She's Writing a Novel

Since coming out as an atheist (and here I must have an aside as I catch myself using the phrase "coming out" again. Atheism is presently the most despised and distrusted minority in the United States, falling behind any race, religion, or sexual orientation. When people who are technically atheists refer to themselves as "secular humanists" or "freethinkers" or even "agnostic," the consideration of social self-preservation probably plays a role in the selection of a semantic designation) I've been more mentally/emotionally content and more intellectually excited than I have in years. Which is to say, allowing myself to acknowledge the reality of my non-belief, and my conviction of the imperitve of that non-belief, has energized me in a way that no "faith" ever has. To be able consume myself fully with the consideration of what is rather than worrying about what may be is a delicious freedom that I would not ironically call redemption.

In any event, I've come across something interesting on an acquaintence's blog. I pop in there occaisionally because A) I used to date the fellow, and you know how that morbid curiousity goes, and B) he is a theology student of the progressive kind, and I wonder what those kids are going to be teaching people in the coming years. Now, I happen to think that the progressive/emergent movement is eventually going to be divided and conquered by political evangelicalism and intellectual secularism respectively, and it is sort of a shame because I counted myself in their camp at the end of my days as a christian and I think in some respects they are on to something; they are certainly ahead of the lunatic evangelicals on a lot of things. Which is to say they've discovered a compassionate humanist worldview and stamped JESUS all over it, but I won't hold that against them for now.

Anyway, back to the interesting thing said by the acquaintence. I read the following statement of his a few days after I'd written my "Atheist Confession of Non-Faith" :

if one is faithfully dedicated to God, who cares if you play with ideas about God that may turn out to be wrong.

This got my attention, and got me thinking, for a few reasons.

In the waning days of my Christianity I would tell people, particularly my ever-concerned Christian parents, that ideas about God cannot possibly matter to God. If God is the big all powerful, all knowing, and, most importantly, all loving God the rumors have it that it is, then my ideas about God can have no effect on any immutable God and its relationship with me, much as my playing with ideas about a tree can never change what a tree is.

What ideas about God CAN have an effect on is how I live in the world. Sure, there are some esoteric, arbitrary questions about God, and you can find these in seminaries I'm sure. But inevitably beliefs will have direct consequences for how we live. If I believe that God is pleased when I kill those who do not do his will, my idea about God (and "his will") has caused me to murder. If I believe God has given me eternal life, I might not feel so inclined to be sure I enjoy and appreciate this one. If I believe God wants me to have compassion on those less fortunate, I will make efforts to help others. If I believe that God has opinions about sex, I will approach sex not rationally but with a preoccupation with trying to somehow figure out what God's "boundaries" are, and staying within those "boundaries."
And we can't say simply that ideas are right or wrong simply because what they prompt people to do is good or bad (and not just because "good" and "bad" are empty terms, but I'm not getting into that here); if I believe that a little fairy wants me to hold a door open for someone on crutches, I'm doing a compassionate thing for another human being which we would call "good" or "right." But I'm still wrong about the existence of the fairy. (But I'm not getting into "true" vs "useful/good" here either).
Anyway, what I'm getting to is that "faithfully dedicated to God" is problematic in conjunction with the concept of playing with ideas about God (well, really it's just problematic, period). Because I have to assume that "faithfully dedicated" is a way of life, not just a state of mind. So for every new idea of God, the enaction of "faithful dedication" can change. But if the idea of God is wrong, then the faithful dedication to the God of the wrong idea is merely faithful dedication but not anything right or admirable, because it is doing something wrong. Suicide bombers remain faithfully dedicated, even though I would venture to guess they have found a wrong idea about God. But hey, they are faithfully dedicated and that is what really matters....see the problem here?

This is where we have to be brave, and admit that we make God in our image. Hey, maybe there will turn out to be some great underlying unifying "force" or something big "out there" that we don't yet know about or understand, but we must realize that the God the religious claim to know and worship is really their idea of God. For some, God is an exacting, demanding God of rules. For some, God is a compassionate, loving God of mercy. Everyone claims to be the closest to knowing what God "really is."

The closest to knowing what God really is, is to admit you know no God.

Atheism is the future of Christianity...and the future of all religions and of all humanity, if humanity survives and if it is to survive. Seeing the perils and problems of organized, systematic religion, more and more people are claiming not to be "religious" while still holding on to (ideas about) God. I want to tell them: Let go.

...he who wants to find God must lose God.

"The atheist does not say "there is no God," but he says "I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God; the word 'God' is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. ...The Bible God I deny; the Christian God I disbelieve in; but I am not rash enough to say there is no God as long as you tell me you are unprepared to define God to me."
--C. Bradlaugh

There is one way to eat a grapefruit - cut in half, with a spoon, scooping out one segment at a time while being careful not to tear the veil between segments.

The other day, the Russian lover observed me eating a grapefruit this way and spoke up. "All you American women are so strange. You all eat grapefruit that way. Why? Why do you eat it that way?"

I was puzzled. "Becuase...that's how you eat a grapefruit." And then I was curious. "Well, how else could you eat a grapefuit?"

The Russian lover looked at me as if he was seriously beginning to doubt my intelligence. "The same way you always eat an orange. Just peel it and eat it."

It was an epiphany for me. I had never, ever thought about eating a grapefruit the way I would eat an orange (or vice versa). Never ever. My brain was as compartmentalized as the segmented citrus fruits it had never contemplated eating in any other way.

So today I packed a grapefruit for lunch, and tried to eat it like an orange. And it worked! There proved no insurmountable obstacle to eating a grapefruit without a spoon, and I was saved the trouble of finding a spoon, and a knife, and having to wipe down my computer monitor after droplets of grapfruit juice had gone splurting all over.

However, there is something to be said for a bowl, and a spoon, a grapefuit half, and being squirted in the eye. I don't think I'll ever give it up altogether.

On one of our earliest dates, the Russian lover took me to a Chineese restaraunt. At the end of the meal, they brought out fortune cookies and a small plate of orange slices. I munched on one slice slowly and, I hoped, seductively. I was preoccupied with my own mastication performance art when I looked up to realize that the rest of the orange slices were gone. All gone. And I looked up in time to see the Russian lover pop the last half of a slice into his mouth, peel and all.

"Did you just...eat the peel of that?" I asked.

"Of course," he said, confused at the question.

I started to giggle. And I couldn't stop. I just looked at him and giggled with sheer delight.
It was so unthinkable, so absurd, and yet...why not?

And now I sometimes catch myself, after peeling an orange and eating it, just nibbling a bit at the peel and finding it...not so bitter and strange as I would have thought.

But if he suggests I eat a banana peel and all...well, a girl can only be so open-minded.

The Russian lover's mother left for Moscow yesterday. She had been visiting us, i.e. living with us, for two weeks. When I tell people this, most of them gasp and give me horrified looks of pity. I don't know why, but I'm extremely laid back about these things. It probably helps a lot that his mother can't really speak in English (although she can read it and understand it, which helps but is also spooky. And I end up doing that ignorant American thing where you talk REAL LOUD and S L O W instead of just clearly.)

In any case, I'm just not THAT put out. I'm used to rolling with it, to making sacrifices, or just dealing with what you've got. So if Mom wants to come for a few weeks? Well, we'll just figure it out.

Plus, Mom cooks. She cooks Russian food that is pretty good, although I like the Russian lover's food better (we're more fish/vegetable than meat/potato people). She cooks soups and things that I don't understand and fills our refridgerator with them. And she also does dishes! I mean, really. So yes, it's MOM living with us. But it's like having a cook and a maid, and one who imports Russian vodka!

Yes, I'm a terrible human being. I wear it well.

Let's talk about real Russian vodka, how it is unlike any vodka you've had, how it makes Grey Goose taste like pond slime. I do not exaggerate. The Goose is slimey and not all that tasty, although it does beat out a few other, even more unworthy opponents. And the Stoli you get here, btw, is as fake as your Louis Vuitton bag. The truth will out! But real, true Russian vodka...that...that is like Evian, my friends. This is vodka you can put in your water bottle and no one, not even you, will know that it is not the nectar of a spring in the Alps. Smooth, sweet deliciousness. This is what makes the Russians the ubermensch, I'm sure of it.

So, I'm going to miss the Russian mom a bit, although we exchanged only about 12 words. I spent a lot of time listening to Russian conversations and not learning any Russian while I was at it. That's not true: I now know how to say Hi, Bye, Thank You, Yes, No, and HUH? All of which should get me around the Motherland just fine one day.

But Mom was really sweet, or at least, she was really quiet and smiled and I never understood a word that she said. So it suddenly feels very... empty in the apartment. But, this is a good thing. It means that we have just this much more space in our tiny apartment again. It means that I don't have to put on pants before I stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It means I don't have to feel left out of conversations held in another language. It means I don't feel obligated to make it home in time for dinner. And while it means there is no breakfast laid out in the morning when I wake up, it also means that when I wake up in the morning I can have a pleasant romp with the lover and not have to worry about the fact that our bed squeaks, but not as loud as I shriek.