Does the US deserve to survive?

The question arose as I wondered if America could do its part to win another war like WWII. Well, no. Then, we were lean and Depression hardened. Now, we’re waddling diabetics with telephone earrings. Then, we were physical laborers. Now, we’re clerks and service representatives. Then, we could convert heavy industry to making the weapons of war. Now, we have little heavy industry to convert. As the realization of our inadequacies came to me, the question changed from whether we could survive another such war to whether we would deserve to survive.

Americans commonly describe their nation as “number one,” “favored by God,” “leader of the free world,” and “greatest nation on earth.” All this is, of course, true. No nation comes close to us in conspicuous consumption, and no nation can match us in waste (many a Third World family would be the envy of their neighbors if they were allowed to clean out just one of our dormitory dumpsters at the end of the school year). We’re also the fattest nation on the face of the whole entire worldwide world—yay! What’s more, American ingenuity enables us to lead every other developed nation in poor health while also leading them in the cost of health care! Beat that, you smart alecky foreigners.

Then, of course, there is the matter of our moral authority. YES, we lead the world in that too. That’s why our secretary of state is constantly having to travel around the globe to chide other countries for their ethical shortcomings. Oh, I almost forgot bankruptcies caused by medical bills—yet again, we’re number one. Gratuitously violent films? “USA! USA!” Church attendance? But, of course, we’re the leaders, at least of the developed world. That’s where we get our moral authority, and that’s why we’re “favored by God,” and you’re not.

“Ah, ha,” you say. “How about torturing prisoners or at least locking them up without a trial and throwing away the key? You don’t lead the world in that.” Well, no, not if you compare us to the whole world, but our last president was making great strides in that direction until another guy took his job. However, we do lead the world in the percentage of our population that is behind bars—prison maintenance and construction stocks are major traders on Wall Street. And don’t forget that we’ve started two completely unnecessary wars in just eight years, and that George Bush even intimidated a few other countries into joining us with his post 9/11 threat: “…it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You’re either with us or against us.”

Talk about leadership—what other world leader can compete with that? And if our presidents weren’t effective enough all on their own, our Congresscritters would fill the gap. Even though they are unwilling to provide government healthcare benefits to any but the poorest of their fellow Americans, they themselves enjoy premium benefits for life after serving a single two-year term.

We might very well lead the world in other ways too, but we don’t brag about them because we also lead the world in modesty. For instance, we spend tons of money on scientific research, and then tell everyone what we found out for free. And despite the fact that our educational standards drop lower every year, we still lead the world in the number of foreign students who attend our universities. And even if we don’t have the world’s highest standard of living for our average citizen, we still do pretty good; after all, thanks to government subsidized Big Macs, the poorest Americans are the fattest Americans. In fact, if every poor American were able to donate 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of his body fat to starving foreigners, there would be no starving foreigners, and most poor Americans could easily donate more than that, many of them 250 pounds (113 kilograms) more than that.

We also give a lot of money to you foreigners (although it’s rather oddly distributed, some might say), and it’s not money we actually have either; it’s money we borrow from China. We now owe so much to China, and they now own so much of us, that they don’t dare nuke us, so at least we don’t have to worry about that anymore. If we didn’t give so much to you guys, and if you didn’t force us into all these stupid wars, and if our government wasn’t bought and paid for by the super rich, we might be able to pay our medical bills, or at least fill our potholes.

So, would we deserve to triumph in another WWII? What do you think?


Footnote: When I wrote that Big Macs are government subsidized, I meant indirectly. Because my country’s minimum wage is not enough to live on, and because McDonalds—and many other companies—doesn’t provide health insurance to its rank and file workers, the government has to support these people. This enables such companies to sell their products far below the actual cost of producing them.

Ghosts I have known and sometimes had the hots for

I made one of Julia Jackson’s pictures (Julia Jackson was Virginia Woolf's mother) into my computer background, and even started talking to her. Peggy didn’t exactly insist that I get rid of, “that awful picture of that depressed looking dead woman,” but I nonetheless replaced it with one of Peggy smiling broadly. When I turned my computer off for the night, Julia Jackson reappeared just before the screen went blank. I was considerably taken aback, but didn’t really believe—despite my desire to do so—that Julia Jackson was inhabiting my monitor.

I remembered a walk I took in the desert ten years ago during which I heard the ghost of Katherine Mansfield talking to me. I challenged the voice to present me with a gift to prove that I wasn’t hallucinating, and I immediately found a large, jeweled, feathered, brightly painted stick in the sagebrush. If the object had been a gaily wrapped first edition of one of her books with the inscription, “Best wishes to Snow from your dead friend Katherine,” I would have been more impressed, but I couldn’t connect the stick with anything I knew about her, and since I was at the bottom of a mile wide volcanic crater during an era when small groups of New Age men were running about the desert trying to get in touch with their primitive selves, I suspected coincidence.

Several observations keep me from believing in ghosts despite my very great desire to do so. For starters, they are seldom said to do anything worthwhile unless moaning, rattling chains, knocking over lamps, and otherwise scaring the hell out of the living, can be considered worthwhile. Secondly, on those rare occasions when they decide to actually say something, they don’t say it to the person it is intended for, but to a stranger who charges money to repeat it.

When I was a teenager, I used to visit country cemeteries hoping to see a ghost. One night I saw a red light slowly arise from my Granny’s grave and move in my direction. I ran like a dog with its tail on fire. I went back the next day, but didn’t see anything to account for the light. I even returned several times after dark, but never saw it again.

Granny died when I was eleven, and I was afterwards afraid of the room in which she spent her last years. It was separated from the rest of our large old house by a long hallway, and I wouldn’t venture into the back portion of that hallway in the daytime much less after dark. Yet, I had a very great curiosity about whether ghosts were real. One night, my mother sent me to the store on my bike. I had two routes by which I could return. One was by a path that ran alongside the house, and the other was around the block.

I chose the first because it would take me directly beneath the window behind which my Granny sat rocking for her last few years. When I passed under her window, I looked up, half hoping and half dreading to see her looking back at me. At that very instant, my bike stopped. It didn’t veer, it didn’t fall over, it didn’t slide, it didn’t tumble; it just stopped. I somersaulted over the handlebars and got up running. Fortunately, I was carrying the bread in a backpack, because I don’t know how I could have found the courage to go back for it.

The next day, my bike was still standing there, a sight that spooked me considerably until I realized that a horseshoe stake had become wedged between the chain and the back wheel.

Peggy’s grandmother was a great believer in ghosts. She told of hearing her bedroom door open one night, and footsteps crossing the room. She anxiously poked her head out from under the covers and saw a sallow figure in antique clothes standing at the foot of her bed staring at her. She drew her head back in, and spent the rest of the night saying, “Help me Jesus. Help me Jesus. Help me Jesus…”

And, of course, there was my dear demented, departed father who became convinced that he was being haunted by my mother’s ghost. He was notoriously forgetful about where he put things, and she had been able to point him in the right direction. When she died and could no longer do this, he became convinced that she had returned from the grave, and was hiding important papers, stealing money, and even rearranging the furniture.

He went from being annoyed to becoming absolutely livid, and the situation climaxed one night when he felt her pull back the covers and sit on the bed as if to join him. He said, “Kathryn, you’re dead, and I expect you to start acting the way someone in your situation is supposed to act.” She left the room, never to return. Since his death—in this house—Peggy and I often have a good laugh when we can’t find something. “Tom must have taken it,” we say.

If I really were to see my father’s ghost, I would only be worried if he should be as crazy dead as he was alive. Oh, I know, I just admitted to talking to not just one but two women who died long ago, but surely there’s nothing out of the ordinary about that, now is there?

An update offered in lieu of anything better

I’m still unable to write anything creative or thoughtful, but I will at least check-in. The pain is no better on the shoulder that was operated on in December, and it’s significantly worse on the other, presumably due to continued arthritic deterioration. I don’t sleep well because of the pain, and the longer I stay in my chair, the worse it hurts. Narcotics have become all but useless for pain relief, but they still get me stoned, and if I’m having an especially bad night, I had rather lie awake stoned than sober.

My lower leg bones are now giving me fits, as if they had been burned. Shin splints feel that way; only my pain is higher up. I finally connected it to the recliner I sleep in. Peggy bought the chair years ago, and it’s a little short for me, so I tend to lie with my legs bowed. When I finally realized that this had to be the cause of my leg pain, I tried forcing myself to keep my legs straight. This didn’t work, so now I’ve taken to fastening a belt snugly around my lower thighs.

Sleeping is complicated. I tie a blanket to the footrest to cushion my heels; place my pharmaceutical stash and toothguard (I grind my teeth when I sleep) within reach; fill my CPAP tank with distilled water (a CPAP is a machine for sleep apnea); hook the mask and the tank to the CPAP; and get one or two ice packs and a heating pad. I drape one towel over the chair back to protect it and another towel around my neck and over my shoulders so I won’t get frostbite from the ice packs. Now, I’m ready to sit down.

I fasten the belt around my thighs to keep my legs straight; unfold my afghan; lay the ice packs over my shoulders, lean back in the chair while trying to keep the ice packs from falling off; lay towels over the ice packs to keep the cold in; put the heating pad on my chest so I won’t shiver from the ice packs; take off my glasses; put in my toothguard; put on the CPAP mask; and, finally, adjust the mask ten or more times until I get a tight seal. One to two hours later, the pain wakes me up, and I have to go to the kitchen for fresh ice packs.

No one knows why the shoulder that I had operated on in December isn’t improving. My physical therapist suggested that I see an MD who specializes in chemical imbalances, but it would cost a lot, and since my yearly physical—which is paid for by insurance—is in a few weeks, I’m going to wait and see how that turns out. If nothing else, it will provide me with test results to take to the new doctor.

If I had only myself to think about, I don’t know how much more of this pain I would tolerate. I had years of it before surgery—although to a lesser degree—and when I had my first surgery a year ago this month, I figured that in twelve months, I would have both surgeries and most of my rehabilitation behind me. Now, here I am twelve months later, still in pain, partially disabled, and anticipating at least one more surgery on my right shoulder. The final outcome of the surgery on my left shoulder won’t be known until the end of the year.

In other news, I’ve been spending hours a day creating a synopsis of my writings. I started in February, and have completed eighteen months out of 30+ years—I don’t know the exact number because some of them are handwritten and unorganized. I had previously completed fifteen years, so the job isn’t quite so voluminous as it sounds. I enjoy the work but wish there were less of it. I also wish I could focus better. Unless you have been in pain hour after hour, day after day, for months or even years; you can’t imagine how tiring and distracting it becomes.

I have zero social life because I have no energy for it. I walk the dogs for a half hour each day, but the rest of my time is spent indoors, often close to despair. I’m not without hope however. I also have a bottle of Lexapro, but I’m not taking it because I’m on so many other pills, all of which are tough on the liver and kidneys—I’m in no mood for organ failure.

As for what efforts I’m making to actually help myself, I’m doing my prescribed stretching exercises—when I can tolerate them— eating sparingly, and taking various vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplements. I stand 5’10” and weigh 168 pounds, so I’m already on the lean side. However, a minimal diet has been found helpful for many problems in animal testing even when the animals weren’t overweight. I’m also intrigued by such a diet because, years ago, I fasted one day a week and lived almost entirely on raw smoothies that I made from nuts, grains, fruits, berries, veggies, and soy milk. I found the combination of fasting and smoothies to be a tremendous boon to my general health, so it seems worth trying now. I haven’t started the smoothie part yet, but I lost three pounds this week.

I have contemplated such a regimen for the better part of a year, but because Peggy opposed it when I did it before, and because food is one of the few things I still enjoy, I only made half-hearted efforts. I kept hoping there would be another way to deal with my problems, or that time would work its magic, but neither has happened.

Some of you have suggested various alternative therapies, and I am grateful for those recommendations. However, I have sometimes been accused of preferring to wallow in self-pity when I didn’t do what you suggested. I never reject a suggestion without first learning something about it. I’m just not willing to spend time and money on things that—in my mind—make no sense whatever and lack even a smidgen of scientific validation.

Things that go flat

My air mattress went flat last night leaving me atop a sheet of plywood that probably wasn’t the worst bed in the world but wasn’t the best either. I took my pillow to Peggy’s room planning to spend the rest of the night with her, but when I opened her door, I saw that she was with a guy—a black guy. I’ve put up with her shenanigans too long to be surprised by much of anything, but I was vexed to note that he was in the middle of her bed. This left no room for me to sleep next to her, and I wasn’t about to sleep next to some s.o.b. who was in bed with my wife.

As I turned to leave, the floor squeaked, and he opened his eyes and looked at me in surprise. We glared at each other in silence for what seemed like a long time, but probably wasn’t more than a minute or two. I wondered what he was thinking, and I suspect that he was wondering the same thing about me. Maybe he thought I was going to hit him, but I was just trying to figure out what Peggy saw in him; what he could give her that I couldn’t. All I could think of was that he was younger than I by a lot of years. Okay, to be completely honest, I have to say that he was good looking too—at least for a black guy.

“Sleep with her, but don’t marry her,” I whispered, “or you’ll end up like me: standing in the dark with a pillow in your hand, a flat air mattress on your bed, and some other dude with your wife.” I don’t suppose a marriage between a woman and a schnauzer would be valid anyway, but I wasn’t sure he knew that, and I wanted to say something that would make me sound superior. I slept in Peggy’s recliner. It, at least, was available.

The three of us had breakfast together, but he didn’t talk much, and she didn’t either. I knew better than to ask questions because Peggy doesn’t like questions before mid-afternoon. Even then, she doesn’t like questions that are too personal. Years ago, I asked her about this, and she said, “Just because we’re married, it doesn’t give you the right to go snooping into my affairs.” I knew she was unaware of the pun, but I didn’t have the guts to point it out. The thing about making Peggy mad is that Bonnie Blue Heeler will help her beat me up. I don’t know why this is because the dog seems to like me better the rest of the time.

The black guy is still here—planning to spend another night, I suppose. I couldn’t find the leak in my mattress, so I’m looking at another night in a chair.

What gives life purpose?

If you discount the existence of a deity or the claim of an authoritarian government or institution, the decision is yours. At the moment, I would say that my life has none. It has its compensations certainly, but mere survival marks the limit of my abilities. My pain is such that I sometimes fight back hysteria. Demerol won’t touch it. Dilaudid is a joke (ha, ha, ha). Percocet and Vicodin are like baby aspirin. I think that, if I were weaker of character, I would lose my mind.

When I ask myself what losing my mind would look like, I picture the drainage canal across the street, and then I picture myself gibbering like Porky Pig while running naked onto the bridge over that canal and throwing myself into the water. The drop is only fifteen feet, and the water is never more than four feet deep, so death would be an unlikely outcome—but that’s the point. Suicide requires judgment, but if I lost my mind, I would lose my judgment, which completely precludes taking the course of a local woman who put on lots of clothes, loaded the pockets with rocks, and drove her car into a lake. Such a woman could not, in any respectable sense, be accused of losing her mind. Losing your mind has to appear profoundly stupid if it’s to count for anything, and the most the woman with the rock overcoat could say was that she was depressed. I laugh at depression (ha, ha, ha)! I left mere depression behind months ago. Depression is for pikers. Depression is okay as a starting point for people whose goal is to lose their minds, but that’s the most that can be said for it.

The more I think about throwing myself into the Amazon (for that’s what the drainage canal is called) the more I doubt the advisability of losing my mind, because it is plain that nothing good would come of it. I might break my legs—or even my back—but in any event I would be locked away in a padded cell and force-fed anti-psychotics. These drugs pose a significant risk of tardive dyskinesia (a permanent condition that causes one to compulsively grimace, stick out his tongue, smack his lips, blink his eyes, and lots of other party deflating activities), and this condition alone is enough to convince me that I really, really don’t want to be locked away in a padded cell.

But then I reflect that, okay, what if no one was around when I threw myself into the Amazon. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have to worry about tardive dyskinesia, but I would have to decide what to do next. I would probably start by sitting in the oil-slicked water until I got cold. Then I would crawl through the blackberries that line the canal’s steep banks until I could peek out and see if anyone was coming. When the coast was clear, I would make a break for my house, take a long, hot shower, and—I suspect—feel relieved that I was all done with losing my mind and could move on to more rewarding activities. In other words, I would be right back where I am now, only bruised, scratched, and with a broken leg or two….

….Since I have no idea what to write next, I paused just now to listen to the clock tick. It’s an electric clock, so I see no reason why it should NEED to tick unless its creator thought he could sell more clocks that way—or had lost his mind. Yes, of course, he lost his mind, and in his psychotic state concluded that ticking noises annoy clock hands, which then run round and round to get away from the racket, and coincidentally tell us what time it is. When the ticking gets tired and takes a nap, the hands stop moving, and then someone has to wake the ticking up again, either by winding the clock or changing the battery.

What I find about being in pain every goddamn moment of every goddamn day is that it takes a lot out of me. I can’t sleep, so I can hardly hold my head up when I’m awake. I’ve taken lots of strong drugs, and they have left me feeling polluted in body and senile in mind. I can’t work at anything requiring two arms, and this means that Peggy has to do her job plus much of my job. I can’t make plans because I have no idea when or even if I will be able to do most of the things I enjoy, plus I’m too despondent to make plans anyway.

This brings me back to the purpose of life. I see life as like a movie that’s weird and not terribly interesting, but that you keep watching just to see how it ends. Only every time I’ve forced myself to sit through some dog of a movie just to see how it ended, I hated how it ended because there was no resolution. It was as if the director ran out of money after 116 minutes and immediately stopped shooting. THAT’S how life is. The different scenes aren’t connected into a coherent whole, and it doesn’t come to a meaningful conclusion; it just stops with a final exhalation of air. It can be a 105-year-old feature length life, or it can be a day old public service announcement length existence, but either way, people try to build a meaningful story out of it (i.e. make sense of it) as an afterthought because we NEED coherency.

I guess most people don’t feel as I do, but I don’t why. Look, I’m down on my own life, okay? I’ll admit it. I look back at my six decades, and damn if I can figure out what the point of my existence has been or why I didn’t do it all better. But I pass the same judgment on other people’s lives, or at least most other people’s lives. Let’s say you’re a teacher, or a plumber, or a road-crew worker; what’s the good in it? Of course you contribute. You make sure kids can read, people can flush their toilets, and the roads are paved; but, really, is that enough to make you feel that all the shit you had to put up to stay alive was worth the bother?

I suppose most people would argue that there’s more to life than work, as if life were a layer cake that gets better as you add to it. So, you’ve got your job; plus you’ve got your family, weekend bowling tournaments, yearly vacations, popcorn at the movies, and so forth. What I would ask then is this: why do these things give you purpose; why do they make your life worthwhile? I can see that they’re fun or that they contribute to the world to some extent, but, on the other hand, you’re going to be dead really soon, and in a few decades no one will even know you lived, and there will be little if any reason to believe that the world is a better place because you were in it. Doesn’t it bother you that, in the big picture, you’re no more important than a spittlebug?

I would guess that most people, if it really came down to the bottom line, would say they lived for their family or for serving God. Take the plumber. He might feel pride in the years he spent gluing pipes together, but I doubt that many people find purpose through such things. Maybe I’m wrong, but if you were on your deathbed, and someone asked you what you did in life that you were the most proud of, would you talk about your job? I would guess that most people would talk about the people they loved. I’m guessing, so feel free correct me. Pretend that I just arrived from Mars, and I’m trying to understand earthlings.

Right now, my life sucks. It really does. I can’t tell you what a drag my life is. I hurt all the time; I’ve lost most of the friends I ever had; I’ve stopped attending all of the groups and activities that were ever important to me (chronic pain is as isolating as a monastery); and I can neither do the work I love nor pursue the hobbies I enjoy. I spend hours a day loathing the present, panicking over the future, and blaming myself for the past. Great. Some life. Yet, it is not without its compensations, and they are partly due to the fact that things are so bad in the macro that I have become skilled at finding pleasure in the micro.

For example, Peggy and I went to Goodwill yesterday. We call such trips our dates. She bought three CDs and a drinking glass with penguins on it; I bought a four-cup coffee maker; and together we bought a book of cat-inspired art and poetry. When we got home, we made supper together and then watched the Olympics. While we watched, Peggy threw the ball to our blind dog, Bonnie, who would alternate between searching for the ball and humping my leg. Except for the Olympics (we usually watch really old TV shows or even older movies), it was a typical evening. In such small things, I find reason to live. I become inordinately happy at times just because I have a roof over my head and food in my pantry. I rejoice on those few days when the rain stops long enough to take the dogs for a walk. I appreciate the fact that neither Peggy nor I have been diagnosed with cancer. I find happiness just by shifting my arm to some position in which it hurts less than it did in the previous position.

And as much as I dread the late hours when I must finally face getting into my chair for another night of suffering, even then I find rewards. Ice packs feel SO good on my shoulders. They make me cold, but that’s okay because the heating pad feels SO good on my chest. Next, I pull the CPAP mask over my face, and I remember that CPAPs were only invented 25 years ago and that without one, I would almost certainly have died a prolonged and miserable death. Some nights, I listen to the rain or the wind, and feel grateful that I don’t have to be out in it. Other times, I feel appreciative that I have insurance to pay my medical bills. When I finally get out of my chair at 11:00 a.m., I rejoice that I don’t have to set an alarm clock and go to a job I hate; or any job for that matter, because I honestly don’t think I could find the strength.

So, do I think—for me, for now—that life contains some BIG purpose? Hell no. My life is worthwhile only because I am well loved by a good woman and two good dogs, and because I still have the capacity to feel joy, pleasure, and gratitude. That’s it. If I die tomorrow, there will be no traffic jams around the funeral home, and people won’t share stories about how much I accomplished or how many people I touched. If they’re honest—and if they know me well enough—they will be at a loss to find much of anything good to say about me, because I have done nothing more noble than to blunder my way through life pretty much as blind Bonnie blunders her way through the house, bouncing off first one wall, chair, or table and then another until she finally stumbles out the exit. Maybe your life has gone better, but I wouldn’t trade. Mine might not be much, but at least it’s paid for.

Going deeper: how I am and how I am not an atheist

“When I consider the brief span of my life, absorbed into the eternity before and after, the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright… The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.”
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

I’ll start with a bit of a timeline.

At age eleven, I began to lose my faith in God because of the atrocities that he reportedly committed in the Old Testament. Other reasons for disbelief quickly followed, and when I asked my pastor for answers, I was told that: (a) faith is necessary for salvation; (b) faith is impossible in the presence of knowledge; (c) because faith is impossible in the presence of knowledge, my questions would only be answered in heaven.

In the late 1960s, I left my boyhood church—the fundamentalist Church of Christ in which I sometimes preached—when I was unable to liberalize it, a project that I had initially thought would be easy, what with the truth being so obviously on my side.

In the early 1970s I became an Episcopalian, but gave it up a few years later when I finally had to admit that, theologically speaking, I was at most an agnostic. I had suspected as much for years, but growing up a nonbeliever in the Bible Belt is a little like growing up gay in the Bible Belt: you want so desperately for it to not be true that you keep hoping you will grow out of it.

In the late 1970s I moved rather smoothly from agnosticism to atheism and joined American Atheists. John Marthaler was the lovable, elderly, eccentric president and only member of the South Mississippi Chapter, and Paul Tirmenstein the lovable, elderly, eccentric president and only member of the North Mississippi Chapter, so I drove 100 miles to New Orleans for meetings with the South Louisiana Chapter. I was warmly received, and soon began attending national conventions and writing for the national magazine. After a few years, my romance with American Atheists wore thin because I grew tired of the vitriol against theists despite the fact that I had initially been an enthusiastic contributor to it.

I lived in Minneapolis from 1988 to 1990 and joined the First Unitarian Society, which was very large and very atheistic—even the preacher was an atheist.

In the late 1990s, my personal life was not quite in shambles but close, so in desperation I turned—or tried to turn—to God. Not believing in God naturally posed a problem, so I became a Catholic. I hoped that by joining such an ancient and mystical organization, I could magically recapture the religious faith that I had—for all practical purposes—lost at age eleven.

Before an adult can join the Catholic Church, he must attend months of classes and meet regularly with a sponsor. Since I didn’t know any practicing Catholics, the good father appointed my sponsor. He assured me that Bill and I would get along famously because we were both intellectuals. Alas, Bill and I did not get along famously. Bill had the old fashioned idea that I should believe in God before I joined the church rather than hoping that God would mysteriously reveal himself to me after I joined. He didn’t block my acceptance though, so I became an official card-carrying Roman Catholic (they don’t really give out cards) in a moving ceremony one night before Easter.

I was also a Freemason and an Odd Fellow at the time, and the Catholic Church forbids membership in either, but no one asked if I was a member of any outlaw organizations, and I saw no need to bring it up, so maybe that’s what pissed God off. In any event, I woke up the morning after I became a Catholic with no more faith than I had when I was a card-carrying atheist (they do give out cards), so I gave up on Catholicism a few weeks later.

I was feeling pathetic, ridiculous, and flaky by now, having gone from fundamentalist Christianity to liberal Christianity to agnosticism to atheism to Catholicism. Clearly, I didn’t even have it in me to remain faithful to the faithless. I had become as much of a joke to religion as Elizabeth Taylor did to marriage.

Everything else aside, one of my main problems with Christianity was that I never liked the Biblical god—or Jesus for that matter (who I saw as the intolerant, inconsistent, and bad-tempered protagonist of a pathologically bizarre story about a merciless three-faced monster that imagined himself a deity). Liberal churches try to dress God and Jesus up a little (okay, a lot) by either throwing out much of the Bible or interpreting it metaphorically. Maybe I would have gotten better at this if not for my fundamentalist background, but I just considered it a hell of a strain to be forever trying to reinterpret the Bible to say something other than what it appeared to say.

Besides, I asked myself, if this kinder, gentler version of God is real, where was he when I hid under my bed as a child, crying in terror because of some fire-and-brimstone sermon—why didn’t the God who counts the hairs on everyone’s head and watches all the sparrows fall (but never catches them) comfort me? In all my years of seeking him, he never answered one prayer for faith or gave me one smidgen of encouragement. My entire religious experience from age eleven onward consisted of me trying to force belief down my throat as if it were a fiery poker, while those who never seemed to question anything attacked me for my “refusal to trust God.”

Enough history: where am I now? Well, I’m a member of American Humanists, but I don’t plan to renew because there are no local meetings, and the magazine is a waste of time. I’m still a Freemason and an Odd Fellow (mostly non-attending) because, although both require a belief in God, they don’t define what God is. So what do I think God is?

I’m a pantheist, I suppose, but not a door-to-door street-preaching pantheist. I’m more of a slightly embarrassed pantheist who wonders if it even makes sense to call himself a pantheist. Sometimes, I think yes; other times I think no. My problem is that atheists and pantheists both define the universe in completely naturalistic and scientific terms. The difference is that pantheists call the universe God and worship it, whereas atheists just call the universe the universe and don’t worship it.

When I’m in a cynical mood, this just makes pantheism seem like a way for timid atheists to avoid the negative stigma of being called atheists. Other times, I can look at a cloud, or a baby animal, or even a shrub (a Cascade Mountain snowbrush, for example) and quite literally cry in utter and complete awe at the wonder of existence, and at THOSE times my heart longs for a positive term with which to describe my wonder, and atheist just doesn’t cut it. ALL atheism means is that you think the supernatural is make-believe. Well, I DO think the supernatural is make-believe, yet I ALSO experience worship, or at least something that feels like worship. I could just call the feeling awe, but adoration seems more apt. The feeling is actually more akin to what mystics describe. It’s…how can I put it… I feel overcome by wonder; I feel as if I’m a tiny part of an infinitely vast machine in which every movement of every part is an absolute necessity; I feel at ONE with the universe.

Atheists don’t talk that way. At least, I never heard any of them talk that way, and I think they would probably consider me suspect if they heard me talk that way. They would look at me in the same troubled way that my Catholic sponsor looked at me. Like him, they keep their distance and wonder how long it would take me to realize I wasn’t welcome. In regard to religion, no matter where I am, I don’t belong.

I am a pantheist almost by default. It’s as if I’m a ball-bearing rolling down a conveyer belt at the end of which are all these holes. I see all the other ball-bearings moving in a precise and orderly manner down holes that are meant just for them; only I don’t fit any of the holes, so I just keep being tossed around on top of all the other bearings. You might say I’m a special ball-bearing, or you might say I’m a defective ball-bearing, but one thing is for sure: I can’t be other than what I am. Count them: I’ve belonged to FOUR churches (if you count the Minneapolis Unitarian Society as a church) and hung around the periphery of a few more religious organizations. I’ve also been an atheist, an agnostic, a humanist, and a pantheist.

I’ve been all these things because I wanted so badly to find someplace in which I could feel a sense of peace and belonging, someplace where I would be truly and unreservedly welcome. I never have, and I doubt that I ever will, but I’ve grown to accept that. As a person advances through life and reflects that there is more of it behind him than in front of him, wisdom dictates that he stop expecting much of his fellows, not because he is bitter or cynical, but because he recognizes that the limits he finds within himself are also within them. However unqualified he feels to take full responsibility for his life, he is still better qualified than they to be a leader unto himself.