Pivots (Part 2)
(Part 1 of this series is located here.)
I wrestle often with God, and he normally gets me into a headlock till I’m begging for mercy. The second pivot I’m going to talk about is my decision as a teenager to become an atheist.
Unlike my many older brothers and sisters, I was not baptized Catholic at birth. I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but it had something to do with a priest showing up drunk to my older brother’s wedding rehearsal. I think my father stormed out of the rehearsal and stopped attending church. He was brought up to look up to priests as paragons of virtue in the community and for him to see a priest behave in such a human and fallible manner was too much of a blow. Or at least that is how I interpret what happened using my freshman year psychology.
My mother was Protestant, raised by a father who believed that one should sample religions before deciding on your personal view of the universe. My mother recalls him attending various churches: Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist. My mother’s views about religion , I think, come mostly from her father who believed that the Ten Commandments were the key to living a good life.
Sometime before my ninth birthday, my father reconciled with the Church. We had recently moved back to New Jersey and began to attend a local Church run by Cistercians. My parents broached the subject of baptism with me, and gave me the choice. I decided to get baptized and immersed myself into Christianity, as much as an eight year old is able.
I remember at the time having a simple faith. I recall praying without a doubt that I was being heard. I remember dreams where I saw the face of Jesus and of God. I think the faith at this time, the faith of a child, is the baseline I’ve used since and the level of faith to which I’m forever seeking to return.
A few months after I was baptized, my brother Cliff died after several years of struggle due to injuries sustained in a particularly violent auto accident. I remember sitting with my parents and siblings with the pastor of the church. I was the only one in the family who wasn’t crying. The priest asked why and I replied that I knew I would see him again and had no need to cry. This is the type of faith I long to have again.
At the age of thirteen, I decided that I was an atheist. That summer we rented a room at the beach for a week or so. The beach we were on had a weekly fireworks display and we stood on the boardwalk staring skyward. I remember vividly the whistling “incoming” sound that you often hear in movies. An unexploded firework landed in the crowd on the boardwalk some ten or fifteen feet away from where my family was standing. I remember blood and screaming, crowds and confusion, people yelling “Get Back!”
The unexploded firework had hit a woman, bounced off the side of her head and struck and killed her little boy, who she was holding up to get a better view of the display. The woman was left maimed but alive. The next day, while walking along the boardwalk, I remember seeing the red stained section where it happened. They had tried, but they couldn’t get the dyed wood clean. My mind has filtered out much of what I saw, but it took me many years before I could watch a fireworks display without shaking and wanting to scream.
I remember taking the event personally. How could God, my close friend, do something like that to a small boy? And, more self centered on my part, how could he have subjected me to that tragedy? It’s well know that teenagers get pissed off. Well, I was pissed off at God, so I turned my back on him and refused to acknowledge his existence.
It took many years for me to build the relationship back up, never quite to the intimacy it once had.