Tag: Christianity

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No room in the inn

Around this time of year, for many years in my youth, my church and school would begin preparing for our annual Christmas pageant. Wiggly little kids, we’d anxiously await the assignment of our roles. Was I going to be an angel this year or a shepherd or maybe a narrator? Gabrielle would be cool! Or even an inn keeper. They always gave the Wise Men and Joseph to the boys. I was never lucky enough to get selected as Mary. Every little girl wanted to play Mary. It was a ritual of sorts, to reenact the birth story of the Savior and one that just about any church-attending Christian could largely recite by heart…

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered… Joseph went… to a town called Bethlehem… to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child… and while they were there, the time came for her to give birth… There were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them… suddenly a multitude of the heavenly hosts appeared.” There were wise men that fell to their knees bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh… and a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothing, lying in a manger… because there was no room for them in the inn…. no room in the inn.

And every Christmas all over the world, the story is told over and over again… and each time, I imagine that millions of people have an unsettling, ill feeling, like I did, when Joseph and a very pregnant Mary knock on door after door and are turned away. Only finally catching a break when one, kind inn keeper lets them stay in a stable with the animals, where she gives birth. And we all marvel at the irony of a” King” entering the world under such humble circumstances.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I gained more insight into the story… Despite the white- washed picture books and pageants of my youth, I came to realize that Jesus was a middle- eastern man. It was a brown baby that was born that night, and an immigrant- not a citizen of the Roman Empire but living under Roman authority, born to a young mother… with no place to stay. And despite our inflated sense of ego, those inn keepers who shut their doors, were much more usual than the one who gave them shelter.

We were never suppose to get our current foster placement. It was an “out of the blue” phone call, like they all are, when I was asked if we could take a 12 year old boy. I said “Of course”. But unlike the calls of the past, this was a rare heads up… they’d call back tomorrow with more details. Normally, we’re given a hour or two before the child arrives. So I took the time to grab some extra groceries, make the bed up in “boyish” bedding, to dust the shelves and set out a toothbrush and toiletries, fresh socks, underwear and some clothing options- because the kids rarely come with anything at all. But when tomorrow came… one child became two and we were asked if we could take a sibling group… “These two can’t be separated.”, the agency said. We got an emergency override to make our single bedroom work for this brother and sister until we could make more room. And I readied the other bed with “girlie” sheets and another toothbrush, more socks, underwear and clothes.

It’s been four years since we first began our foster journey and the comments I’ve gotten in regards to it are as varied as, “You guys are angels!” to “Wow, aren’t those kids really messed up and isn’t that a big risk you’re exposing your family to???” And I’m always amazed how many of the people with comments like the later, call themselves Christians.

Especially when I recall the words Jesus later spoke as an adult when he taught his people… “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” … “Hungry and you gave me something to eat… Thirsty and you gave me something to drink… a stranger and you invited me in… I needed clothes and you clothed me…”

Unlike the passage above from the book of Matthew-in the Christian bible, fostering for us, has nothing to do with gaining passage to heaven, pleasing a god, or even faith for that matter. I lost my faith a long time ago. I have doubts about even the presence of an after-life. We expect nothing in return for our work. We do it because we saw a need and we felt compelled to help. Still, the Christmas story of my youth pervades my soul.

The truth is, yes, it is a risk. A well-calculated one that my family went though extensive training and education to prepare for and one that we discuss often in family meetings each time we reassess if this is a journey we want to continue. But a risk nonetheless.

Why is it that we can watch a play with children on a stage and feel the sadness and even, dare I say, judgement, towards the inn keepers that turned Mary and Joseph away… insisting to ourselves that WE would have been the kind inn keeper that opened our doors… and yet… living in a world of extravagance and privilege, all around us are thousands of people in need- many of them young mothers and children… and we lock our doors and tighten our purse strings, reasoning that helping them is somehow too much, too risky, or just not our job.

The truth is, we’ve all been the unaccommodating inn keepers… and we have to do better. We have to be willing to stretch a little more, bend a little more, give a little more.

I’m not here to say that everyone should be a foster parent. Some people can’t. Some people won’t pass the background checks or meet the criteria. And some people just don’t have it- the money, the time, the patience or skills. And it isn’t easy- I’ll never say that it is. But a lot more people could, if they allowed themselves to move past the fear or the excuses.

And foster care isn’t the only way to help. There are so many other ways to show your love and charity for our fellow human beings- tasks as simple as handing out lunches and smiles to the homeless, volunteering at soup kitchens or food banks, donating to charities, helping a friend or a neighbor in need- with a visit, getting them groceries or giving them a ride. Do you take the time to notice those around you or do you keep your head down and hurry on? Do you stop and hold the door, lend a helping hand, check in on the elderly, or are you just “too busy”? Have you offered a single mom or an over-worked couple a night of babysitting… or invited the unusual and lonely kid at school out for a play date… or are those kids just too needy? Have you made dinner for a family in need or better yet, welcomed them to your table… or are groceries just too expensive? It’s amazing how we can often find time and money for the things that serve us, but not for serving others.

I don’t write this post pretending to be something that I’m not. I’m not better than anyone. I’m not even a Christian anymore. And I’m no angel or savior. I’m just a person who answered the door when someone knocked. And I’ve discovered the magic that happened when I answered. What initially felt impossible and overwhelming, proved plausible and rewarding. And I’ve also felt sinking regret when I knew I could’ve done better. I see the tremendous need around me and my heart aches. I know we can all do more.

This winter season, let us all find room. Or better yet, make room, if not in our homes, within the confides of our hearts for someone else. Life is too short to turn out the light and ignore the knocking.

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Teaching our Children: Christian Lessons Carried on by a Self-proclaimed Non-believer

holding hands pic

If you follow my blog, you already know that not every behavior my parents modeled for me was a positive one. I challenge you to find one set of parents that did. Despite the dysfunctions that plagued our family, there were also positive aspects to be had. And I fear, I don't often focus on these positives enough.

A large part of my childhood revolved around our church community. And many of the lessons I was taught stemmed from a fairly fundamental view of Christianity. Dr.Dobson was a favorite in our home. If you follow my posts, you already know that religion is no longer something I subscribe to. I think a lot of unhealthy habits and behaviors can easily grow from fundamentalism including exclusion, judgmentalism, revenge ("an eye for an eye"), and even violence and abuse -("spare the rod and spoil the child").

But I think it's only fair to give credit where credit is due. While I have many gripes about my childhood and even more about religion, there were many things that my parents did well. And they used Christianity as the basis for much of it. In a spirit of taking the good with the bad…

Here are some lessons taught by Christians … and carried on by this Non-believer:

 

We always ate dinner together at the table. Meal time was community time. It encouraged family togetherness and conversation and it created an awareness of each other's lives. It's harder to be self-centered and disconnected when you share a meal with someone and are aware of their days' struggles.

It's a practice that I've carried-on in my family today. One of the reasons I continue to work night shift is that it allows us to continue to eat dinner together. Many days it's the only time we all have together. Not hungry? Too bad … you sit at the table anyway. For that 30 minutes we commune as a family. And I've found that often times, that sulking teenager soon has something to share about their day that we wouldn't have otherwise heard.

Thirteen years of dinners we have had together and now the kids are dumb-founded if someone is missing from the table one night. While their growing independence may create a desire to pull away from this tradition, the sense of normalcy surrounding this routine is one I hope they continue to appreciate.

My parents taught me to be a friend to the less fortunate and to appreciate people for their genuineness, not their popularity. My father, in particular, had an affinity for the unusual and less popular kids and he taught me to not only discover their worth, but to celebrate their treasured uniqueness. Most of my childhood, I was friends with the dorks and still am …. dorks usually grow-up to be way cooler than the cheerleaders anyway 😉 Ok ok who's judging now … point taken.

They taught me charity. I remember my mother holding the hand of a homeless man in church once. When everyone else stepped away because he smelled bad, she stepped in. She always volunteered for the projects for the poor. Through her, we learned that there were many people much poorer than we were and that their misfortune was usually due to a history or unfortunate life events and not through some direct fault of their own.

Consequently, I've raised children who sympathize with the less fortunate. They carry extra snacks with them, to pass out to the homeless, every time we go into the city and donating clothes and bagged lunches are monthly practices for us.

They taught us to appreciate the things we had and to take good care of them. It was a lesson in respect for the work it took to buy the things we had. Nothing came free and every gift, no matter how small was to be cherished. I still have quite a few items from my childhood, in good working condition, that I have been able to share with my children. In a world of disposability, I cherish this lesson and continue to teach the same to my children.

Focus on the Family is a Christian ministry that focuses on helping families thrive. Family Game Night was one of the suggestions my Dad took from this and he practiced it regularly with us kids. Being able to escape from the current stressors and focus on something less serious, to spend time together just having fun was crucial to our survival. Some of my favorite memories came from those family game nights and it brought-out a youthfulness in my father that I rarely saw. My mother didn't usually participate on these nights and instead used it as an opportunity to have some "quiet time". As a mother, I now understand that need and have used my disappointment of her absence as a child as an opportunity to understand and improve.

Game night is a common practice in my household and while it is sometimes a challenge to pull my teens/tweens away from the screens, once the game is underway, it is almost always a great success! I love that Game night gives my kids another opportunity to see me as a fun-loving person and not just a parent all the time.

 

Leaving my childhood, there were a lot of things my parents told me to do/not do … and many of them I chose not to subscribe to …. including religion.  Although, my father and sister have also since left the faith. But regardless of where I now stand and what my current beliefs are, I did manage to carry-on many positive practices that were rooted in the church and practiced by my then-completely religious family. And while I still found myself holding on to some bias and judgment and a restricted view of the world, I'm learning to overcome that.

We all have unhealthy examples set for us and the sources or reasons behind them vary. But by hearing people's stories, seeking out different perspectives and being willing to accept that lessons can be learned from so many different places, I have learned how to shed a lot of that bias and yet still hold on to the goodness that came from a religious household.

The same way I learned from my parents to befriend the unusual, to play with my children and be to silly, to appreciate the community of a family meal, to be charitable to those in need and to appreciate the things I have … my children can learn from me. And my hope is that they learn their lessons not just from me, from any source they can.

The world is full of lessons we can learn and opportunities to improve …. regardless of where they come from. If I can learn from the addict, the prisoner and the fallen, then I can learn from the Christian. I am thankful for many of the lessons my parents and my church taught me. I am thankful that they taught me to fight for and believe in my family. I am thankful that given their limited resources, they sure as hell did try to create an intact and happy family. The church and it's teachings are full of good lessons to learn from, even if you don't buy into the whole package, even if you're a non-believer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Learning to love like a Christian and live like an Atheist

cross picFor those that don't know me, I grew up in a devout Catholic home and attended Catholic schools for 12 years. I am now a Humanist/Agnostic but I often use the word "atheist" because I don't care to play semantics and it gets the point across faster. This post isn't meant to incite an argument or to offend anyone. Nor is it an invitation for you to convince me that I'm wrong or invite me to your church because your church isn't like the ones I describe. If religion works for you, enjoy it! Just don't judge me because it no longer works for me. Here are my thoughts and experiences. I hope you find them reason to love more.

"Thou shalt not….."……I memorized them all….all ten. And then there were the beatitudes and the prayers and the rituals of the mass. I've read both the Bible and Catholic Catechism in their entirety. There were family rules and school rules and outside rules. I learned how to altar serve, how to lector, how to be a liturgical dancer and how to earn the Christian Achievment award every year. In many people's eyes, I was the model citizen, the model Catholic, the model child.

People often times ask me why I left the church, "What happened?" Some assume I left because I didn't want to follow their rules any more. Others assume I acquired some unbearable level of shame and that I felt unworthy of returning. Neither of these things are true. The reasons I left are many, though they mainly stem from difficulties I found in church doctrine. My brain and science as I understand it just don't jive with the stories and rules taught by any religion that I have studied. And yes, I've studied quite a few!

But the reason I've separated myself so much from all organized religion and Christianity in particular, is that what I wanted for my life and from my church community more than anything, was to be loved and I wanted to love others in return. I felt like Christianity sold me on an ideal that it didn't deliver and I'm working hard to shed my disappointment from this.

"They will know that we are Christians by our love."… that's true … isn't it?!

I wanted more than anything for this to be true. The bible taught me about a man who didn't judge, who didn't hurt, who had no sin … and yet in my experience, fewer places are filled with as much judgment and as much hurt as the walls people flock to for salvation. Inside the institution I so dedicatedly belonged to, I found myself submersed in a sea of people all pointing their fingers, all criticising and judging one another. Either 'her make-up was too dark', or he 'didn't contribute enough' or she simply wasn't following 'God's ways'. Often the biggest sponsors, the loudest mouths, the most visible faces, were the ones living double lives and I just couldn't take it. They would stand on their pulpit and condemn while in their basement they held boxes upon boxes of sins and secrets. The sins I can forgive, the condemnation of others I can't. Don't get me wrong … the soup kitchens, the clothing drives, the pregnancy centers are all worthy causes. The church has saved many lives. And for some, the structure and community that it offers is irreplaceable. For those, I would never take it away. But there is still so much work to be done within the body of the church; and for me, I have done better without it.

My church taught me to love IT and it taught me to do things to gain God's praise …. but it really didn't teach me to love others, or myself. I wanted God to be happy. I wanted my parents and teachers to be happy and I got so caught up in what the rules were that I failed to truly love. And I'm not alone in this, I'm just more honest than most. For years, I followed this lifestyle, fooling myself that I was happy, that I did love everyone. But there was a storm inside of me …. an unrest. I didn't realize, while I was in the midst of it, just how hard it was for me to love without restraint. There were so many rules that excluded others- homosexuals, atheists, those engaging in premarital sex, divorcees, liberals. And as I left the nest and explored the world as an independent adult, I began to discover that some of the best humans I'd ever met just so happened to live alternative lifestyles, held different beliefs and subscribed to different politics than the ones I was raised to believe were the "one and true". The people I was raised to look down on, to judge, were kinder and more honest humans than the people who sat next to me in church every Sunday.

I had no idea how unhappy and weighted down I was with the judgment of others, until I escaped it.

Maybe it wasn't the church … maybe it was my background … where my parents came from. Maybe it was the church members who were attracted to me because of my role-model status, who were fundamental in their beliefs. Maybe it was me. A degree of self-centeredness and a lack of perspective is common in childhood, I believe. I suppose it's also common for it to carry into adulthood for a time. Maybe my loss of religion and gain of love for humanity was just 'maturity' and my faith was just a coincidental and unfortunate casualty.

Wherever their origin, those judgments clung to me and hung from my neck like weights. Until, through my own adult journey, I learned to disrobe them. You ask me why? Why I left?… Why I changed?… Why I still get angry at the church sometimes? Because the moment  I became aware of my own judgement towards others, I felt the burden I was carrying and it became unbearable. It cut into my neck and I struggled tirelessly to rid myself of it. Every day I looked for a new perspective, a new understanding, a new love. I was tired of hating my fellow man because he didn't follow the rules I was taught. I was tired of being a part of a community that spent more time telling people what they should and should not do than simply loving them.

And I was tired of being loved conditionally. I was a "good girl". I wore my medallions and walked to church … before school even! I studied my faith every day for 12 years and I subscribed to what I knew was "holy". Their words instructed me to be honest, to respect, to obey and to be faithful. I knew what they wanted to see and I gave it to them. I thrived on positive reinforcement and I longed for structure. And I did it, knowing that if I didn't, they'd dismiss me like all the rest. I did it, because I wanted to be loved and I wanted to feel worthy. My home life was nothing for people to be proud of … nor were my academics … I was an average student; But my dedication to my faith made people proud. And I loved that.

As I began to venture outside of the church community, I expected the world to eat me alive. Afterall, that's what I was taught would happen; instead, they accepted me. Outside the walls of the sanctuary, I learned that I was loved and I was worthy, regardless of the medallions and the commandments and the mass schedule. Wearing short shorts, using swear words, having a sex life … didn't take away from the fact that I was kind and generous and honest. My worth wasn't based on those things anymore. Outside the church community, I could help people and still be "me". And I could do so without the sideways glances and the whispers and the disappointment. And believe you me, those whispers are deafening when its you that they talk about.

Without a church, I learned how to love like a Christian and live as an Atheist.

I am lighter now and yet I still carry a heaviness in my heart because so many still don't understand their hypocrisy. They don't understand the unspoken lessons they carved into my soul and the journey I took to erase them. What I would like them to know, what I'd like them to see, is that its the way they treat everyone else that speaks volumes. It doesn't take a saint to love babies and it's only human to feel compassion for the homeless and the destitute. But what about the un-holy, the un-faithful, the falling but not quite hitting rock bottom yet? Do you work as hard to catch someone when they're slipping as you do after they've hit rock bottom. It's not hard to help someone when they've got nowhere else to turn … but what about when they have a choice? Will you love them just the same if they fail to subscribe to your teachings?

What I want the church to know is that its walls are filled with little girls and boys who are watching. I was once that little girl and I learned the most by watching. Every time someone shook their head at that "other girl", I learned how to pass judgement on her. With every patronizing giggle, I was taught to feel insecure and inadequate. When they were "embarrassed for her" and "felt sorry for her mother", I knew they'd one day be embarrassed of me and I felt sorry for myself. When they said they were "proud" that I "wasn't like her", I saw myself in her. They ministered to the poor and yet they abandoned the girl next-door. Silently, not so silently they taught me. They said they were "proud" of me … but the conditioning had already been set, my sense of self-worth already tarnished. "Be yourself" they said …"but not like that". "I've never judged you", they said, but I'd watched them judge the world and I was afraid they wouldn't love who I really was.

They told me that if I laid with a man who had failed to put a ring on my hand, it only meant that he would leave me. Girls that did that were trashy whores. Only men worthy of waiting with me, were worthy of marrying me. It was a valid possibility, but when pounded and pounded with no other alternative it seemed to be an absolute truth. So when I did lay with a man prior to marriage, my expectations were set. And when he did leave, I felt nothing. They told me so. To avoid the hurt, I learned to be defiant and then to be numbed.  I didn't know then, that the man who would fulfill all my dreams, would be a sinner just like me …. and that he wouldn't leave, but instead beg to stay.

They taught me that while abortion was a grave sin, sex before marriage was also a unnegotiable one. And so without instruction or even self-awareness, I learned as a child to look for a ring when I saw a gravid belly. When the un-wed in our community ended up pregnant, we were embarrassed for them … less concerned because of the difficulties their future would hold in education or love or finance, but embarrassed because it was evident that they had sinned. That evidence which stuck out in front of them, a round belly, for the whole world to see and pity, held a miracle … but people only saw that when they stood outside the abortion clinic. Despite leaving the church several years before, when my own bare hands held my own swollen belly,  I felt ashamed. And it left me pretending to be something that I wasn't – either unashamed or betrothed.

With the storm brewing inside of me, I felt like a wild animal who was tethered. Pulling, pulling, I broke free and when I did, I ran, never to go back to that place again. I don't want to be a Christian anymore – but I want to love like one is supposed to. It is my journey to understand not to judge. To listen and to forgive, not to justify. To see and to help, not to turn my head. To lend a hand with no expectations of changing ones beliefs. The world as a whole is a much larger picture than one altar. And I am better person because I cut the ties that taught me to judge and learned to love without rules.

This atheist is going to show to world how to love …. like a Christian should. And if I do, if I can learn to love all people without restraint, including the Christian, than their god tells me, they will see who I am. And I guess that's all I really wanted …. to be seen and loved for who I really am and for others to love in return.