Struck By Lightning

More Than A Minivan Mom gently called me out a couple of days ago. She suspected that my meme rule bucking had as much to do with diplomacy as rebellion. In the case of my last post, I'm going to stick by my rebellious guns because I really couldn't pick just ten blogging women to invite to a party. I am in love with way more of you than that and when it comes to parties, the more the merrier. But, in general, she's got me pegged. I am a stay-between-the lines, people-pleasing, fearing-of-authority, rule-follower-of-the-rule-followiest sort. Suggesting that I am a rebel was, ah, one might say untrue, but I like to think of it as artistic license.

By way of apology for painting myself in a slightly false light, I'm going to confess a sin (pun totally intended) that's been on my mind a bit lately. I do fear and respect authority. I have a deep attachment to the order that the state and its necessary governmental institutions provide. I find it hard to question things presented as official, although I force myself to do it. I'm not a natural doubter. Except in the highest sense of it all. The ultimate authority. The cosmic rules, as some have laid them down, don't appeal to me. Those, I question, I find lacking and I reject. I do not believe in God in the traditional Western sense.

I have spiritual beliefs. I accept the existence of a higher power, for lack of a better term, that some call God. I prefer to think of it as the Powerful Force in the Universe for Order Instead of Chaos (PFUOIC). I don't have any belief in the rules humans ascribe to it. I don't believe it smites or bestows. I simply cannot live in a reality where a supreme force targets people for good and bad. I think it just is and we just are. I also believe that if you focus on order and harmony instead of chaos and disharmony, you can occasionally get things aligned just right, so that you are emitting the same note as the stars and the galaxies and the bees. That rightness resonates with PFUOIC somehow and strengthens it.

I'm at peace with my own conclusions on this question. My husband views religion and God through a far more traditional Christian lens and I am at peace with that too. Every once in a while, though, my marginally Christian ham-eating husband wants to go to church. Normally, I'm too lazy to make such effort, because I strongly believe that PFUOIC has no preference for where I sit as I work on greater harmony. Church, the kitchen table without a bra, it's all the same to PFUOIC.

I go to church when Matt wants to go. I don't mind going as a family. I will certainly talk openly with my children about my own beliefs when they are ready, but hopefully not in a way that disparages others' beliefs. When we step over the threshold, my rule-following guilt-secreting glands kick in and I feel insanely criminal for being there, hugging the sweeter-than-sweet pastor and nodding and smiling, all the while lying. If my mere presence somewhere can constitute lying. I don't pretend to believe, I'm just rarely asked.

The truth is, my guilt is deeper than that. I love church. My reasons just aren't exactly pure. Want to know why? (Let me climb under my desk and whisper just in case I am wrong, which would cosmically SUCK for me because my universal karma is then really, really off.) The nursery. At church, there is a nursery filled with lovely toys, run by a delightful, nurturing, earth-mother-kind woman. The church people not only allow me to leave my three children there, they encourage it. For two hours. For free. They are eager for me to do it and consider watching my children a small price for getting my unrepentant, damned-to-eternal-unhappiness soul into a pew. All I have to do in return is sit quietly BY MYSELF on a bench and contemplate how to be a better person and how to align myself more harmoniously with PFUOIC, whom they call G-O-D or sometimes the son of G-O-D.

It seems too good to be true. Of course, it is. My fear of authority spoils it for me a little. I spend some time contemplating a judgmental lightning bolt from the blue as I exit. But overall, it's a little piece of heaven, which is a pretty funny coincidence. If they would allow Starbucks chai tea inside the sanctuary, I would go every Sunday. Confession over. Anyone offering absolution?