Here it is. My inevitable requiem on Christianity and my life.

I have tried very hard to escape the religion in which I was raised. Why? Oh, so many reasons, but I guess what lies underneath it all is that it just wasn't serving me anymore. The peace I was supposed to feel was always so elusive, and I never really believed that those who said they had it actually had it. The humility I was supposed to feel towards God (with a capital G) always felt more like guilt. I never got that so many people and so many lifestyles just weren't acceptable to the community. The whole "one way to the truth" mentality made me writch in my seat. (Is writch a word? I want you to picture me squirming and twisting in a church pew, both physically and emotionally, as I tried to find a comfortable place to just be. Yes, I writched.)

So I questioned and I pointed out inconsistencies and I became a thorn in the side of all my Bible study leaders and pastors and Christians friends. Why couldn't I just have more faith? Why couldn't I drink this down the way so many others seemed to do so easily? Why didn't it taste sweet? Then, after years of unsatisfactory answers, one winter Friday night in my twentieth year, I had enough. The four Christian girls I was living with at the time were gathering their coats and Bibles and notebooks to head out to our weekly gathering at the Christian group I belonged to in college. I have this image of them standing in the doorway, adjusting their coats and putting on gloves and securing their Bibles under their arms. One of my roommates held the door open for me, then finally looked back when she saw that I wasn't walking through it. I stood there behind the kitchen counter, all buttoned up and ready, but I couldn't move. They said, "Are you coming?" I said, "No. I don't think I'm going to go to Navs anymore." Long, awkward pause. "In fact," I continued with more confidence, "I don't think I'm going to go to church or Bible study anymore either. And I think I'm done reading the Bible. And I'm done praying. I'm just done with God. It's over." They stopped dead in their tracks, my other roommates peeking their heads in from around the corner where they had started to drift, anxious to get going. I will never forget that image of four pairs of eyes, gaping and oogling at me like I had suddently started speaking in French. They just closed the door and left. When that door clicked shut, I felt more free than I ever have in my life. I know it's cliched, but it was like I could breathe for the first time. I didn't know that air could feel so good going into your lungs. I calmly took off my coat, walked into my room, and put my Bible into the bottom dresser drawer under my stockings and other items of rarely-worn clothing. I didn't take it out again until I moved from that apartment, and I didn't crack it open again until earlier this year when I needed inspiration for a song I was writing called, "I will not be your Eve."

There is no possible way I could write just one blog entry about the journey I embarked on after that night, leading up to this very moment. But to summarize, I pretty much swung as far as I could in the other direction for awhile. After years of being told that all non-Christians were walking around with a gaping, god-shaped hole in their hearts, trying desperately to fill it with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, I figured that was what I should do now that I wasn't a Christian. I didn't yet know that finding peace and a secure identity in other places was an option. I felt I only had two choices before me: continue in this Christian charade or rebel in every way I knew how. So I did. I starting drinking, getting high, doing coke, giving my body to men that didn't value me, partying, etc. etc. If this was a Christian "testimony" this would be the part where I tell you that I felt unfulfilled by all of that and so I came running back to the "peace that passes understanding" in Jesus. But this is not that kind of story.

I actually did feel strangely fulfilled by much of it, but not for the acts themselves - more for the independence they gave me. The confidence to make my own decisions, even if they were bad ones. How frightening and exhilirating it was to make moves in life without praying first! What power I had all of a sudden to create my own opinions! I didn't have to believe any certain way about abortion, homosexuality, Democrats, French people, wars against terrorism, or Harry Potter. I had opened the package of Christian ideology that had been neatly wrapped for me, and I started disassembling it piece by piece. I would take each thing out of the box, examine it for awhile, and then decide whether to put it in the "keep," "toss," or "yard sale," pile.

As you can imagine, that reckless rebellion couldn't sustain itself for long. I started seeing the emptiness in those superficial vices; starting seeing them for what they were - distractions from the hard work I was really going to have to do to find what I believed. So I set most of them in the "toss" pile along with most of my Christian values. Now here I was, starting from scratch again.

I wandered around, meeting people from all walks of life, asking them what they believed and why, making observations about the world around me. I started doing yoga, which led me to Hinduism, which led me to Buddhism, which led me to Taoism. I started teaching at a Quaker school, which led me to Quakerism, which led me to Unitarianism, which led me to Transcendentalism. I started reading philosophy, which led me to existentialism, which led me to mysticism, which led me to agnosticism. Then I went to Europe and did away with all the "isms," which led me back to me.

And now here I am. Am I happy all the time? Certainly not. But Christians are not either - no matter what they tell you. Believe me, I know. I have days of despair and days of inspiration; moments of self-loathing and moments of self-discovery. But I am mine, and that is wonderful.

So what to do with all the Christians from my past? Well, for awhile, they called and emailed and stopped over, trying every tool in their good little Christian toolbelt to bring me back to God. I got everything from patronizing "I'll pray for yous," to shaking heads and looks of pity, to outright anger and threats of eternal damnation. My mom stopped talking to me for awhile. I lost basically all of my friends, and my boyfriend. Slowly, through the next year or so, one by one, they stopped calling. They were giving up; writing me off. Thank god.

Then, six years and eons of self-discovery later, I started writing this blog. I intended for it to simply be a way to update friends back home on my travels. I thought maybe I would write about seeing the Colosseum or the Eiffel Tower, but I found that I wanted to write more about what I was learning about myself on my trip. I was growing up and up and up, almost too rapidly to think straight, and it was exciting! I was learning how to love myself again after my divorce, learning how to think for myself after years of indoctrination, learning how to be my own best friend after years of clinging to people and things that were just never enough. I can't possibly emphasize to you what an amazing, fulfilling time this summer was for me. And I wrote about it all on here. The reaction from the Christians reading it? "Melanie, you have fallen."

Kick in the gut. Wind knocked out of me.

My mom, in her endearing pride for her daughter, had been passing this blog around to old friends and faithful relatives, all of whom were die-hard, accepted-Jesus-as-my-personal-Savior kind of Christians. You know, the kind of people you saw in that documentary, "Jesus Camp." I don't mind at all. This blog is public. I don't write anything I'm ashamed of. Now, why they continued reading when they found my life so offensive, I don't know, but read they did. And email they did as well. I don't know why I was surprised at their reactions. I was in that mentality for most of my life. I should have known that they would see my self-discoveries as poisonous pride and my search for the truth as a desperate cry to be re-saved. How silly of me to think that they would be proud. How ignorant to think that they would applaud my courage at finding my way through 14 foreign cities all alone when I obviously should only be travelling if I'm on a mission trip. How selfish. I guess I had been out of that world for long enough to forget just how cyclical their thinking can be; just how mired narrow-minded, and short-sighted their views are. (Uh oh, now she's getting a little bitey, watch out.)

But it is good of them to remind me that one can never outrun one's past. No matter how much I try to escape it, this thing will always follow me. What's sad is that there really were some times since I left my faith that I was making some pretty ill-advised decisions. I would have agreed with them if they said I had fallen then. But to know that I am in a place of such strength right now, and all that they can see is my absence in that church pew on Sunday morning is what cuts me right to the heart. It reminds me that I really am in this alone. Even my non-Christian friends who support and applaud my recent growth cannot really understand how much it means without also understanding the parts of me that my old, Christians friends do. Perhaps I just like to feel misunderstood in a Holden Caulfield-ish sort of way. Somehow it's more comforting than trying to fit into the little spot that so many have carved out for me in their minds.

I'll end with this image that I keep having. I picture myself as a flower or plant in a garden bed, growing calmly beside all the other plants. We are all drinking in the sun from above and the water from below in our own, sweet times. But all the other flower faces are turned towards each other, or towards the ground, while mine is turned up. I start growing at a more rapid rate, reaching towards the sky, throwing tendrils up, up, upward. I'm nearly flying now, shooting skyward at an incredible rate, my flower face still turned up towards the sun and smiling (if that's possible for a flower). The plants below me send out shoots and thorns of their own, trying to rope me back down. They shout up that they love me and miss me down there and where am I going and so on and so forth in plant language. But I don't even feel their grasping, chlorophylled arms. I just keep growing, all by myself, content and warm from the wonderful sun.