At what TSN-turning point in my life did the word God become one of the most used words in my vocabulary and center of almost all my thoughts? It’s like I’ve been born-again except that would also mean I have gone crazy, am obviously preachy, definitely desperate and probably now part of a cult. Some HOW, some THING has gotten to me. I am now in fact lost, not found. Surely, there is another explanation for this rebirth. I mean, Mary pulled the 'immaculate conception' card - so, what's mine?
I grew up with pretty decent exposure to religion for someone whose answer to “are you religious?” has been, “god No!” for the better part of my teens, twenties and thirties. I certainly never considered myself a very religious person (and still do not for those curious) except I’ve attended both United and Baptist churches AND played “Mary” in the church’s epic shortfilm, “Come to Bethlehem,” (which has been long held in my family as one of the finest performances given) and where we stood for DAYS in a freezing-ass barn while older church ladies wiped endless streams of snot from my nose, fawned over my head piece a gazillion times and told me, “look at the baby, Mary,” on repeat as I gazed down through frozen eyeballs at a plastic doll with the expected exhaltation of a woman who had just ejected the Son of God from her body - come to save the world and free all of humanity! I was like, 8, at the time. Not exactly reverent or versed in reproduction - of any kind. And, the barn smelled like manure from all the live animals in it they were trying to cajole into looking as enamored as I was supposed to be looking AND who got to make a crap-load more amount of noise in the film than I did. This, being more of a “silent” film narrated completely in a voice-over recorded by one of my sisters who never actually appears in the flick but stood in paralyzing cold while donkeys were led by shepherds wearing towels on their heads and angels with wire coat hangers and tinsel-halos floated by. Mary didn’t even get a damn line in the movie. Utter and complete BS. Anyways, once the crew had wrapped things on set and I had a solid review from the church under my belt, I blew off the United's house and joined a Baptist youth group down the road where I came home one summer day after a go-karting-youth-extravaganza up north somewhere with 118 mosquito bites and covered in calamine and quit the group. I then signed up for something called CGIT (Canadian Girls in Training) - a decision based solely on the need to be part of something my childhood bestie (turned-adult-bestie) was doing and felt I should definitely be a part of.
With this surprisingly stacked religious resume for someone who wasn’t very religious and who didn’t really grow up in a religious family (save for some Palm Sunday’s in church and a few midnight masses), I began trying to sort the experiences I was having amongst the growing list of questions that were forming. I started to get curious about the whole “being good” thing and, after several Easter Sunday’s worth of religiously watching the four hour production of Charleton Heston as Moses in “The Ten Commandments,” it felt a little misaligned when it became public information that the Minister of the church I attended sporadically as a child was having an affair with a member of the congregation. That felt like a definite breach of one of those commandments and I started to think that maybe just because you went to church, it didn’t necessarily make you a “good” person. It was getting harder to make sense of some of the holes I was beginning to see in the “story.” It also seemed extreme and a little unfair that if you weren’t “good” and you didn’t follow all the rules, your final stop was a fiery pit of just one temperature and in a place run by a guy who has a reputation for, let’s face it, being a bit of an A-hole. It was starting to feel less and less fun to hit up the basement of the church once a week for a Baptist version of Girl Guides - bestie or no bestie.
Not being one particularly interested in rules nor overly fond of following structure, I started to test what certainly sounded like limits - kind of odd for 'some thing' described as all-seeing and all-knowing. I figured if someone could spin a great “story” about Saint Nick surely you can piece together a miraculous tale of a baby “immaculately conceived” (a likely tale) under a starry sky in a little town of Bethlehem. I mean - who doesn’t love a good story - and the Bible was full of them. It didn’t seem that hard to pull together. Aesop managed an entire encyclopedia-sized book of fairytales.
So in my infinite wisdom of about 13 years, I started to feel a little less God-oriented and played with the Ouija bard a bit more. I was now not only questioning the validity of the good guys - but the bad guys too. After all, they were characters in a book, nothing more - so to truly test the religious waters, I began repeating stupid mantras in my mind while we rehearsed for the annual Christmas pageant pretending I was in trance as I stared down the candles on the altar, going, “evil spirits - if you are truly here, make the candle flames flicker.” Bwa ha ha. I shivered with a little fear and tempted the taste of rebellion on my lips. Then I decided I had better things to do than hang out with these losers each week.
So I graduated myself to Atheist. What that meant entirely, I wasn’t sure but it sounded like a way better bet than following along with the fakers at church and I started making really big, profoundly deep statements like, “I don’t believe in God! I just believe in ME!” thinking how clever I truly was. (Thank God my t-shirt slogans have evolved since then.) So agitated anytime I heard about this divine and heavenly “father” - I had nothing to relate to -mine had left when I was kid, too young to remember or really be “affected” by it. I was just FINE without THAT one. What the heck did I need from another one that nobody ever saw or actually spoke with. No, I was just fine all on my own thanks very much. And life kept on from here. A series of school degrees, jobs (some I actually liked sometimes) and a sense of true adulthood - a family under my belt - I was doing it! I was on the wheel!
Until.
I started to hear faint whispers. And those turned into written words in a journal, then bigger questions and even bigger problems - turned into therapy to try and find some answers - and all the shouts and wails and brick walls in my way unfolded into a path (a path that was always unfolding) - as if by magic - to here and now.
To God.
So. How DOES someone 'endowed' with such 'worldly, broad views' go from sweeping declarations of “only I got me!” to the me now, a 44-year old barely bothering to preface the use of God with the common tagline, “you can use the word universe, divine, higher self or anything else that resonates,” each time the word is used in conversation? How did she become one who wakes up reciting the Lord's prayer and breathing the words “thank you” every morning and a heart exploding with gratitude as she places a hand over it and counts the blessings this life has created FOR her so that she can step into her most authentic self and remember who not only she Is but who we ALL truly ARE. Someone who anticipates prayer and stillness for the rich conversations she has with a heavenly and always-present Father and his Son, sees miracles by the dozens unfold in the infinite world around her and who feels 'Christmas-morning' levels of excitement for a life so beautiful, so filled with the musical notes of love it brings her to tears several times a day? How does this woman recapture a childlike quality of trust and faith in “believing is seeing” and find healing, peace and a path of freedom unfolding into eternity before her?
Well, of course, you see the answer to that question all began when I started to hear a Voice…
Allie xo