3

When I was younger, I envied people born into faiths of various kinds. How wonderful it must be to have certain questions answered, to have instructions written down in a text that many others seemed to believe in and follow. It sounded much simpler than the vague, atheist, try-to-do-good prescriptions my back-to-the-land hippie parents tried to bestow in me while smoking cigarettes, chopping wood, and listening to the Cure. It was naive, but I envied my buttoned-up peers who went to church on Sundays and believed in heaven. It sure sounded nice to have answers, nay, concrete directives.

My parents warned me off religion of all kinds, particularly Christianity. They said it had been bastardized and weaponized and could not be trusted. I try to avoid criticizing any faith, because it is a dangerous game, but I do think it is miraculous that each culture established by humanity sought and found an expression of faith that have extraordinary similarities. We all came up with similar stories, even if the telling is different. That tells me there is some baseline truth or need within all of us, and so that is what I try to focus on when establishing my own sense of faith.

Things are not easy right now. I have a very limited income and no real sense of security that anything will get much easier or better. I was born into privileged poverty, which means my parents were well educated and from middle class families, and our austerity was a philosophical choice I couldn’t possibly understand. I’m not sure they understood their poverty would increase the likelihood that I would be poor and stay poor, no matter how hard I worked to avoid it.

So, it is Day 2 of attempting to live as if I believe in something bigger than myself. This is a record for others who are seeking faith in Good, for those who also want or need to believe that things will work out with good choices and trust. There are some who believe vehemently that religion is the opiate of the masses. They believe that it is used to placate the poor, the keep us all working while we believe in a better day, which comes in the form of a granted prayer or an afterlife, rather than by amassing in protest against our oppressors.

God, I hope not. I’m willing to bet that having faith in a Universal Good does not actually mean living in servitude. In fact, that cannot be. Righteous faith in the betterment of humanity in the name of Good means helping others, advocating for the fallen, doing more and better for our downtrodden brothers and sisters, and I have not been doing enough. This writing is an attempt to do more, but I can still do better. Righteous faith in Good means spreading it to others, both in word and deed. Not through proselytizing, but by being the light where there is dark, helping others who are being ignored, doing good or right when no one else is.

And, to be honest, it’s suddenly occurred to me that I’m not sure anyone needs instructions in a book or long-winded lectures for that. I’m willing to bet, deep down, we all have that version of faith sitting within us, regardless of creed.

So, here I sit at my desk, the sunlight blasting me straight in the eyeballs as I write this, another simple sign that this task is useful, and good, and a conduit to something more, to doing more and better, and I’ll take it over one more day wallowing in the dark.