I have briefly resurfaced from term papers.

This is a rework of something I've written several times.  The first time was about four years ago as an essay assignment.  I retaylored it a few years later to use as a college application essay.  I just stumbled across it when I was going through old files and thought it could use a polish, especially with a few more years distance.

Some people find themselves when they find religion.  I found myself when I lost religion.

I was raised by a Catholic and an agnostic.  Catholicism, like many religions, has a sort of default setting.  Catholics are expected to raise their children as Catholics.  With a quarter of my family Italian and a quarter Irish, there was really no question how I’d be raised.  I liked being Catholic.  Half of my friends were Catholic, so I’d always see them at church.  I was allowed a sip of wine, despite being a decade underage, something that always seemed very exciting.  The usual parish fundraiser was a bake sale with the best apple pies ever made.  There was just one problem.  One little thought that would occasionally tug at the corner of my mind.  Why?

I’ve always wanted to know why.  Whatever I see, I want to know why it is the way it is.  And though I believed what Catholics believed, I was never sure why we were supposed to believe it.  Why Mary?  Why the Beatitudes?  Why the Holy Spirit?

I gathered the courage to ask a few times during CCD classes.  I’d ask why we believed something, and my teacher would always answer the same way: Because we have faith.  And I’d accept that.  Why?  Because.  Oh.

I suppose I was about twelve when I became less accepting.  If ever my parents asked me a question and I’d reply with “cuz,” they’d tell me that “because” is not an answer.  Who was I to argue with my parents?

Wednesday after school one spring afternoon found me half-asleep in CCD with my fellow half-asleep Catholic students.  My teacher’s droning words were slipping unnoticed through my brain without leaving the slightest impression.  I nibbled on the cookie that only partly made up for the boredom of religious education.  It was a little stale, and so was the cookie.  For a religion with many stories of death, betrayal, and miracles, my teacher certainly had a talent for making it mind-numbingly dull.

I remember staring at a glossy page in the textbook with a drawing of the twelve apostles printed in cheap ink.  I’m sure my teacher was far beyond that page and I had just failed to notice.  The grain of my desk was becoming more interesting than the picture of the apostles anyway.  I let my eyes slide out of focus.  The hum of the air conditioner covered the ticking of the clock, making time stand still.  Just as I began to zone out the hour, something pushed through the fog I had wrapped around my mind.

“There were still many people who doubted the divinity of Christ.”

My teacher had made this statement as if it were astounding.  But what was so astounding about people refusing to believe something so seemingly impossible?  Why did I believe it?  Because they told me to.  I wasn’t even all that sure who “they” were.  I put down my cookie and put up my hand.

“Why do we believe it?”

My teacher blinked at me, mouth half open, then responded without answering.  “Because we have faith.”

“Why do we have faith?”  I tried to look as innocent as possible under her hardening stare.

“Because God gives it to us.”

“But how do we know that God gives it to us?”

Blink.  Say it, I thought, we both know there’s only one answer you can give me.  She gave it.  “Because we have faith.”  And she quickly changed the subject and proceeded down a different path.

But I never went any farther than that.  The rest of the class was far away, learning about I don’t even know what, but I was still thinking about the unanswers I’d received.  It didn’t make sense.  None of it, none of what I’d been taught for so many years in that classroom.  It just didn’t make sense.

That moment, I felt a tearing between my temples, deep within my mind.  Everything I’d believed, everything spiritual, began to come apart.  It was like watching an elaborate tapestry unravel and seeing it for what it really is: thread.  Thread that’s been twisted and dyed and woven together to look like something it’s not.  My thoughts were unraveling, one thread pulling the next.  And then they were nothing but a tangled knot.

My first instinct was put it all back somehow, to reweave it, but I couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried.  The threads slipped through my fingers, just becoming more tangled the more I tried to sort them out.  I worked at it for nearly two years, until finally, I couldn’t fool myself anymore.  The tapestry was gone.

Perhaps during that time, I might have been considered an agnostic.  I couldn’t believe the things I once believed, but I wasn’t ready to completely let them go, just in case I could get those unraveled thoughts back together again.  Spiritually, that’s the hardest place to be.  Not knowing what you believe is a hard experience to understand unless you’ve been there.  But it was somewhere I needed to be to get to where I am now.

When I finally gave up my old beliefs, or indeed any religious beliefs, I realized something.  Those thoughts I’d fought so hard to reassemble were never even mine to begin with.  Someone else had given me those thoughts and instructed me to believe them.  And I had.  When I let them go, I felt new thoughts slipping into place, my own thoughts.  I know plenty of people who somehow make religious teaching their own thoughts and find comfort in their beliefs, but I could never do that.  I could never turn someone else’s beliefs into my own true thoughts.  I don’t know if that’s a deficiency or a gift, but here I am now, a devout atheist, and I like the view from where I stand.