If someone asks what religion I am, my answer largely depends on how facetious I’m feeling at the time. If it’s a “fuck you and the horse you rode in on” day, I’ll tell you I’m a “recovering Catholic”. If I’m feeling slightly more generous, I’ll tell you I’m a pagan, even though I don’t practice any one particular discipline. Mostly, though, the real answer is that I’m confused. Some days, I wish like hell I had some kind of organized spiritual practice to fall back on. Others, I wish I could stamp out this tiny ember of belief and declare myself an atheist. There have been a lot of the latter days lately.

The other night, as I was waiting for my roommate to finish her appointment at the salon, I wandered into Shinder’s - a book/comic book/sports memorabilia store that is currently in the process of closing their doors - looking for a book to read while I waited. They had a copy of Anne Lamott’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith; I’ve been a fan of Lamott’s for a number of years, thanks to Bird By Bird, her wonderful book on writing. As it turns out, she’s also a very liberal Christian, and writes memoirs based on her faith and struggles to integrate it with her sobriety, parenthood, and political views. I was in the right frame of mind to read about faith, and it was only $5, so I picked it up and trucked over to TGIFriday’s with it under my arm. I loved it. The scattershot essays Lamott put together describe the kinds of things I struggle with - I’m not a mother, or a recovering drug addict, or even a Christian, but I’m a woman with a tendency to be self-involved who overreacts and looks for deeper meaning in everything, even the things that need to simply be taken at face value. I recommend her writing to anyone, except perhaps those on the more conservative end of current politics - she spends a few chapters dealing with her struggle to reconcile her faith in God and the world with her hatred of the current presidential administration and their decisions. They’re interesting chapters, though, because they emphasize the power of forgiveness. Lamott isn’t always very good at it, but the thought is there, running underneath everything she writes.

Randomly, the book made me think of something really silly. I’m fond of reading the recaps and message boards over on Television Without Pity, especially for the reality TV shows that I always end up guiltily addicted to. One of my favorites in years past - i.e., before the train wreck of an All-Star edition - was The Amazing Race, mostly for Miss Alli’s fantastic recaps. In early seasons, the favorite running joke of both recapper and forum posters was “God is in the tub!” The reference, as Miss Alli explained it, was aimed at reality show contestants who constantly invoked God’s name - the people who talked about God being on their side, wanting them to win, helping them in the game. Miss Alli decided that, in these cases, God was like your mother, when she took a rare bath when you were a child. If your mother was in the tub, you stayed far away. You could knock on the door if you were bleeding, or dying, or if something was on fire, but otherwise, Mom was in the tub, she didn’t care that your sister took your teddy bear, you figured your problems out for yourself. She figured that God considered reality show contestants in the same way. He wasn’t going to help you win a television game show, so calling on him in order to win a few hundred thousand dollars was just going to irritate him and everyone listening to you.

Thinking about that joke, I actually realized that I think that’s a pretty good indication of how I view God - he/she isn’t, in my head, a diety that gets involved in our day-to-day lives. There’s a presence out there, somewhere, who created us and loves us, but we’re on our own out here. Calling on him too much isn’t going to do you any good. He/She gave us all the tools we need to get through our lives, whether we know it or not; what we need to have faith in is ourselves, faith that we’ll figure it out, one way or another, rather than faith that some being on high is going to swoop down and save us. That seems to be a recipe for disaster and heartbreak, every time. He/She will be there for the big stuff, but day-to-day? In the tub, so figure it out for yourself.

… of course, I’m also the person who thinks that Kevin Smith’s God, as played by Alanis Morissette, is possibly the most accurate and awesome portrayal of God in modern literature, so take that for what it’s worth. But, I love the concept that it’s better to have ideas than beliefs. Ideas change the world. Beliefs destroy it. Or, so it seems, looking at the news on a daily basis.

… and that’s a very heavy topic to begin the new blog on. Hi. Happy 4th of July!