I was raised Catholic. I was taught early on that there is a God, and that you'd better not piss Him off. I learned that He expected 7-year-old boys to stand in line on Friday mornings, in fear and trepidation, waiting to offer confession, in a white shirt and salt-and-pepper corduroy trousers that announced your coming as surely as He would announce His. I learned that we all - even 7-year-old boys - are guilty of
something, ANYTHING, and that the greatest transgression one could commit was to enter the confessional booth without having any transgressions to report.
I learned that God spoke Latin, and that if you wanted to know what He was saying, you'd better learn it, too. Dominis vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. I learned a couple of years later that God's representatives here on Earth had heard from God that He had changed His mind, and that He would talk to us in English from now on, or, as the priests said, in the vernacular.
When we moved to LA, I stopped going to Catholic school, but my parents insisted I get confirmed. So I dutifully became a Soldier of Christ (since I had missed the draft years for Vietnam) - but by that time I was ready to join the conscientious objectors. I had seen too much hypocrisy and corruption of what I knew intuitively that Jesus wanted people to understand. I had figured out that God didn't really give a rat's ass what color
vestments Father O'Malley wore on Sunday, or whether we had chicken or salmon patties on Friday. While I remain extremely grateful for the grounding I received in the text of the Bible, I knew that there was much more (or less, depending on your point of view) to it than was being sold to me. So shortly after my confirmation, I stopped going to church and became an agnostic.
My teenage years were spent grappling with (or running away from) all the usual existential questions that manifest in the form of teenage insecurities and attitudes. My older sisters went to Berkeley in the '60s, but I was born a few years too late for that. As a frustrated FSMer, I read a lot of radical tracts in high school, my favorites being Postman and Weingartner's Teaching as a Subversive Activity and The Soft Revolution, John Holt's How Children Fail, and Jerry Farber's The Student as Nigger. While I was still an agnostic, something inside told me that there was Something Bigger Out There, that This All Didn't Just Happen By Accident.
In my last high school years and on into college, I found myself reading more philosophical and spiritual books. Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery and, ironically, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig had profound influences on me. The idea that everything is one, and that states of being - including this earthly one that we are in now - are just illusory and transitory, held a great deal of appeal to me. As time went by, I came to realize that Buddha and Jesus were preaching the same message: Do not become attached to this life and its distractions, because it's only temporary. Live and think rightly. Simplify. Desire nothing.
I am older now. I sometimes say - only half jokingly - that my command of knowledge peaked when I was 17 and I knew EVERYTHING. It's been a downhill slide since then. I hope I will attain enlightenment just before I die, with the realization that I know NOTHING.
But there will always now be one thing I do know. Through all of this, I have had this niggling thought in the back of my mind. It's why I never became a full-blown atheist. I just couldn't let go of the thought that there was, indeed, Something Bigger Out There, that This All Didn't Just Happen By Accident.
I have seen enough of life to satisfy myself that, yes, indeed, there is a God. I wake up every day and thank Him for all of the blessings He has bestowed upon me. I look around and realize that there is so much out there that is so much bigger than me, that I will never fully comprehend, that is so full of wonder and awe and mystery, and that I feel so connected to on a very deep level, that that connection must be real. And it is that connection that I choose to call God.
How do I know there is a God? Here's how:
I have seen my children sleeping, and watched them grow up
My wife married ME!
Our pet beagle greets me enthusiastically every day
I have family and good friends who love me
I wake up every day
I have seen Yosemite Valley
I have climbed at Joshua Tree
I have seen what our planet look like from space
My car keys always turn up
I have heard Alison Krauss sing
I found an outlet for my writing!
I have tasted an In-N-Out Burger Double-Double, Animal-style
Humankind has demonstrated the curiosity to explore and unravel the mysteries of God's creation
I know there's a God because . . .
In spite of there being literally thousands of them,
no one has used nuclear weapons in my lifetime
I watched Richard Nixon resign,
and Spiro Agnew convicted . . .
. . . and John Mitchell do time
Patrick Fitzgerald was assigned to the Plame case
There must be a God, and Helen Thomas has probably interviewed Him
I know there's a God because there's a Keith Olbermann
and finally, of course,
I KNOW there's a God because
I saw Him last night.