Losing My Religion

"Help me believe in anything, cuz I wanna be someone who believes."

Counting Crows, Mr. Jones

"And [he] was knocked forever into that middle place, unable to worship a God in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve."

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

This one time, when things were just starting off with the Nica I tried to date, he and his bandmate friends randomly showed up in San Miguelito and started a jam session by the dock. One of them, who played the box (I know there is a real name for his instrument, but I don't know what it is), asked me if I could sing one of his favorite songs, REM's "Losing my Religion." I told him I knew the songs, but not the lyrics, but conveniently he whipped them out of his case and we attempted a sing along, which, if you've ever heard me sing, was extremely weak. 

To paraphrase my friend Isabel, who lives in super Evangelical Nueva Guinea, I've never had to think about religion more than while living in Nicaragua. And I've never felt so lost and unsure of my actual beliefs. Like my inability to sing "Losing my Religion" loudly and clearly, I don't feel able to say that I don't believe in God. But to invoke God at every turn, as Nicaraguans do, "Si Dios quiere," "Dios Primero" "Gracias a Dios," "Ni quiera dios," "Vaya con Dios" feels equally disengenuous. While I have learned to parrot these phrases in Spanish, they feel hollow to me and I frequently forget to invoke God's approval to have a meeting with someone 2 hours later. 

My religious journey started off so simply. I was raised Catholic by two parents who worked hard to make religion part of our lives. They worked hard to get the money to put us through Catholic school and to unfailingly attend mass every Sunday. As a child, I  loved the mystery of the church, the saints, the rituals that structured our family life. In high school, I was involved in youth group for a while and while I never quite fit in, I enjoyed having another sense of community, particularly as I struggled to adjust to public school from the shelteredness of Catholic school. 

In college, however, I predictably drifted. I still went to mass sometimes, and was pleased to find a much more diverse and inclusive community than in my white bread upper class town but as is the point of college, I began to question things. The bigotry spewing from the church on an institutional level, the institutionalized sexism and devaluation of women's contributions, the mysteries that had once captivated me no longer seeming so powerful. And so I did the usual things that the spiritually homeless seekers try on a "diverse" college campus, experimenting with attending Jewish seders, a Sufi islamic meditation circle, a Buddhist meditation group and Congregationalist services. And every now and then, usually after a wild Saturday out or something else guilt inducing, I would crawl back to Catholic mass, looking for solace and a relief to homesickness.

Flash forward to Nicaragua, a very Christian, conservative country. During training, I lived with Doña Bemilda, an evangelical woman of deep faith, who remains one of the most loving and supportive people I have known here. I went with her to services a few times, which were long and uncomfortable for me, as I didn't really know what was supposed to be going on, and there was some yelling. Not a lot, compared to some churches, but yelling really turns me off from any religious message. After attending a few times with her, I looked for excuses to get out of it. Yet I felt too uncomfortable to go to Catholic services or pray or meditate on my own. It was a weird limbo. 

Imagine my relief when I realized my site was a very Catholic town and that my host family was Catholic. Having literally nothing to do and being invited along by the family, I went to mass A LOT when I first got to site, because it was Purisima (a festival to celebrate Mary's immaculate conception) and they were having a novena of masses at 5 am. I went to mass that December more times than I had probably gone in the last four years. There is something beautiful about listening to the Scriptures in a town of agriculturalists and fishermen: its context makes a lot more sense. 

Yet Latin American Catholicism is a different enough tradition that I soon felt out of place. I learned the mass in Spanish, and while the only thing I learned in elementary school Spanish class was the Our Father (El Padre Nuestro) at least I had that leg up. But other things I couldn't relate to. While I can appreciate intellectually the indigenous subversion through syncretism through the altars to the (white) Virgin Mary and the saints, I can't connect to them emotionally. The tradition of saying "Viva ________" and giving a round of applause to whoever's feast day it happens to be. The fireworks and chichero bands at 4 am. The out of time clapping to accompany any song. I felt happier and more connected to my community by attending mass, respectfully placing my arm on the arms of elderly women at the Sign of Peace, getting awkward breast height hugs from my students, and watching young neighbors receive first communion. But ironically, while drowning in it, I felt less and less connected to religion and God and less and less sure of its existence.

The thing I find strangest abou this is that I am surrounded by extremely religious people, often in difficult circumstances. Their faith is inspiring and something I wish I could imitate.

But at the same time, I am disillusioned by seeing the hypocrisy of a society that claims to be Christian, yet where corruption and wife beating and cheating and sleeping with students and so many other things that go against any traditional idea of morality or treating others with respect are in evidence. On the other hand, I guess it might be intellectual, with my devouring of too many books that lay bare the hypocrisy of religion at a higher level. And on its deepest level, it is also just an intuition, a feeling that maybe there isn't anything more than this, as cruel and crushing as that might be, especially to the poorest members of society. 

While I grapple with the "middle place" described by Rushdie yet struggle to maintain a  facade of belief necessary for working in this culture, I am relatively sure of a few things. My upbringing taught me about the importance of working for the good of others and there's no reason to change that. There can be morality without the idea of God, and maybe it is an even stronger one, not rooted in external reward but coming from a place of deep respect and reverence for fellow human beings. And secondly, whether or not the soul exists, there is something that makes each and everyone of us unique and the struggle to build societies that honor that is the most beautiful thing I can imagine.