me is simply irritated that she'd impose such a meaningless Christian ritual upon me when she did nothing to help me spiritually develop.
I feel the same way about the time in my youth when she made me go to Sunday school, though she never, ever went to church herself. Oddly, I remember everything about those Sunday mornings with pristine clarity, with the exception of what actually happened inside the church. I remember getting dressed up in one of my sister's old dresses (which always looked ridiculous on me as she was always short for her age and large, whereas I was tall for my age and stick-skinny), I remember unzipping my baby blue patent leather purse with white lace and buttons on the front, and sticking in the dollar my mother gave me for the collection plate. I remember walking across the parking lot to the conveniently-located Lutheran church behind our home, and I remember climbing those giant cement stairs. But once those wide red door openned, it's as if my mind refused to commit a single event to memory. This has always made me a bit curious; have I blocked out bad memories, or was my time there simply so meaningless to me that my brain didn't bother to store the events?
I remember thinking I was a Christian when I was a young child. I think I was 10 or 11 when I started to question why on earth I thought this. I know my mother told me we were Christians, and we put up a tree on Christmas and hunted for eggs on Easter. But no one ever accompanied me on those Sunday school trips, and no one talked about God or Jesus. I remember having picture books of Biblical stories on the shelves next to my Dr. Seuss books, but we always read them with the same attitude that we read all of our other fairy tales. In my mind, Noah must have had one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish on his ark. I didn't think I was supposed to actually believe any of it was real.
When I was 12, my father became a Born Again Christian, and would suddenly choose random times to lecture me about hell and damnation. His timing was a horrible coincidence, as this was right around the same age that I really started to think I didn't believe in any of that stuff. I was two years into my ultimately seven-year schooling experience through a Seventh Day Adventist organization, and the lessons I'd been receiving on their doctrines began to inspire a feeling verging on ridicule within me. I read Genesis and finished my lessons as directed, but read up on Darwin in my spare time. My life-long love of dinosaurs and the fossil record spurred a great deal of frustration in the face of lessons which taught that fossils are all fake, planted on the earth by Satan to tempt people from the path of righteousness. My fascination with the Big Bang Theory and carbon dating did not align well with the lessons on Earth's literal 6000-year age. When my father, who I'd only ever bonded with over discussions on logic and science, suddenly began to spew the same "truths" at me, I began to question the sanity of organized religion.
That year, I earned my permanent damnation. When my father told me that it was a provable scientific fact that Jesus was the holy son of the one God, I argued that only the existance of him as a man could possibly be proven, and his divinity was a matter of personal faith. He exploded, and told me that I would burn in Hell for all eternity. I was 12. And I was a very straight-laced child. I decided that any religion that would punish an honest, innocent, upstanding kid for theological disagreement was not a religion I wanted to be any part of.
My experiences discovering my true spiritual self are another chapter in and of themselves. This is how I cleaned my slate, shrugged off those vaguely imposed religious ideals that were such a subtle but pervasive part of my childhood. I am no shade of Christian; I do not believe in monotheism, nor do I believe that any great deity sent their son to die for our sins. Jesus may have lived, and he may have been a great man, but I do not see him as holy, nor do I view him with any greater reverence than any other human being. This, in and of itself, is a complicated way to live in this country sometimes. I don't talk about my religious views often, because they've caused so much trouble in my life. But I am content in my beliefs, and respect all others for their own, so long as they use faith to seek enlightenment, and do not use it as an excuse to hate or persecute others. I wonder, sometimes, if those sorts of religious people are dying out in an increasingly extremist world. It feels like we are all being asked to be Sunday worshipers or atheists, and I don't wish to commit to either.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the lord my soul to take
My mother used to recite that with me every night at bedtime. We had a ritual: That poem, the alphabet, and fully spelling my first, middle, and last names. Then we said goodnight, shared a quick peck, and I went to bed.
It didn't occur to me until I was a teenager that the rhyme she had me recite was a prayer of sorts. I'd always repeated it so blindly, I never even thought about the words. I didn't notice the "lord" references, or any of that soul-talk. It was just like how you spell your name so automatically, you don't even think about it. She made it a habit, and I was good at being habitual.
The rhyme mattered to me for many years, as part of the ritual as a whole. My mother was not an affectionate person, though she would argue that. My sister and I got kisses at bedtime and before leaving for school, but we didn't hug or snuggle or hold hands. That prayer-poem was a part of a ritual that ended with one of the very few physical displays of affection I received in my day. So it meant a lot to me.
It doesn't surprise me, then, that the cessation of my affection for that poem coincided with increased distance between my mother and me. I'd started homeschooling, which served quite the opposite purpose that you might assume; my curriculum was self-taught, so my mother didn't interact in my lessons. She didn't allow me much time outside of the house (three times a week I was allowed an hour and a half to figure skate at the local ice rink; I wasn't allowed any other activities or social interactions), and even those occasional trips were always chaperoned, so she was always with me, if not interacting. There was no longer a reason for a goodbye kiss during my day, and my resentment towards her for my stunted social life led me to shun all kisses in general. I began to drastically change my schedule, staying up until 8 in the morning so I could sleep until the early afternoon and avoid her for as long as possible. We started to have frequent, ugly fights which always resulted in me unloading my growing hatred, and her telling me I was insane and should be locked in a mental institution.
I don't know how to feel when I hear that prayer now. A part of me feels a warmth for a fond childhood memory, whereas another part of me is simply irritated that she'd impose such a meaningless Christian ritual upon me when she did nothing to help me spiritually develop.
I feel the same way about the time in my youth when she made me go to Sunday school, though she never, ever went to church herself. Oddly, I remember everything about those Sunday mornings with pristine clarity, with the exception of what actually happened inside the church. I remember getting dressed up in one of my sister's old dresses (which always looked ridiculous on me as she was always short for her age and large, whereas I was tall for my age and stick-skinny), I remember unzipping my baby blue patent leather purse with white lace and buttons on the front, and sticking in the dollar my mother gave me for the collection plate. I remember walking across the parking lot to the conveniently-located Lutheran church behind our home, and I remember climbing those giant cement stairs. But once those wide red door openned, it's as if my mind refused to commit a single event to memory. This has always made me a bit curious; have I blocked out bad memories, or was my time there simply so meaningless to me that my brain didn't bother to store the events?
I remember thinking I was a Christian when I was a young child. I think I was 10 or 11 when I started to question why on earth I thought this. I know my mother told me we were Christians, and we put up a tree on Christmas and hunted for eggs on Easter. But no one ever accompanied me on those Sunday school trips, and no one talked about God or Jesus. I remember having picture books of Biblical stories on the shelves next to my Dr. Seuss books, but we always read them with the same attitude that we read all of our other fairy tales. In my mind, Noah must have had one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish on his ark. I didn't think I was supposed to actually believe any of it was real.
When I was 12, my father became a Born Again Christian, and would suddenly choose random times to lecture me about hell and damnation. His timing was a horrible coincidence, as this was right around the same age that I really started to think I didn't believe in any of that stuff. I was two years into my ultimately seven-year schooling experience through a Seventh Day Adventist organization, and the lessons I'd been receiving on their doctrines began to inspire a feeling verging on ridicule within me. I read Genesis and finished my lessons as directed, but read up on Darwin in my spare time. My life-long love of dinosaurs and the fossil record spurred a great deal of frustration in the face of lessons which taught that fossils are all fake, planted on the earth by Satan to tempt people from the path of righteousness. My fascination with the Big Bang Theory and carbon dating did not align well with the lessons on Earth's literal 6000-year age. When my father, who I'd only ever bonded with over discussions on logic and science, suddenly began to spew the same "truths" at me, I began to question the sanity of organized religion.
That year, I earned my permanent damnation. When my father told me that it was a provable scientific fact that Jesus was the holy son of the one God, I argued that only the existance of him as a man could possibly be proven, and his divinity was a matter of personal faith. He exploded, and told me that I would burn in Hell for all eternity. I was 12. And I was a very straight-laced child. I decided that any religion that would punish an honest, innocent, upstanding kid for theological disagreement was not a religion I wanted to be any part of.
My experiences discovering my true spiritual self are another chapter in and of themselves. This is how I cleaned my slate, shrugged off those vaguely imposed religious ideals that were such a subtle but pervasive part of my childhood. I am no shade of Christian; I do not believe in monotheism, nor do I believe that any great deity sent their son to die for our sins. Jesus may have lived, and he may have been a great man, but I do not see him as holy, nor do I view him with any greater reverence than any other human being. This, in and of itself, is a complicated way to live in this country sometimes. I don't talk about my religious views often, because they've caused so much trouble in my life. But I am content in my beliefs, and respect all others for their own, so long as they use faith to seek enlightenment, and do not use it as an excuse to hate or persecute others. I wonder, sometimes, if those sorts of religious people are dying out in an increasingly extremist world. It feels like we are all being asked to be Sunday worshipers or atheists, and I don't wish to commit to either.