Old Questions, New Questions

I find it very curious that the theme of religion has started popping up. For some strange reason, the past four or five days have each contained significant conversations with friends, old and new, on that topic.

A new friend is instrumental in a nearby church in Tucson and is looking for a music director. She asked if I would consider assuming that position. I immediately responded "no way, no how", following that swift response with my standard mantra, "too much evil has been done to me in the name of Christianity throughout my life." She quickly said, "oh, we're not Christian". Well, that threw me. Anytime I think of the word "church", I associate that with "Christian".

Yesterday in the Phoenix and Cincinnati airports, I kept running into a handsome man from outside Charlottesville, one of my favorite cities in the world. We spent much of our waiting-for-the-plane-to-board time chatting about various topics, among them "being single". I told him my Adventist>Baptist>Lutheran>Mormon>Golfer line about religion, and he asked if I would ever consider a religious golfer. I found that statement humorous, and it again made me start thinking about the place of religion in my life.

What was always important to me in religion was the music. During sermons, I would design dresses or rearrange rooms in my head. But the music was what was meaningful to me and could bring fullness to my heart and tears to my eyes. I grew up attending church every Saturday morning. Even though I abandoned that practice in my late teens, the "rightness" of the seventh-day Sabbath was very deeply ingrained, such that attending church on Sunday never seemed quite right.

But I did. And I attempted to embrace the religion of whatever man I was associated with at the time. (Except the golf. John always told me I didn't have the personality to be a golfer. So I embraced my fabric religion anytime he he worshipped at Our Lady of the Greens.)

When I stop to examine the role of religion in my life, I am struck with my "go along" nature. What I have wanted in my life, what I want as I try to find a man to enhance my life, is to be accepted, to be loved, to be a part of something. I want to be a part of someone's life. I want to be someone's [insert label here]. Girlfriend, sweetheart, partner, lover, significant other, honey, family, . . . . Fortunately, I am able to [or] Unfortunately, I am willing to — do whatever it takes to make that happen.

Is this why eHarmony won't accept me? I'm too adaptable? I'm willing to subsume whoever I am to become whoever I need to be to have a happy life? Or what seems like it could become a happy life?

Is this peculiar to me or to my Little Adoptee, or is that a common trait of lonely midlife singles? Unfortunately, I'm afraid it's not a common trait, and I'm not sure it's a good thing in me.

I come back to Tyler and others telling me it's time to have my own life. But I don't know what that life is, who that person is. And I don't know how to get there. And I come back to the bottom line: I'm lonely and I don't like living a lonely life.

And, contrary to what my mother tells me [frequently], I don't think asking God or Jesus to fix it will make any difference. Maybe I'm wrong. Not sure I'm willing to try prayer again to prove myself wrong.

Tyler tells me one of the reasons they have decided to move back to Youngstown is to have a spiritual life. (I think that's what he said. I was in such shock when he told me of this decision, I'm not sure what I heard during that conversation!) His statement surprised me and I want to know what he means by that. He and TJ were raised very religiously by their father, and I'm always curious with how they have reconciled that as adults.

Tyler recently told me about a book that talks about religion and why people turn to religion in their lives. (Ty, can you please add a comment here with the title of the book? I can't remember it.) Something about people needing some way to explain things they couldn't understand.

I live by the tenet that things work out the way they're supposed to. I look back at my life, at all the various smart or poor choices, and see them as building blocks to who I am today. I was taught as a child that one prays to God, and closes the prayer with "Thy will be done." And then God would answer, and the answer might be "yes" and it might be "no". So many people look at prayer as a way of getting what they want. But if the answer could be "yes" or "no", then that's not a way of getting what they want. What is it? How different is that from my "things work out the way they're supposed to"?

I was raised to believe that Seventh-day Adventists were right and everybody else was wrong. Many religions and religious denominations teach the same thing. As an adult, I have said I don't think anybody has all the answers, I don't think anybody knows the definitive answer, and when we get to wherever it is we're going when all this is over, we'll learn the answers.

I went to law school thinking everything was black and white. Then I learned everything was gray. Many, many shades of gray. Maybe that's what all of life is — just a lotta shades of gray.

I'm thinking of starting my own religion: Be Nice, Be Kind.

Would you excuse me now, please? It's Sunday morning. I've got to go worship at my favorite church: Nordstrom Pentagon City. The Shoe God is waiting.