SPEAK
SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN
Finding something to believe in doesn't always mean finding a religion. by Rikki Kite
I'm confused about religion. I sometimes wish I could pick one to follow, but I just can't make myself believe in any of them. I was raised Presbyterian, but by the time I entered junior high school my mother was confused about religion too. We quit going to church, and she converted to not believing in anything specific. She wouldn't even call herself an atheist because that meant she believed something, even if that something was nothing.
At first I struggled with my non-belief system. I felt so guilty that one roommate suggested that I'd make a good Catholic. I was uncomfortable with all the rules and saints and Sunday Masses, so it was clear that Catholicism wasn't for me. Eventually, I began to wonder why anyone needed a religion at all. I let the idea of karma and living by the Golden Rule help direct my life, and it worked...for a while.
Then my daughter Cleo was born. I was suddenly panicstricken. Religion made sense for the first time; I needed to know that everything would be OK. I needed to know that no matter what, Cleo would be safe. I wanted a rule book — like the Bible — to follow, and I wanted to give Cleo the experiences I'd had as a child: Sunday school, Christmas carols and new Easter bonnets with matching white lace gloves.
I tried to find a new religion that fit better. I looked into Buddhism and appreciated what I read about it, but my trip to the Zen Center made me feel like a visitor in a foreign land, surrounded by a chanting language I would never understand. My Krishna friends invited me to their Sunday dinners, and I dragged Cleo along with me. She played with the children while I sat on the floor in the temple, eyes watering from the burning incense filling the room, and pretended to read what the people around me were chanting. Cleo and I loved the vegetarian feasts that followed, but I was uncomfortable with the ceremony and chanting and admitted to my friends that I still wasn't buying into Krishna consciousness.
life. She cried when my brother rebelled in high school. "Your brother has become a Baptist!" she sobbed as we talked on the phone. I tried to comfort her, telling her that at least he wasn't having pre-marital sex or getting drunk, my rebellious behavior that she had found almost as upsetting as his religious conversion.
My mother was no help. She'd become less tolerant of any talk of religious beliefs. She'd cut the Born Again Christians in our family -completely- out-of-her
When I was 33, my mother became ill. Mom had actually been sickly since I was in high school and was diagnosed with an array of allments — depression, bi-polar disorder, fibromyalgia, arthritis, rare blood disorders, thyroid problems and more. Mom took a turn for the worse and spent a couple of weeks in the hospital as the doctors performed test after test, frantically trying to determine what was wrong with her. Her pain was excruciating, and it was clear to us, her family, that she was dying. We took her home to care for her while we waited for her diagnosis, which wouldn't come until after she had died of two rare cancers.
Those last days of her life, I saw my mother's struggle with her beliefs, or lack thereof. She knew she was dying, but she didn't know what that meant. What happens after we die? She allowed my aunt to pray for her, next to her hospital bed in our living room. She let my youngest sister read pamphlets that hospital clergy distributed. And in my mother's opium haze, she whimpered and asked for us to "make him go away." "Make who go away?" I asked her.
"Lucifer,"she answered,before drifting back to sleep.
A couple of days later she died in our living room with me, my brother, my stepfather, and my aunt around her. We stroked her hair and held her hands and told her that it was OK to go, that we'd be with her."Where will you be?" she asked my stepfather. "Right here, in your heart," he answered. Her face relaxed, and she was gone.
My aunt prayed under her breath, and despite my grief, I was relieved that my mother was no longer in pain. I still had no idea where she went. My aunt will tell you that my mother was born again before she died. She will tell you that my mother accepted Jesus, or did the hokey pokey, or whatever it took to save her soul and land-in heaven.
I don't think that happened. Instead, I think my mother left this world with a sense of peace because she was surrounded by her family — in all our various forms of belief and disbelief — telling her that we loved her, we'd take care of each other, and it would all be OK. She died without the knowledge that she'd end up with a harp and angel wings in heaven. Instead, she passed away knowing that she was loved and that her four children and her granddaughter would miss her, but part of her would continue to live within each of us.
Even though her death didn't bring me clarity in a religious
sense, it taught me something else that I think is equally important — when you die, the only thing you get to take with you is the experience you had while you were alive. It doesn't matter whether you die as a Hare Krishna, Protestant, Buddhist, Catholic, Muslim or atheist. You don't take the church, the incense or religious texts into whatever happens next. Instead, you get to take with you the memories of the Sunday dinners, chants, friends or the hokey pokey.
Last semester, I had the opportunity to take a road trip to Memphis and watch an album get recorded at Sun Studio:A big part of me thought
I should stay home and catch up on my homework. The rest of me won the internal debate when I pictured myself on my deathbed, looking back on the life I'd led. I realized that as the images of my life passed before me, I wouldn't be thinking about grad school, and I wouldn't care about the grade I made in Research Methods. I imagined myself regretting that I'd never made it to Graceland or stood in the sound booth at Sun Studio, touched the piano keys that Jerry Lee Lewis played, or gripped the microphone that Elvis held. I may never find a religion that fits me, but at least I ended up with something to believe in.
something to believe in
09.28.2006 JAYPLAY <19
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