Operating on Religion. Act 1.

written September 24, 2010

I met SJ in college. We hit it off immediately. Both from the west coast, we were marooned in Philadelphia and its fast east coast ways and lackluster sunshine. Our mothers bonded while they moved us into our tiny freshmen rooms. Well, my room was a tiny double. SJ’s roommate was a Pakistani girl that for reasons unclear withdrew at the last moment leaving SJ with a double, already slightly larger than normal, to herself. My mother and I were on the floor of my new room, transforming it into the set from one of those commercials Bed Bath & Beyond runs during college move in season. “Yoohoo. Anyone in there? We don’t have a key,” wafted through my ground floor window. And thus I met SJ’s mother.

I immediately saw in SJ my salvation. The world feeds us the line that college is where it’s at. College is where you meet your best friends (true for my parents), where you live and reminisce about it for the rest of your life. I stepped foot in my assigned hallway, opened my assigned door, and checked my subconscious expectation for an assigned best friend.

Which is all to say, SJ and I connected on a plane I hadn’t quite experienced before. Politically, culturally we were borne of opposite threads. I grew up in a household that wasn’t religious. My parents aren’t atheist, but we didn’t go to church. I did go to bible study – of my own free will – because I found the exercises fun and it was run by my neighbor’s mother. My favorite book for a long time was the Children’s Bible because I loved the pictures (one on every page) and the stories. But none of this molded me into a religious person.

I went to a high school stuffed with big ideas and liberal veins. The majority of my friends fit this mold and those who didn’t were considered naive and given more than one impromptu sex education demonstration with a spoon and a fist over greasy pizza and chocolate milk cartons in the cafeteria. We were lucky to go to a high school that encouraged us to fight our teachers, to debate our peers. Occasionally we dug ourselves into holes, but by the time we graduated we had tasted blood. We flipped our tassels, tossed our caps, and began our hunt for some college meat to sink our considerable (or so we thought) canines into.

So I expected myself to be frustrated with SJ. To stalk her conservative values and take them down one peg at a time. I admit that at first this is how I approached our friendship. We’d watch The Music Man – in love with the world our favorite musicals presented us on screen for 3 hours. Marian, the librarian. But at lunch, I’d bring up Prop 8 and ask again what she believed and why.

I quickly abandoned the huntress and prey approach. I respected SJ’s ideals. I didn’t understand them, so I grilled her constantly about her religion and learned about it. I went to church with her, got a Book of Mormon, went to a bible study or two. Mormonism became my “Operation” game (a stand in for all general religious ideas). I poked my tweezers into its organs and mulled the result over.

I haven’t been convinced.

I’m still a spiritual person. I can Have Faith and Believe in the Universe to work things out, but “God” and His principles still stand to question.

I’ll leave my specific objections to Part 2. As I’ve been writing this post, I’ve been listening to the L Word in the background but now approaches the finale (with Anabella Sciorra) and I’d like to give it (and her) my full attention.

Also my nose is running – I shall vanquish ye head cold! – and it’s slowing down my WPM.