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Posted by Kate on 11/20/2008, 7:20 am, in reply to "dragging out the soapbox..."
My oldest sister was a staunch atheist, and she started sending books to my mother. I was about seven when I discovered Bertrand Russell's, "Why I Am Not a Christian" on my mother's bookshelf. I was horrified, and terrified. My mother was going to hell. The Devil was going to come get us. I was sure of it. I began to have nightmares about Satan and Hell -- the devil would surely come out of the shower drain and drag us down to the Netherworld. Where in the world do kids get this stuff? I have no clue. Maybe I watched too many episodes of Night Gallery or Twilight Zone...
My best friend and I were in her backyard, trying to dig to China. Suddenly, when we were in a muddy hole about two feet deep, I realized.."Kim...before we get to China, what if we get to Hell? What then??? What if the Devil pulls us in?!?" I was absolutely petrified. My dear friend, who had no such fear, calmly said, "Okay, that's alright, we don't have to do this," and filled in the hole that had taken us all morning to dig.
I tried to search for God. Having lost my father, I was looking for the Father I Could Never Lose, the Father Who Would Never Leave Me. I went to Vacation Bible School with my Lutheran Friend. Someone gave me a Jehovah's Witness children's story book, and when my Mom found it, boy was she pissed. She had a hard time explaining to me why they weren't really Christians and had some messed up beliefs. Especially since she wasn't a Christian herself. My dad's Mormon cousins did their best to proselytize me, but fortunately they were too transparent about the roots of racism in their faith (and in their own lives), and I rejected Mormonism. I finally started going on a Sunday School bus that came through our neighborhood and took all the kids to a Baptist church. There I learned to recite the Books of the Bible in order, and learned about Noah, Job, Adam, Moses, and all those other guys. I learned to let this little light of mine shine. I got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart. I learned the wise man built his house upon the rock. I made a book of colored construction paper -- green for creation, black for sin, red for the blood of Jesus, white because he washes us white as snow, gold for the streets of heaven.
Mom put me in a Christian school when I was in sixth grade, and it didn't go too well. Girls had to wear dresses, which I thought was stupid. I tried to tell the teachers that dresses weren't such a good idea because the boys would just stand under the monkey bars and look up our skirts. I thought they'd want to know. They didn't. I got in a lot of trouble for pointing that out. I guess they just didn't want girls to play on the monkey bars. I also got in trouble for not doing the required 10 pages in my Bible workbook every night. The mimeographed pages were all blurry and the fill in blanks didn't make sense. I got in trouble a lot there.
We moved out of state, I went back to public school. Then I REALLY started getting into trouble. Drugs, drinking, running around with boys...then running around with men, because most of them were considerably over 18, out of school, and sure as hell should have known better than to be hanging out with a teenage girl. Why was I hanging out with men? Hmm...Freud would say I was still desperately seeking the father I had lost.
Is there a point to all this? Oh yes. But now I have to go to work. I'll come back and rant more later.
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