She's Writing a Novel

Today I hit the quarter-life mark. I'm ignoring that fact, and the fact that it's only a matter of time before I start spotting fine lines and maybe the dancing baby. Ooga-chaka.

I went to the salon this morning for a cut and a blow out. My stylist starting poking at something in the back of my head and making a puzzled face. And then..and then she pulled out a scissors and snipped something off to show me. It was the saddest deadest most stark white wiry hair. I made a joke about the origin of said hair. But it was not the way I had hoped to kick off the second quarter-century of my life.

Nevertheless, it's been an unseasonably warm and gorgeous day, and that is a gift in itself. I'd always wanted the autumn leaves to stay on the trees until my birthday, and this year they have. It's been a lazy day involving crepes and tea and strolling, and later it will involve stillettos and diamonds and a black silk dress and wine and jazz and STEAK. So overall it's a fine day.

My birthday is 11/11. I used to date someone who was also an 11/11, And after him, I started dating a 1/1. If this has some psychic significance I don't know what it is, but it is at least an amusing coincidence.

Last night I had a dream about a graph.

I saw that the X-axis was labeled "laziness."

The Y-axis was labeled "whorishness."

And I? Was apprently trying to graph just what kind of a lazy whore I am.

There is no good time to announce to your baptized, born-again, bible-believing parents that you are no longer a Christian. And I haven't decided if this is the sort of thing I should get out of the way before Christmas, or if I should wait until after the season of pseudo-religious celebration. I don't want to make their holidy glum; I have no desire to see my mother bursting into tears every time she catches sight of a nativity scene, having been reminded that her only daughter has given the baby jesus the heave-ho.

It's been a long, slow slide from the confession of faith. Or rather, should I say, from the inevitable crying "Uncle!" after years of indoctrination. Which is what it was. In the strictist definition of the word, I did "choose" to become a Christian as a young adult. But in reality, what choice did I have? When you dangle a child over a pit of eternal torment and tell them they are free to choose Jesus as their savior - are they making a choice? When their reality has been carefully crafted to include angels and demons and heaven and hell and eternal punishment, does their psychology offer them any options? Is choosing Jesus over hell a confession of faith or an instinct of survival?

My poor parents - they don't understand where I could have found all that fear as a child. The fear of hell, the fear of losing God's favor, the fear of the apocolypse. They assure me that they never emphasized those things - it was all about Love! Love and grace and forgiveness. Sure. But I wasn't stupid. Even if the children's books and lessons were edited, I could read the bible. And that book sure wasn't about love or grace or forgiveness. And when it was, it was love and grace and forgiveness with an asterisk.

And what kind of God has an asterisk?

So I deconstructed the bible and started playing with theology. Universalism, pluralism - fun, comforting ideas that had once seemed like heresy now felt more true - needed to be more true, if I was not to lose my mind, to lose my faith.

Because I was losing my faith. And my mind had been formed in the faith. There seemed no way out of the one without losing the other.

And eventually, even the intellectual honey of liberal Protestant theology started to turn sour. It was an articifical sweetner I'd been choking down in the illusion that life was somehow, intrinsically, not sweet enough.

When I was a child, my parents strictly controlled my sugar intake. When I complained about being deprived of some treat, my mother would sing-song "But you're sweet enough already!"

And that is how I began to feel about life, with all its evils and perils and abominations. The beauty was there, and how much more poignant it was for being obscured. And no metaphysical explanations were necessary, and there was no need for intellectual acrobatics to squeeze out extra drops of meaning and comfort. It was already there. And with my short, finite life I could work to make it grow, to make the beauty grow larger and the darkness grow smaller.

The peace that passeth understanding is not found in the acceptance of Jesus Christ as your personal savior. It is found in acceptance.