I want this

I've been looking for a rocking chair for Baby Ziggy's room and this is the one I want...

Too bad it belongs to someone else. You think they'd be willing to share?

Horton Hears a... Who??

Remember the book Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss? The story of a friendly elephant who hears a tiny voice from a speck of dust and discovers an entire microscopic world. None of Horton's friends believe that he could have found a whole world within a speck of dust. They believe it impossible for such a tiny place to exist.

***

Science used to say the world was flat. Now it's round. Maybe next, we'll discover it is, in fact, square. We used to think the atom was the smallest thing until we cracked it open and a whole mess of crap came out. (Did anyone get that Friends reference?) A good scientist should leave open the possibility that their theory can be wrong. So what about a good religious leader? There are so many different systems of belief in this world, it seems closed minded to think that there can only be one correct religion.

My mama raised us to come to our own religious conclusions. And out of the five of her children she raised one child with devout Catholic beliefs, one atheist, one agnostic, one who cannot be defined, and one me.

Over the last 15 years or so I've run the gambit in regards to religion. In high school I went through a very religious phase. I went to church every Sunday, attended religious conferences, helped with vacation bible school and Sunday school. I must admit though, I never took communion. It felt fake to me. Now before I offend anyone, I want to clarify that it felt like I was faking religion not that the ritual itself felt fake. I always felt a little like an outsider in church because I wasn't raised in a church. Accepting communion would have felt like I was taking from someone else who had spent their whole life building their faith.

Through college I probably would have told you that I was a nonpracticing Christian. I believed in God when it was convenient for me. I prayed when I needed something but mostly I didn't pray. And then I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to have religion out of convenience. If I found myself talking to God, like something as simple as thanking God or something as personal as praying to God, it was more of a reflex than a belief. It felt phony. I didn't pray because I was a religious person, I prayed because that's simply what good Christian's are told to do.

If you asked me two years ago what my religious beliefs were I would have told you with no doubt, that I was an atheist. I can't remember coming to this conclusion. I didn't become an atheist overnight. For me, it took years. But the day I realized that I didn't believe in God was a sad one. It was as if someone had died. I mourned the loss of this higher power in whom I had believed for so long. I mourned the idea that I no longer had a security net. I could no longer say "God works in mysterious ways" when something bad happens. I could no longer fall back on the idea that there is a plan for all of us when things don't work out. I had no idea what would happen me when I die. It seemed cruel to say that death is the end and there is no afterlife. It was hard to accept that if I didn't believe in God I didn't believe in Heaven. It is, after all, a package deal. At this point I had to decide what I was going to believe in. The religious explanations for life's misery seemed like nothing but a band aid. Religion doesn't explain why good people die miserable deaths and why rapists live to be 100. I need more than "mysterious ways."

I don't want to be a cliche, but I will be the first to admit that a major factor in my complete conversion to atheism was the death of my mom. I was already moving towards atheism but her passing cemented the change for me. I couldn't understand why a merciful God would decide it was time for her to die. Almost immediately after I recognized myself as an atheist I began yet another transformation. I didn't believe in God but I couldn't fathom the idea that there is nothing after life. That this life is all we get and then we're gone. So maybe I needed that band aid to help me grieve the death of my mom. What's so wrong with that? Maybe there is a higher power that oversees our tiny little planet. But what shape does it take? Buddha, Allah, some kind of Deity, one God, multiple Gods, or no God at all. Who's to say?

So this is where my brain has landed on this spiritual plane. Total religious confusion. But I must say that I'm comfortable in this place. My scientific side needs evidence of a higher power but spiritual side is comforted with the idea that maybe one (or multiple) such being does exist. There are too many possibilities and too little evidence to dismiss any idea completely. Maybe we are a tiny speck of dust floating around the living room of some higher being.