my mom didnt send me to sunday school until i was in the third grade. what was she thinking? clearly i was too old to be brainwashed by then. my time of "make-believe" and "invisible friends" was over. when i was 9 years old and sat my little tush in synagogue for the first time to pray, i thought, what the heck am i doing? how do i do this? do i fold my hands together and put my head down? do i talk out loud? how can "god" hear me talking in my head? can "god" really hear my thoughts? strange.
so, i tried talking to god in my head. what was this? i did not hear anything back. i wondered what i was doing wrong. i asked my sunday school teacher. "am i supposed to hear Him talk back?" i definitely pictured an old wise white man with an incredibly long white beard, bald head, and a staff for a cane who was somehow able to be everywhere at once while being invisible and having complete control of the world. cuz obviously i could not see him with my bare human eyes. and then to top it off, for some reason, in this temple, it was as though god was supposed to be even more present in the building than outside. it really didnt make sense to me, but i did not know what else to do or to think, or to believe for that matter.
"maybe you will hear Him," my sunday school teacher responded, bless her big Jewish heart.
so i thought to myself, maybe? only sometimes i get to talk to him? this did not make sense to me, and did not seem fair, because i was certainly trying to talk to GOD but i definitely didn't hear him talking back. i figured only special people get to talk to God, and that wasn't me, because mainly I didn't really know how, and I must not be so special. which then, i figured was crap, because that seemed to completely defeat the point if only "special" people got to pray and talk with God. why would God exclude me? i tried praying again.
silence.
dammit.
even in the third grade, when i was learning about how God supposedly created the world and stuff, i was like, "seriously? who made this up?" i knew the universe was huge, and all the other millions of species of plants and animals out there... it really could not have all come from just God or humans or whatever. there's more to this existence than only humans. anyway, it all seemed so silly. i guess you have to start brainwashing them when they're really young, like four or five, before the kids actually start to have a mind of their own.
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Ha! I'm sitting here smiling, after reading this. I was brainwashed from as early as I can remember, but I must have been about 5...it was about the time I'd figured out Santa...that I remember thinking all this talk about God and Jesus was more of the same. My mother was a devout Lutheran. She didn't proselytize (except maybe to me). Instead, she quietly believed. She had a very hard life, including losing an adult child (my sister, who died of cancer at age 35), and I know that Mom's faith helped to sustain her. I admire that, but I don't have it, and in my experience, most people who are religious don't have my mother's grace about it, but instead try to convince. I could go on and on, but it's probably better if I don't. Just know you hit a chord here, and with many more than just me, for sure.
Judi
I can't see the air I breathe, but yet I have faith that it exists...
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