Tag Archives: religion

Brainfood

Finding Islam

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My journey was long and winding.  I’m not an outwardly religious person, and I normally don’t volunteer my religious views.  Muslims aren’t popular in the United States, and revealing that you’re Muslim can sometimes be a dangerous proposition.

I feel compelled here, however, to speak candidly about my journey.  It’s a la mode these days to bash Islam, stereotype and pidgeonhole and caricature Islam.  I hope my story can cast a different shade on the conversation and reveal that Islam is a complex thing, and with over one billion adherents, is far from monolithic.

I wasn’t raised Muslim.  As a matter of fact, I’m the most religiously Muslim person in my family—my parents are basically cultural Muslims.  I was five years old and I asked my dad “Baba, what are we?” “Oh, we’re Muslim.”  And that was the extent of my religious instruction from my family. We ate pork; my mom enjoyed wine and beer; I openly and notoriously dated.

Islam was my choice.  I know what Islam is and what it represents might be different to someone who has it imposed on them.  Even filet mignon isn’t enjoyable when it’s shoved down your throat.

I was 19 and in a bad place.  Life changes, academic pressure, friction with my family, and ending my first relationship had me emotionally disoriented.  I noticed that my college had an Islamic studies class, and as a general history buff with law school aspirations, it seemed natural.

The Islam I learned about was leagues away from the Islam portrayed on television.  The only thing radical about Islam was how inclusive it was.  It accepted all adherents of the abrahamic religions.  Moses and Christ are both considered Prophets equally important to Mohammed—if Abrahamic monotheism was the Star Wars trilogy, Islam viewed itself as Return of the Jedi.

Women had extensive property rights. Considering that the Quran was written in the seventh century, this makes it a radical feminist text. Comparatively, the Vatican didn’t recognize that women even had souls until the fifth century.  Women in the United States were the property of men (father or husband) until the 1870s.  But to Muslims, God did not believe in race or nationalism.  All were equal before God.

Islam wasn’t afraid of science—it embraced it.  Islam prized education and literacy: God’s first miracle performed before the prophet Mohammed was to make him be able to read.

God was forgiving and merciful.  I was introduced to the idea of a being capable of knowing me so intimately, understanding my thoughts and motivations and intentions, and understanding my shortcomings.

The most important part to me was that there was no compulsion in faith.  You’re allowed to practice what you want, and set aside what rituals you don’t care for.  The idea is that those rules are for human benefit: God doesn’t need them, we do.  You aren’t a bad Muslim if you enjoy a beer or some wine, or even if you can’t resist some pepperoni pizza.

The thing that appealed to me was the contempt for hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy was my major beef with the loud practitioners of religion whom I encountered.  The gay-hating closeted gay pastor; the politician who goes to church on Sunday, meets his mistress Monday and divorces his cancer-striken wife on Wednesday; the moral majoritarian who frequents prostitutes; the list goes on.  In Islam, the worst thing you can be is a hypocrite.

It wasn’t all magical.  Like all religions, the adherents can be a problem.  I traveled to Iran to visit family.  While I was there, I’d hoped to get closer to Islam—after all, it is an “Islamic” republic.  I was wrong.  In short, I saw an almost part-for-part analogue of what was wrong with conservative reactionary Christian theology in the United States played out in Iran.  I saw hypocrisy.  I saw priests driving around in Mercedes when there were people starving in the street.  This wasn’t the Islam I learned about.  This wasn’t my Islam.

What I learned from that disappointment was that each person has to travel their own spiritual journey.  You can’t get a 1040EZ form for faith.  It isn’t something for the lazy.  It’s a long, rocky hike where you might stumble and fall and scrape yourself up.  You have to be willing to struggle.  Some folks don’t have the patience for it, and perhaps faith just isn’t for them. Not everyone likes pizza either.  It takes a particular type of person.  I got comfortable with an idea of what my Islam was.  My Islam was inclusive.  My Islam embraces all—and yes, that means LGBTs.  It wants to end poverty and hunger, illiteracy and ignorance.  It seeks peace in the human family.   It’s still a struggle from time to time.  I get so absorbed into the busyness of my life—law school, starting a nonprofit, getting scholarships and hustling money for fun—that I don’t set aside time to reflect on my life from the macro view.

I see my Islam in my American generation.  I see it in Mos Def and Brother Ali and Lupe Fiasco, in Dave Chappelle and Aasif Manvi and Rainn Wilson—an enlightened but idiosyncratic expression of the human condition: beautiful and chaotic and flawed, but always trying to be better and never losing hope.  I don’t eat pork, but I do drink.  I date women.  I am by no means a strictly adherent Muslim in any “conventional” sense. But I think convention is bullshit—it’s a euphemistic term for uncreative or lazy.

I’m Muslim.  I’m proud to be Muslim. But if I get to have kids, I will want them to choose their own path.  It’s only fair: that’s what I did.  I’m comfortable with the possibility that there is no god, no afterlife, none of the mysticism of religion; there are finer points I disagree with, even within the text of the Quran.  I don’t view faith as an all-or-nothing ultimatum.  . The totality of the philosophy speaks for itself.  As a Christian friend of mine once said, “Truth is truth.”   The truth to me is that the point of us being here is to love each other, comfort each other, and keep the other from suffering.  It’s okay that I falter or fail or have my moments of doubt and cynicism, and even disagreement with what may be considered ‘devout.’  Ultimately, the word “faith” means not knowing.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

Brainfood

Leaving Islam

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Growing up, religion was never something I questioned. When my mother told me I was Muslim, because she and my father were Muslim, I didn’t question it. I told everyone that I was Muslim without hesitation.  This usually meant the other kids thought I was the weird kid who couldn’t eat bacon. What being Muslim meant to me, however, was doing everything in my power to prevent going to hell. My parents very effectively and efficiently instilled the fear of God in me: I said a prayer before meals, after eating, every night before bed… I never dared to think of religion as a choice; it was simply what I was born into.

Then I hit high school and the angsty teenager in me started questioning my parents. I became that stereotypical punk kid with the stereotypical rebellious attitude. I disobeyed my parents, stayed out late, and listened to loud music about how The Man was keeping me down. My religion, however, was still unquestioned until senior year of high school and—like many life-changing stories—it involved a girl. I’d had a crush on this girl all year, and we had just started dating, I was excited to bring her home and introduce her to my family so one day after school I invited her over to play some video games in my room. About five minutes after we started playing Rock Band my mother called me into the living room and asked why there was a girl in my room. When I told her about my new girlfriend she was furious. While my girlfriend was waiting for me in my room my mother proceeded to shout at me in Arabic about how she had raised a sinner and how I was forsaking God.  I’d had a crush on this girl for the better part of a year because of what a genuinely good person she was and my mom completely denounced her without even meeting her. This was the first moment I started questioning my parents about religion. My whole life I had been told never to judge anyone and here she was shouting at me about my girlfriend’s terrible character based completely on her gender. It all seemed extremely hypocritical to me at the time and that made me reflect on all of the other ideas I’d been taught about religion.

I was conflicted for a couple of weeks. I didn’t understand how dating someone was such a crime against the creator of the entire universe. Then, after those weeks of thought, I decided that I was going to do something absolutely crazy. One day I went to school like I always did, but when lunch time rolled around, I walked to the cafeteria and ordered the one classic school lunch that I was never able to try: I ordered a slice of pepperoni pizza. In a single decisive moment, I took a bite into this pizza topped with sin and I waited for God to smite me.

But the smiting never happened. That was the day that I stopped being Muslim. It was the best pepperoni pizza that I have ever had.

I may have stopped being a Muslim that day, but my religious journey was far from an end. For a couple of years after that moment, I identified as an atheist with a staunch disbelief in God. I was basically a jerk to every religious person I met. I thought I had it all figured out. Of course I didn’t, and I still don’t, but that didn’t stop me from sitting on an anti-religious high horse. I still haven’t been able to tell my parents about my absence of religion.  But religion, or the lack of it, became a consuming part of my thought process—probably because I was still coping with an ingrained part of my life coming to an abrupt halt—and I, for some reason, decided I should tell everyone else what they should think.

Eventually, however, I grew out of that as well. I realized that I have no right to force my beliefs onto anyone the same way my parents did on me.

These days, I don’t even identify as an atheist. In fact, I don’t really identify as anything. I’ve had a long transformation on the path to my current (non)belief system, and my ideology will probably keep changing as that path continues. After 23 years of life, the only thing I’ve learned about religion is that I don’t know anything about it. For all I know Zeus and all of his godly acquaintances are sitting in Olympus and using the human race for their amusement.

The only thing of which I can be certain when it comes to religion is that I will never know anything, and at this moment, that feels kind of enlightening.

Brainfood

Shabbos, Shittachs, and Shomer: How to Succeed on the Upper West Side

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On a recent Sunday morning, I venture into Fairway, a grocery store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, prepared to battle the crowd of strollers, walkers, and yoga mats that stand between my grocery list and me. This week, I am on a particular mission: it’s the week before the Jewish holiday of Passover, meaning that I—like what appears to be the majority of the other customers—need to stock up on the foods that meet the specific dietary restrictions for this eight-day holiday. I imagine this mission to be a reenactment of the actual parting of the Red Sea—the story of the Jews’ escape from slavery in Egypt, which we retell on Passover—since people rush toward the Passover food aisle with the same sense of urgency one would bring if being chased by enemy soldiers and crashing waves.

Finally, I find two people stocking shelves and ask them where I can find the Kosher for Passover yogurts. They speak to each other in rapid Spanish, and they don’t respond to me with directions in English; instead, one leads me to the dairy section and shows me how to find the Hebrew, Kosher for Passover stamp of approval on certain Dannon products. It’s a safe bet that the majority of the people who work at Fairway aren’t observant Jews, but they cater to a demographic of shoppers who are, so they are all well-versed in the laws of Kashrut and the Jewish calendar year. As I walk out of Fairway with shopping bags full of matzah and special yogurts, overhearing groups of people stopping each other on the street to wish each other a “Happy Holiday,” I have one of my only-on-the-Upper-West-Side moments.

Manhattan’s Upper West Side—mainly between W 70th and W 96th Streets—is home to an enclave of observant Jews across the religious spectrum, and with that comes a concentration of synagogues, Kosher restaurants, and challah per capita that I believe could only be rivaled by a city in Israel. The neighborhood is made up largely of families and the elderly, but it also has the reputation of being the “it place” to socialize for Jewish twenty-somethings. It’s a comfortable place to live for young, single New Yorkers who want to mingle with others who observe Shabbat, keep Kosher, and integrate Jewish religious or cultural practices into everyday life. There’s even a version of Craigslist that caters solely to Jews searching for apartments on the Upper West Side.

These idiosyncrasies are, in large part, why I find it easy to call the Upper West Side home, even when my own family isn’t nearby. But, like any family, this community can feel overbearing and judgmental, making it just as easy to feel self-conscious as it is to feel included. When I join the hoards of young people walking from synagogue to a Shabbat dinner on a Friday night, I know that other Sabbath observers who pass by will immediately identify me as part of their community and try to figure out who we know in common, wishing me a “Shabbat Shalom” (“Good Sabbath”) even if we are perfect strangers. On the flip side, if I’m coming home from work late, with my headphones in as I head out of the subway, I don my invisibility cloak, hoping that I don’t run into my religious friends and ruin my chance of being indexed as “datable” for eligible bachelors who are Sabbath observers. Last year, an acquaintance set me up with an old friend of hers who lives on the Upper West Side. I was so paranoid that it would be the topic of every dinner conversation in our social network, that I refused to go out on the Upper West Side all weekend, and I swore my friend to secrecy. Low and behold, before we had even set a location for the date, people came out of the woodwork to text me, telling me they’d heard I was going on a date with this person—and, in many cases, to tell me they’d already dated him. Utterly mortified, I coined the catch phrase, “Can’t a girl have a private life on the Upper West Side?!” I quickly learned the answer to that question.

All of that is to say that the codes and assumptions about lifestyle choices, political opinions, and social circles that filter into the young Upper West Sider’s lexicon can make a welcoming community feel more like an exclusive club, and you need to know the password to be let in. Personally, I navigate the Upper West Side by straddling the “insider” and “outsider” Jewish circles of my neighborhood, sending out the appropriate signals depending on which I feel like joining at a given moment. Like in any club, you feel like more of a participant if you can “talk the talk” and “walk the walk”—literally and figuratively in this case—so rather than describe this diverse Jewish community through sweeping generalizations, I thought I’d provide a beginner’s “phrase book” so that you can come and experience it like a local.

  1. Summer camp: The best thing that ever happened to you. The place where you met your lifelong friends, learned about prayers and puberty, and probably had your first kiss. When meeting people for the first time, even if it’s been ten years since anyone was even a camp counselor, you will likely be asked where you went to camp, followed by a ten-minute back-and-forth until you find someone you know in common. (If you didn’t go to camp, say you went to “some remote location of Camp Ramah that no one’s ever really heard of.”)
  1. Meal: This word you know, but in the context of the Upper West Side, it refers either to Friday night dinner or Saturday lunch. Starting Monday morning, friends will text each other to find out where they’re “having their meals” the following weekend. If you are “invited for a meal” (as opposed to “invited for dinner and drinks”), you should ask if you can bring challah or wine. Rather than try to bring something artisanal or fancy, which may not be up to all guests’ standards of kashruth, you should pick up something from a bodega on the Upper West Side. Meals are places to see and be seen. It’s a big deal to secure a place around certain people’s folding tables, and following your meal you will likely walk over to someone else’s meal and schmooze over scotch and their leftovers.
  1. Shittach: Twenty-four-year-olds on the Upper West Side seem to be more obsessed with marriage than the average New Yorker that age, so it’s a safe bet that you’ll throw in this term often. When we talk about dating and marriage, we use the word “shittach” to mean a blind date. Officially, a shittach is a setup orchestrated by a matchmaker, but, come on, it’s the Upper West Side, not the Fiddler on the Roof’s shtetl! Instead, you might be invited to a meal to orchestrate a shittach; in other words, your friend wants to set you up with her friend from camp, so she invites you both for a Friday night meal, seats you next to each other, and it’s b’sheret (“meant to be”). (And, if it doesn’t work out, just know that you will run into this person and all of his friends for the rest of your life on the Upper West Side.)
  1. Shomer: When looking for a roommate, you will want to know if that person falls into any/all of these categories: shomer Shabbat; shomer Kashruth; shomer nagiyah. The first refers to whether somebody observes all the laws of the Sabbath, abstaining from use of electricity and spending money. The second term gives you insight into how many sets of dishes that person would contribute (one for milk and one for meat?). The last, used mainly among the more Orthodox circles these days, will allow you to inquire about a person’s—ahem—sexual experiences. If your friend wants to set you up on a shittach, you’d best first confirm whether or not he’s shomer to find out if he touches girls before marriage.
  1. Jake’s Dilemma: Watch out! This phrase in no way allludes to the biblical story in which Jacob wrestles with an angel. (Actually, now that I mention it, maybe it does?) In this context, it simply refers to the most crowded bar on a Saturday night. If you want to go out in the West 80s, start at Jake’s Dilemma, show your ID to the bouncer, and throw in some of your new catch phrases. You’ll feel like a local. And, who knows, you might just meet your long-lost friend from camp or your b’sheret.
Photo by Gali Levi-McClure

Photo by Gali Levi-McClure

 

 

Brainfood

I’m a Spiritual Person, Not a Religious Person

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When I was in fourth grade, my mom decided to start taking my older sister and me to church. My dad is a firm atheist and opted out of church from the very beginning, but my mom wanted us to experience religion.

When I was younger, we had gone to a few other churches but mostly just because we knew some of the priests who were employed there. I grew up in an area that has an Episcopal Seminary, where people are educated and trained to be priests, so a lot of my neighbors were men and women who had moved their families to our town in order to attend this school.  Two of our closest family friends are from this movement; so, church and religion were concepts with which I’d been familiar for many years.  Still, we never went to church with any frequency until I was eight years old.

Christ Church in Old Town, Alexandria, is a beautiful building that was built before the American Revolution. It is steeped in history and has a lot of funding, which allows the church to take an active part in the philanthropic community. When we first arrived, we sat in the second floor pews and that’s when I saw the church choir come out. Throughout the service, this small but powerful choir led the hymns and then sang a beautiful song during communion. I was mesmerized. That very afternoon, I had my mom sign me up to be in the Christ Church choir. For the next ten years, I went to choir practice every Wednesday and Thursday night. I’m not sure my mom, my sister, and I would have continued to go to Christ Church for as long as we did if I hadn’t been involved, but my commitment meant that from ages 8 to 18, I was actively going to church every week.

Attending church every week and discussing religion in general became a regular practice. But, outside of church, I lived a fairly unreligious life. My parents didn’t discuss religion very much, and I knew that my dad didn’t believe in any of it, but they were very conscious about letting me decide for myself what role religion would play in my life. They knew it was, and is, a very personal decision to make, and I am lucky I lived in an environment where I could ask questions but wasn’t expected to believe in any one thing.

All that time spent going to church made me think a lot about higher powers and what, if anything, is out there watching over us. Each Sunday, I would hear a sermon about the religious readings and then I would talk them over with my peers in Sunday school. This increased my knowledge about religious history and practice, but, honestly, none of it really stuck. I couldn’t find, or make, a real connection with the Scripture. Even though each week different people who had found inspiration and companionship with Christ surrounded me, I couldn’t fully empathize with them or understand how they were able to make such a bond.

Despite this, there was something I really loved about going to church every week. I liked singing in the choir and I liked hearing the interpretations of the different priests on the Scripture. The routine was nice, as was the community. By the time I was 15, I was pretty well known in the Christ Church community and many of the priests I came to know took the time to give me volunteer opportunities and made themselves available if I had any questions or concerns about life in general. Because of their generosity and guidance, I decided to get confirmed in the Episcopal Church, as I believed it would help solidify my feelings towards religion in general.

Now, at the age of 22, I still can’t say if I have any solid feelings towards religion. Growing up in a religious environment made me very aware of organized religion and the politics surrounding it. But it also gave me a new way of thinking about religion and spirituality that I would not have gotten otherwise. In all my time at church, I have come to realize that I am certainly a spiritual person, but not a particularly religious one. What I mean is that I firmly believe that there is something keeping all of us balanced and that miracles and divinity are possible, but I can’t fully believe what the Scripture says happened so long ago.

Religion is so personal, and how one interprets or embodies religion is unique to each individual. I’m happy that I’ve had such a broad education in world religions and Christianity because I feel like I can make an informed decision about what role religion plays in my life. But I also feel as though I am not tied to any one belief, which allows me to grow and change with my spirituality. Religion and spirituality, like so may other things, are fluid. I may not have one particular belief now, but allowing myself to be open to spirituality and, in turn, open to new experiences, makes me feel as though I am a part of something greater than myself. And that, more than anything, gives me hope about what’s to come.

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Brainfood

American Liberal, Roman Catholic: Feminism in Church and State

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Every August, my family gets together for a reunion of sorts: we call it a Feast (capital F) and it’s hosted by my grandfather’s Italian society out in a private park. In many ways, it is a typical family gathering—tons (too much, really) of food, lots of yelling, lots of cousins; you know how it goes. The only difference is that our Feast involves a mass and then, in the afternoon, each family in the society takes turns carrying a large statue of the Virgin Mary around the park. No, we’re not a cult—we’re just old-school Roman Catholics.

The custom of a feast like this actually comes from early Italian immigration to America. Seeking a way to stay connected, friends and relatives from the same small area all formed societies to celebrate their hometown’s patron saint. In many ways, my grandfather’s Italian society is the same today as it was back when it was first formed—that is to say, only men can join. Like the Roman Catholic Church itself, the whole setup reeks of sexism.  And while I was raised with the church being a part of my life, the great irony is that I am a Hillary Clinton-loving, Riot Grrrl-ing, unabashedly liberal feminist.

But I don’t actually see being a liberal, feminist Roman Catholic as really that uncommon. For starters, I certainly wasn’t raised to see myself/women as being subservient. Though this mentality is certainly held by some members of older generations, I was always taught differently. My family has been pretty key to my feminism in this respect—my grandfather was always the first to classify members of his society as “grumpy old men, soon to be left behind in the times,” while my grandmother is basically Dorothy Zbornak reincarnated. This is on top of the glaringly obviously fact that the whole society worships a woman, along with countless other examples of badass Roman Catholic saints and nuns: St. Catherine, Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, Sister Simone Campbell and the Nuns on the Bus, just to name a few.

In mixing religion and politics, I fall in line with the 60% of American Catholics that don’t attend Church regularly, the 77% who believe that abortion should be legal, and the 59% that believe in marriage equality. (All statistics taken from the March 2014 report by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project). These numbers line up fairly neatly with the Democratic platform and fall in line with longer trends that show moderate Catholics voting more liberally, despite the Vatican’s stalwart stance on a majority of (really, all) issues.

In all, 71% of American Catholics believe that the election of Pope Francis represents a major change in the direction of the church. While I remain somewhat skeptical, I certainly will credit His Holiness’ PR skills—just inspiring people to believe again (especially after the disaster of Pope Benedict) is a major feat. More importantly, however, is that I’ve never really considered my political opinions to be in contradiction with anything I learned in religion class. After all, the Ten Commandments are supposedly about the values of social justice. I choose to think of them more as guidelines: as my homeslice (and fellow Catholic) Diablo Cody described her opinion, “it’s about finding your own spiritual path and drowning out human judgment.”

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Relationships

“You’re not my daughter anymore.”

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“You’re not my daughter anymore.”

“Okay.”
“I am not your father.”
“Okay.”
“Do not try to contact me or your grandparents.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe someday we can have a relationship again, but not as father and daughter.”
“Okay.”

I had a wonderful childhood. My brother and I got good grades, played sports, never got in trouble. We were “good kids.” I don’t have many bad memories or scars that I’ve carried with me, that is, until my parents told us they were getting a divorce. We had no idea it was coming. It didn’t seem like my parents were fighting. The way it happened was so matter-of-fact. Two houses, two Christmases, two TVs; two of everything. It sounded fine: we would spend half our time with mom and half with dad, and we were all pretty okay with it. I wish I’d known then how not okay it really was.

After the divorce, my father got more involved at our Episcopalian church.  We had always been religious: my brother and I went to Sunday school; we were in the youth group led by my father. But, when the church allowed female priests and then accepted homosexuals, my father decided we were leaving. We went back to our previous non-denominational fundamentalist church and things at home got more religion focused.  We noticed my dad’s behavior changing but nothing too weird.

My brother and I were now teenagers and I was in high school. Teenagers are moody, teenagers have emotions, they like to ask questions, mostly hard questions. This was not okay with my father. He tried to deal with our “insolence” by having more household rules, more chores, and more “family meetings.”

He started bad-mouthing my mom, telling us that she was a terrible person and that she was evil.  He blamed her for leaving him and claimed she was having an affair with another man. He hated her and now we could see it. (My mom told us later that she had been dealing with this for a long time but had tried not to bring us into it.)

He was so angry; he called social services and claimed my mom was forcing us to get drunk because we were allowed to have wine with dinner despite being under-aged. (But “have wine with dinner” actually only meant special occasions where we could basically have one sip if we wanted.) We were called to the counselor’s office to talk to a Social Worker; which was mortifying. He was furious when nothing came of it, and called the cops. When they explained that responsible alcohol consumption supervised by a parent or guardian in the home is not something the police deal with, my dad tried to make us swear to God we would never drink again. I swore to not drink till I was 21.

Around the same time, my dad had started dating a woman from our church. I’m not going to deny that my brother and I were hostile and not as welcoming as we could have been—she said she wasn’t trying to replace our mother, but it was very hard to not feel guilty doing things with her and not our Mom.

Then, my father proposed. We were not okay with it. Things had already been so tense between all of us in the house, we felt like an addition to the family would only make it worse. When she broke off their engagement, my dad told us it was our fault, that we had not been nice to her. But we had never been mean to her. Looking back though, maybe we were cold and we hadn’t sought out any interaction with her specifically. My dad felt we weren’t trying hard enough. But we thought that their relationship was moving too fast and we were struggling to adjust.

They did eventually get married. And that’s when the rules really took off: my stepmother didn’t work and had sleeping problems so I was grounded for washing the dishes before I left for school because it was too loud. The next week I was grounded for leaving a dirty knife in the kitchen sink in the morning. Our bedroom doors had to remain open at all times, but their door was shut and locked and they rarely interacted with us except at family meetings or scheduled activities. My brother and I had to have our laundry done before we went to our mother’s house, but we couldn’t do laundry together because it was inappropriate for him to see my underclothes.

So my brother and I began leading double lives: trying to be Christian angels in one house and regular kids in another. I tried to be the “good” daughter my father wanted, but his rules kept changing. It seemed no matter how hard I tried to do everything right, I would always make a mistake. This led to curfews and check-in calls and extra Bible study at home as punishment.

Not long after they got married, my father and stepmother started watching an evangelical minister on TV instead of going to church. My brother and I were not comfortable with watching a TV minister, but my father informed us that the hierarchy was: “God, me, your stepmother, you”—since he was closest to God, we had to do what he said. I believed in God, I knew what Christianity was. It was forgiveness and love and sharing the gift of salvation. What my father was living was not Christianity to me.

We started getting depressed. My father was telling us we were sinners, not true Christians, because we kept making mistakes and never seemed to learn. My mom ran as much defense as she could. And she was amazingly supportive; really, we couldn’t wait to go to her house and escape from my dad’s. We could see that what my dad was doing was wrong, but we were “good kids,” and we certainly didn’t want to lose our dad. He loved us after all, and we loved him, so we went along. And, yet, he knew we didn’t really believe the things he believed and it was getting harder and harder to fake it. But I couldn’t find a way to articulate this to him.

My dad and I finally went to a Christian counselor that he had picked.  I let it all out. I told my dad how hurt I was, how he never thought of our side and never considered that maybe we had our own ideas or relationships with God that he wasn’t a part of. I asked him to be more understanding and not take out his anger at my mom on us. The counselor agreed with me. He told my dad to work on being more forgiving and patient with us. My dad was convinced it was a complete waste of time and that the counselor was obviously a quack. We never went to counseling again.

The dysfunction in our relationship finally came to a head at the end of my senior year. I had asked my mom to chaperone my last field trip but it was on a day my dad had custody. The day before the trip, I mentioned that my mom was chaperoning and my dad lost it. He said that this was the “last straw.” He called my mom and made her cancel. He made me ask my teacher if he could go instead. He didn’t care that he had never chaperoned anything before and that it was special to me that my mom chaperone this last one. He accused me of always choosing my mom over him.  He was probably right.

As High School drew to a close, I was accepted into a private college across the country. My dad disapproved of me going to an “expensive” school—really he disapproved of me going to college altogether. He believed I should get married immediately, start having kids and be the perfect Christian wife. I didn’t have everything figured out but I was pretty sure I wasn’t interested in that path. After the chaperoning incident, he told me that I had to move out the day after graduation. I didn’t fight him. I didn’t say anything really. What else was there to say?  I couldn’t handle the confrontation anymore.

My dad and stepmom didn’t come to my high school graduation. My stepmom felt I had betrayed them. The following day, I moved out. They made me leave anything they had ever given me as gifts.

I didn’t see them again until the end of that summer, my dad took my brother and me to the park to say goodbye. He hugged me and wished me well and I cried, unsure about the future. This was the last time I saw my father.

The night before I left for college, he called me. He told me he never should have hugged me when he said goodbye to me. He told me I was not the kind of person he could call his daughter. To this day, a lot of that conversation is fuzzy. I think I was in shock. All I could say was “Okay.” He hung up and I just sat there.

I was sad, I was angry, I felt betrayed, but more than anything, I couldn’t believe that a religion really meant more to him than family. After a few days, I was relieved. I had been living in fear and stress and anxiety for years. Now I was free.

Wouldn’t it be great if the story just ended there, with me feeling free? It doesn’t. The mental abuse stuck with me. I didn’t drink again till I was 21 because I was afraid my dad would find out and then we would never be able to reconcile. In hindsight, I was more damaged than I could admit.

A few years ago, my stepmother sent me an email. She said the hurt had gone on long enough and that she hoped we could put it all behind us. I assume this was due to some sermon that struck a chord. I replied that I agreed and was willing to start over but that since my dad had ended our relationship, I had to hear from him that that was what he wanted.  I never heard back from either of them.

But the wound had been reopened, so I decided that I would take the first step. I wrote my dad an email. I said I was sorry for the way things ended, that we both made mistakes and that I would be willing to start a new relationship.

His response was one sentence: “How have you changed your life so that what happened before will not happen again?”

I deleted the email.

I had—have—regrets. I lost my father. He didn’t see me graduate from college. He didn’t walk me down the aisle when I got married. He won’t meet his future grandchildren. They won’t have a grandfather. I lost half of my family. And I foolishly hoped for a long time that he would see that he had made a mistake.

Two years ago I found out that my grandmother had passed away. I should have found out about my grandmother’s death from my father, I should have had the opportunity to go to her funeral, to mourn her, but I didn’t. Because I didn’t even learn of her death until months after it happened, when, by chance, my now husband Googled her name.

That was what finally sealed it for me. There is no hope for a relationship with my dad. I don’t have delusions anymore. There is only regret left. And pity. I pity the person who does not forgive, the person who cannot love their family because of things they have cherry picked from their religion, the person who lives in fear of change and hates everything that challenges them. I don’t hate him or myself, or anyone involved in the situation. I value the family I have and the family I have gained marrying my husband. Last year, my mom walked me down the aisle and it was perfect.

I hope he is happy somewhere, wherever they live now. I hope my grandfather, if he is still alive, is well cared for. And even though I don’t have any desire to see him again, I hope that my dad forgives my brother and me someday. I have forgiven him.

Photo by Remi Coin

Photo by Remi Coin

Brainfood

A Religions Overview

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In A Religions Primer, I introduced the basic elements of religions and reasons you may or may not be interested in exploring particular faith practices. Below are some of the (still-very-general) specifics of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam—the top four world religions by population.

Photo by Sara Slattery

As I write this, my heart is trembling a little bit. My personal faith practice is a huge part of who I am, and I have close friends for whom different beliefs play just as big a role in their lives. My goal here is to give a general overview of a few world religions, hopefully in a way that helps you learn more about a certain faith. But I am a student of religions, not an expert: if I at all misrepresent a part of your faith, please leave a comment below so that I can remedy the mistake. Rather than in-depth or comprehensive descriptions, consider the following as a springboard for you to continue your own education and exploration. In the interest of space, I won’t mention the many other smaller religions and faith practices out there.

Buddhism

Basic Ideas

Buddhism is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who abandoned his wealthy life in order to seek enlightenment. He achieved enlightenment after meditating under the Bodhi tree for forty-nine days, after which he sought to share what he had learned so that others may be freed of life’s suffering. He advocated a balance called the Middle Way between self-indulgence and self-denial, and he delivered a set of teachings called the Dharma that reveal how to achieve freedom from suffering. They include the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, among others. Buddhism teaches that there is rebirth after death, but not because our individual souls keep living; rather, we continue being reborn after we die until we attain enlightenment and freedom from suffering. BuddhaNet is a good next step if you want to keep digging deeper.

Weekly Practices

Following the Buddha’s Dharma is the place to start. Meditation is an important daily practice in Buddhism; in order to free yourself from suffering, you need to be aware of your own sources of suffering. The practice of mindfulness—being aware of yourself, your actions, and your motivations—permeates daily life for many Buddhists. Community service is also highly valued.

Faith Community

The Buddha Dharma Education Association has compiled a World Buddhist Directory of Buddhist centers and organizations around the world. You can narrow your search by continent, country, state, and type of Buddhist tradition, making it fairly easy to find Buddhist communities in your area.

Christianity

Basic Ideas

The foundation of all Christian denominations is the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth: raised as a Jew under the Roman Empire, Jesus was  the prophesied son of the monotheistic creator God, sent to redeem humankind. Jesus performed miracles of healing and gave many teachings, the basis of which form the Gospel books of the Bible. Jesus of Nazareth was sentenced to crucifixion for the crimes of claiming to be divine and creating political and cultural unrest. Christianity teaches that Jesus was resurrected three days after he was entombed, visited with his disciples and followers, and then ascended into heaven. The Gospel books and books written by early Christians form the New Testament, which in combination with the Jewish Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, form the writings that inform Christian religious practices. One core belief is that humans are imperfect and need redemption to be worthy of an eternal afterlife in heaven. Jesus’s crucifixion is believed to be the sacrifice necessary to redeem humankind’s failures, so acceptance of him is seen as the way to baptism and redemption. Each Christian denomination interprets the Bible differently, and here is a chart that gives a sense of their main differences.

Weekly Practices

Most Christian practices revolve around a gathering or service on Sunday, often in a cathedral, church, or other designated meeting area. Services may include singing hymns or other songs of worship; a message delivered by the priest, pastor, or minister; and spoken or silent prayer, along with other rituals. Outside of the Sunday gathering, practices range from meeting in small groups for prayer and Biblical study to individual daily following of Christian principles.

Faith Community

Churches of many denominations are easily found throughout the United States.  If you’re not sure where to start, this directory has a fairly comprehensive list of churches by denomination, so you’ll be all set to explore.

Hinduism

Basic Ideas

Hinduism doesn’t have a particular founder, and its various forms may follow one deity, many deities, or the sacred nature within all of existence. The Vedas are a collection of scriptures that contain many of the beliefs that Hindus follow, though there are several other sacred texts as well. One core belief is that Truth is the one Reality, but this belief can be expressed in a variety of ways—Truth can be thought of as Brahman, the sacred nature that is all-inclusive, eternal, and that encompasses all existence in the universe. Gods and goddesses in Hindu traditions are considered expressions of Brahman, and a person’s soul in relation to Brahman is often described using the metaphor of a drop of water in the ocean. The dharma is what Hindus strive to achieve in their lives, and can be interpreted as morality, duty, or right conduct. (Sound familiar? Gautama Buddha was raised in a Hindu society, and his Dharma came out of his experiences with Hindu dharma.) Unlike Buddhism, Hinduism holds that our individual souls are immortal and are reincarnated into new bodies after we die. Karma, your actions in this life and all of your past lives, determine what kind of body your soul will inhabit in your next life. The ultimate goal is moksha: liberation of the soul from the cycle of life and death by realizing its true nature and uniting with Brahman.

Weekly Practices

Many Hindu practices include daily or weekly rituals centered around shrines with sculptures and images of deities in their own homes—these follow bhaktimarga, or the path of devotion. Other practices called jnanamarga, or the path of philosophy, don’t involve deities at all and instead focus on Brahman through meditation. A third branch of practices—karmamarga, the path of works and action—is based on fulfilling the social and moral roles specific to one’s lot in life. All three paths are equally valid. For more specific rituals and practices such as Ayurveda, different types of yoga, and the daily puja, here is a list to get you started.

Faith Community

Temples, ashrams (religious centers or monasteries), shakhas (Hindu theological schools), and Hindu cultural centers are good places to get plugged into communities of practicing Hindus. This comprehensive directory lists such places located in the United States.

Islam

Basic Ideas

Somewhat similar to Christianity, Islam is founded upon the belief that there is one all-knowing God (Allah) and one man (Muhammad) who was chosen to communicate divine truths to humankind. The central creed of Islam is called the Shahada: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God.” Unlike Jesus, Muhammad was not divine; rather, he was the last in a line of great prophets who received messages from God to give to humanity. The Qur’an is the central scripture of Islam and contains the teachings given to Muhammad from God through the angel Gabriel. The teachings show how to live life in a way that pleases God, so that after death one’s soul will be judged worthy of spending eternity in Jannah (paradise) rather than in Jahannam (the abyss).

Weekly Practices

The Five Pillars of Islam are considered the essential practices of the faith. They include the Shahada, or confession of faith; the Salat, or ritual prayer performed five times a day; the Zakat, or alms tax; the Sawm, a period of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan; and the Hajj, a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. (Exceptions to the Sawm and the Hajj are made for Muslims who are physically or financially unable to fulfill these duties.) Certain sects of Islam have other practices in addition to the Five Pillars.

Faith Community

Muslim places of worship are called mosques, but many Muslims also gather at community centers and Islamic schools. Here is a directory of mosques and Islamic schools in the United States.

Still interested? Or want to learn about a religion I didn’t cover? There are a lot of great resources out on the web. ReligionFacts.com and Pluralism.org are good introductions to a wide range of religions practiced worldwide and in the United States. Pluralism.org also includes a great directory of religious centers, organizations, and places of worship in the United States.

Brainfood

A Religions Primer

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I’m not sure that there is any other part of human existence that is so often disputed as religion. Alongside politics and money, most won’t touch it with a ten-foot-pole in polite company, yet belief systems have formed and continue to form the foundation of life for many societies and individuals. “Religion” can be many things to many people: a set of guidelines for how to live a good life, a part of their culture, a guide to connecting with the divine, a source of oppression and violence, or simply nothing at all. My goal here is not to give the end-all-be-all breakdown of world religions and how to choose one—you can do that here, or here, or with this (taken with a grain of salt, of course)—but to look at the tip of the iceberg and share some ideas that might be helpful if you are interested in exploring a particular faith or faiths.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Let’s take a moment or two to consider why humans have gravitated towards religion throughout our existence and what basic characteristics distinguish religions from each other. A little “Religions 101,” if you will.

There are several main camps into which people fall when you look at their perspectives of religion: materialistic, functional, and belief-based.

  • A materialistic perspective proposes that humans have imagined that the supernatural exists, when in fact the material world is all that is real. (Marx and Freud fell into this camp: Marx felt that religion provided a false security to people and was used to oppress them; Freud thought that religion was no more than a “universal obsessional neurosis.”)
  • A functional perspective proposes that, regardless of whether or not the supernatural exists, religion is useful for both societies and individuals to create harmony and health, to further the human species, and/or to create a sense of purpose and security.
  • A belief-based perspective proposes that there is a larger-than-life supernatural reality, and religions are humanity’s responses to that reality. (Many names have been given to encounters with that reality, like enlightenment, realization, illumination, kensho, awakening, self-knowledge, gnosis, ecstatic communion, and “coming home.”)

If you feel that you have a functional or belief-based perspective about the supernatural or divine reality, exploring the kinds of religions that might suit you could be the next step. However, it’s helpful to be aware of how your perspective influences your interest in religion. If you have a functional perspective, then the lifestyle, daily practices, or community aspects of a religion may be the most important to you. If you have a belief-based perspective, then the ideas and beliefs of a religion may be more important, though those often will still include the lifestyle, practices, and community elements.

Once you know why you want to explore religions, it can help to think about the different kinds of religions that are out there, in case certain types resonate with you more than others.

Some religions (like Christianity or Judaism) distinguish between the profane existence of our everyday world and the sacred existence of the spiritual world. Some religions (such as Taoism) say that the profane and the sacred co-exist or aren’t different realities at all. Certain religions (like Buddhism) teach that the sacred is immanent or present in our lives, whereas others (such as Hinduism) teach that the sacred is mostly transcendent, existing in another sort of reality that can be accessed through prayer or ritual.

Then there are the concepts of a sacred being or entity. Depending on the religion, there may be a personal being: a Mother, Father, Teacher, Friend, or the Beloved; or, there may be a specific being with a name and a life-story. These beings often serve to personalize some or all aspects of the divine in a way that allows practitioners to connect with it. These deities may also serve as examples for how humans should live. And, sometimes, the divine is characterized as something other than a person—as elements of non-human nature, as all of existence, or as a pervasive force or love that exists in the world supernaturally.

Religions are often categorized by the number of sacred beings or entities they believe in—monotheistic religions have one, polytheistic religions have many, monistic religions hold that there is a divine nature underlying everything, and nontheistic religions don’t attribute the divine to any particular being or entity.

Whether you are atheist (believing that there is no deity), you are agnostic (not sure whether the divine exists), you believe in something but want to give it more structure, or you were raised in one religion and don’t feel like it is spiritually fulfilling anymore, understanding why you are interested and what basic types of religions are out there is a good start! If you find that you want to learn more about particular religions, you can check out resources like BBC’s religions guide website; though beware of the plethora of biased and inaccurate information about religions that exists online. To play it safe, you can find many basic comparative religion books, like John Bowker’s World Religions or Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions.