Growing Up without religion.

       I remember when I was about four my family getting ready to go to church. Most psychologists will say that on average autobiographical memories don’t start being formed until a person is about five; so, this would have to be one amazing memory as to cause my mental faculties to jump a couple of levels or perhaps I just developed faster than the average person. Either way, this happened. I don’t remember the specifics. All the details about this, like what we were wearing and such, I got from a photo and what I’ve been told.

       My whole family, which consisted of my father, mother, sister, and me, were dressed in our best clothes. Now, despite being dressed in our best clothes, our best was not all that appealing. We were a low income family living in a trailer on a two acre plot of land behind my uncle’s little blue house. My father was wearing a brown suit, my mother a black dress with flowers trimmed along the collar, my sister a little white dress with lacey frilly stuff all over it, and myself a miniature blue suit, which the pants came a bit short on me. All this sounds nice, but none of our clothes were bought for the intent of going to church in; and, lacking of a larger repertoire to choose from, we all sort of clashed, not that any of that is important to a four year old child. However, it may have been very important or at least slightly weighting to our neighbors.

       My mother had gotten the idea that since we had just moved to a new neighborhood we should all try and get along with our neighbors by going to church. She wasn’t ever really a very religious woman. She was brought up very strictly a Jehovah’s Witness by her mother and father. However, once she left the nest, she mostly became a hippie feminist sort, but, as she got older and had kids, she began to become more a Reagan conservative. I suppose church to her had always been just an excuse to socialize. My father didn’t care either way. He was brought up Roman Catholic, but he had stopped practicing back when he was a teenager.

       We had just moved to a predominately black neighborhood in Harvest Alabama. Well, it was more half and half. On one side of the neighborhood you had your low income white families, mostly cattle, cotton, and goat farmers. On the other side you had a mix of low income and middle class black and minority families. We were a strange mix of the two, stuck right in between both sides, literally by location and race. My father was a very dark skinned Puerto Rican and my mother was a very fair skinned German-English woman.  As children my sister and I had taken on the traits of both. I myself have very German-English features but with dark wavy hair and olive skin tone. My sister has very Spanish features and dark hair but with a very fair skin tone. We were very cute kids growing up, but to everyone else where we lived we were considered to be mullatos, which is a term meaning mule—a cross between a horse and a donkey. I remember being called this on a couple of occasions growing up. I never quite knew what it meant back then.

       In any sense, there were two churches near where we lived, a white church and a black church; designated so, after their patrons’ race, not the actual color of the buildings. My mom wanted to go to the white church. My father didn’t care. I don’t remember the actual specifics of the event when we arrived, except, that is, for this seemingly sweet old lady talking to my mother, followed by my mother yelling and screaming, followed by my father taking me and my sister by the arm and walking us away. Later on, I was to find out that the old lady had told my mother that with all earnest apologies the patrons of that church didn’t want our kind there, our kind being that of a mixed family. We were then informed that there was a nice black church down the street.

Of course none of this has anything to do with religion itself and its traditions, but more so it has to do with racism, bigotry, and Christian hypocrisy in the south. However, growing up, I couldn’t help but when thinking about religion think of that seemingly sweet old lady…

       Let me fast forward to when I was eight, just four years later. I grew up a very seemingly dark child. No one ever really associated with me much, so I mostly just learned to stick to myself. I had picked up art and poetry as hobbies. I especially liked Edgar Allen Poe. I remember borrowing a book of Edgar Allen Poe poems from the library and reading it on my spare time. Something about the sound and the way it read to me was enchanting. I was enthralled with the rhyme and meter. I wanted to be able to write just like that. I would memorize entire poems and recite them back to my class mates. They all thought I was weird. I don’t blame them. I was, a little.

       In any sense, it was the third grade, and we were supposed to write something for an English assignment. That makes it sounds more complicated than it was. Literally what it meant was that we had to spend an hour in class writing something on paper. When we were finished we were supposed to recite it to the class. I remember enjoying doing this very much. It was one of the few things in my life I out shone every one else.

       When we were all done, we each took turns down the row to read. I don’t remember which turn I was, but I do remember most people had written about their families and what they did that weekend. I never had any stories like that. My family never did anything, and we were too poor to ever go anywhere; so, my stories always had to be imaginative. When it was my turn, I stood up. I had written something in the style of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. It was my favorite. I wrote something, as best I can remember, about being chased by some sort of monster in the dark and before I could make it home the monster caught and killed me.

       I don’t remember exactly how it went, but what I do remember is the reaction I got, especially from my teacher. She spoke harshly to me, told me to sit down, and instructed me to be careful with what I write because I could go to hell for writing something like that. My mother wasn’t too keen that my teacher had told me this. I don’t suppose my teacher would’ve told me what she did had it not upset her. I assume now that she was a very Christian lady with overly sensitive values. However, I remember thinking; I just liked Edgar Allen Poe, so why should doing something I like cause me to go to hell?

       In our society there are always those things which are taboo to speak about. Of those things one of which is death. Most people don’t start thinking about death until they have to. I probably started thinking about it long before I was supposed to, but I never asked about it until I thought I had to. I was ten years old, and my favorite cousin Josh had just died in a car accident. He was one of the coolest cousins I ever had; although, I only really ever knew two real well. Anyways, I can remember us drinking Kool-Aid and pretending to be vampires. It’s always the stupid and corny things you remember, but those are usually the happiest. In any case, my whole family was at his funeral, and while standing in line to see the body, I turned and asked my mother a question.

“Where do we go when we die?”

She turned back to me, without a pause, and said, “We go into the dirt and get eaten by worms.”

Those weren’t exactly the comforting words I wanted to hear. I didn’t really react negatively though, I suppose I might have been too numb by the sudden death of my cousin or perhaps I was just used to that kind of response from my mother. I simply replied, “Oh, ok,” and I resumed my procession in the line to view my cousin one last time…

       As far as tradition goes, I don’t really know much about normal Christian orthodoxy or protestant churches, if there is any such a thing as normal. My mother was brought up Jehovah’s Witness; so, I suppose that the most church influence I ever received growing up was when visiting my grandparents. They always tried to convert my sister and me whenever we came over. They lived in Louisiana and we lived in Alabama, so, needless to say visiting was one of those once every few years’ things; so, so was church.

       Jehovah’s Witnesses as a basic have a lot of traditions in the non-traditional sense. By this, I mean, their traditions mostly focus around not acknowledging anybody else’s. So, there were no Christmases, Easters, Halloweens, or even birthdays, which they considered to be self centered worship—false idols and all that. The appeal to this belief must’ve been great for the adults in considering all the money one would save in a year, but it must’ve sucked for the kids.

       To me the whole religion was set up around indoctrinating and isolating you from other forms of thought and belief. This is done by following such rules as no participation in local, state, or federal government affairs and no going to college after high school. Higher education was considered immoral, something about Adam and Eve, the apple, and all that. In this way I’m grateful for not having been brought up that way.

        I remember my cousin and my aunt discussing their version of the scriptures, while I was watching the discovery channel. An episode came on about comets and asteroids and the supposed death of the dinosaurs. This sparked a discussion that I somehow found my way into. My cousin said that a comet could never strike the earth, because God wouldn’t allow it to happen. I argued that if a comet was headed straight towards us, God wouldn’t do anything to stop it. Yada, yada, yada…needless to say it was an infantile argument that didn’t go anywhere. I was left with my arguments based on science, having convinced no one but myself, and having earned myself a little scorn at the dinner table. This experience did however teach me a few things: the futility of arguing against faith, and the strength and emotion that can be brought forth in defense of such blind faith. I remembered thinking later that same day that what I was arguing was for the possibility that an asteroid could and would strike the earth ending all life as we know it, and what my cousin was arguing was for the impossibility of the same. Despite which of us was right or wrong, I couldn’t help but think how safe and secure one must feel to argue for that cause as he did and believe it…

       What makes us who we are and to believe the things we do, our experiences, our families, our peers and role models; may be, or may be it's a combination of them all, depending upon our own temperament and satiability to know more. I read somewhere that religion lives on in the gaps of science. This means not just that the realm for one to be religious is shrinking as science expands, but, despite this, there still exists a realm. Given that 90 to 95% of people are religious, as I’ve been told, most people I would have to assume probably don’t care so much. I can’t argue for what might make a person religious, not being so myself. I could make the argument for what might make a person like me religious; an argument which would be composed mainly of what it is I find lacking in myself, a sense of community and social unity. The fight against loneliness I would assume is a major driver for why people might find themselves taking at least a plunge into that world. However, I don’t believe I will ever take that plunge myself. Perhaps, loneliness doesn’t bother me enough. Perhaps, there’s something I’m still missing from this whole religion thing, or perhaps, even if I were to find out what that might be, like everyone else, not having grown up with it, I simply wouldn’t care and would choose instead to stick to what I know—or don’t.

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