Last week I wrote a diary about atheism. My goal was to discuss what it means to be an atheist living in a country that generally distrusts my kind. The response to the diary was incredible, and unlike anything I had anticipated.
As a follow-up, I decided to write about an experience of mine which helped shaped the atheist in me. Just like before, it's my way of sharing my atheism in a rational manner, where too often the discussion on religion is derailed by anger and prejudice.
I have also included, for your enjoyment, a soundtrack: Franz Biebl's "Ave Maria," sung by Chanticleer (not on autoplay, I promise). While the piece is religious in nature, this atheist can tell you that it is one of the most beautiful choral works that I know.
So if you'd care to take part in the discussion, and listen to some wonderful music while you do it, please follow me after the jump.
The Atheist
by SuperBowlXX
MUSIC: "Ave Maria" by Franz Biebl, sung by Chanticleer
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I sat quietly in the third pew, my hands clasped. The lights had been shut off following the morning's service. Most of the town's parishioners had gone home to relax, have lunch, and get ready for Super Bowl Sunday. A small group of others had remained, and sat themselves near the front of the church.
My girlfriend was standing near the fountain, holding her niece tightly to her chest. She looked down at the infant, smiling as it stared back up at her with its bright brown eyes. The baby was wrapped in a long white gown, the same gown that its aunt and godmother had once worn 22 years earlier, the same gown that had been passed down the family line ever since 1889. This was an odd but interesting custom, I thought.
I looked around at the others, who were eagerly awaiting the priest's blessing. The baby's parents stood on the opposite side of the fountain, grinning at their daughter. The baby's grandmother happily focused her gaze through the aperture of her camera, snapping photo after photo of the child to preserve the moments. The baby's grandfather sat silently on the end of the fourth pew, occasionally stroking his graying beard.
"The greatest day of our lives," said the priest, "is the day we are baptized. It is on that day when we pledge ourselves to the Lord, and He gives us the everlasting gift of His love."
I turned to the left to face a stained glass window on the east wall. My eyes fixed on the image of a cloaked Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus in her arms, with large, golden halos encircling each of their heads. Studying this window, I noticed that the sunlight seemed to shine most prominently on Mary's cloak, producing a faint blue glow in the corner of the darkened room. The artwork and the peculiar blue radiance had reminded me of similar windows I had seen years before inside a cathedral in Freiburg, Germany, where the dark blue tint surrounding the biblical figures in the windows left one with the impression that it was always nighttime inside the church, even when it was morning.
I turned away from the window and looked down at the ground. Reflecting on the priest's words, a strange, dual emotion had engulfed me during the past minute: A tranquil sense of calm, combined with a desperate feeling of loneliness. Though I was happy to keep my girlfriend company for the ceremony, I could not shake the sickening feeling that I was not welcome there. She had been raised in a Catholic household, and was clear that her family had taken great joy in baptizing her niece. I, on the other hand, had never even been to a baptism before, and could probably count on both hands (or perhaps one) the number of times I had been to church in my whole life. That German cathedral was the last church I could recall in which I made the choice to go there for myself -- but it wasn't even for Mass. It was just a mid-week tour of the church that many students my age had done.
Long ago, when my mother and father were engaged, there had been supposedly been some tension between their families. I never quite understood why, but I suspect that religious differences played a role. My parents were never particularly religious themselves, but they were brought up in different religious cultures. My mother attended Catholic schools until she reached college; my father had his bar mitzvah back in the '50s. I can imagine that my grandparents might have originally preferred that their children should marry into the same religions in which they were raised -- a common preference among many Catholic and Jewish families in an earlier time, I suppose. It's also possible that my religious grandparents never expected that, when my parents were first married, that they would eventually have three kids who would each turn out to be non-believers. I sometimes wonder if that ever bothered them.
The day of the baby's baptism would be the greatest day of her life, said the priest. In the most cynical reaches of my mind, he was not simply blessing the child to be a Christian. He was condemning me because I was not. He was warning the child's parents to raise her in God's name, lest she become an immoral heathen like myself. I was a stranger in a strange place -- a man sitting in a house of God, but without belief in God.
This led me to some painful questions. Would it really be so terrible if the child were to grow up an atheist like me? Did my lack of belief trouble anyone in my girlfriend's family? Would I be expected to baptize any children of mine in the future, and would I be willing to accept that? Was I just being paranoid, letting my knowledge of religious tension in my family's past color my thinking? In any event, did any of this matter? What business was it of anyone else what my beliefs were? What business was it of mine how the baby's parents chose to raise her?
I looked towards the baby, wondering if it could feel the same emotions of confusion and isolation from the world around her as I did at that moment.
"Do you pledge to raise this child as one with the Lord," said the priest, looking intently at the parents, "and baptize her in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, so that she may receive the Lord's blessings?"
"Yes," said the mother. "Yes," said the father.
My girlfriend then extended her arms, carefully holding the infant above the fountain as the priest sprinkled the water onto its forehead. A droplet of water trickled onto the baby's christening silk, a crocheted bib on which read the words: "Jesus loves me."
That night, as we were driving back home, I was quietly frustrated with myself. Frustrated that I had been frustrated. It's not that I was ashamed of being an atheist -- it was that I feared my presence at church was a burden on my girlfriend. I did not speak a single word during Mass or the baptism, but in my imagination, I might as well have loudly objected to the baptism and stormed out of the church in a huff.
I then remembered something my brother once told me: It isn't your beliefs that matter, but your actions. Whatever the priest at the baptism might have said, my girlfriend and her family have still accepted me for who I am -- even if the Jerry Falwells, and Pat Robertsons, and James Dobsons, and Rick Warrens, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connors of the world have not.
It was then that I came to the realization that her family and mine were not really all that different. She had been raised in a religious culture, and I was not. But it didn't matter. Her parents had taught her well the values of love, laughter, kindness, and respect -- just as my parents had done. We would not be with each other today if we didn't both mutually understand and share those values with each other. She was Catholic, and I was an atheist. But we were both good people with good hearts -- that's all that mattered.
She was sitting in the passenger seat. I looked at her. She looked back at me and smiled. It was a wonderful reminder to me that never, never once in the years that I have known her, have I ever felt like she and I were incompatible with each other because of our separate beliefs. No matter what my anxieties about religion might be, I still have no doubt that she is the right person for me.
The thought of that was comforting enough to bring this atheist at peace for another day.