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    Faith

    November 3rd, 2013

    I’ve gone back and forth for years thinking about how I want to express my religious beliefs to the boys some day. The hard part in sharing this is that before I can tell someone else, first I have to be able to tell myself.

    I wasn’t raised in any faith. I wasn’t baptised. My parents didn’t belong to a place of worship. A big part of this, of course, was that during my very young years I resided in a communist country. My first visit to a church was with a school field-trip. Even though Bulgaria respected, maintained and showed pride in it’s places of worship, religion wasn’t really evangelized in my youth. I was aware Christianity as “the” singular faith because of my mom’s work as a restorer and an iconographer and Bulgaria was (and actually now post-communist again predominantly Orthodox Christian). I could spot Jesus on wooden artwork in a second, and can tell you how to write his name in ancient Greek by the time I was 6. That… was about it.

    My mother began talking about God, and praying after the car accident my sister and I were in in 1994. I didn’t really get why that changed in her until fairly recently. My father to this day has remained mum on the subject.

    In many respects this un-attention to religion has given me much freedom to explore what *I* believe in. I can’t thank my parents enough for this freedom. I have been fortunate in my travels around the world to attend services across multiple faiths, although there are many I am yet to experience. I have friends that relate to different faiths. My hope is that some day, I will be able to expose the boys to the same and have them come to find their own relationship with God, if they chose to.

    I so badly want to be able to say “I’m a Christian!” or “A Muslim”… or something… but I just can’t. I know that I believe in God, but I also can’t find a faith that truly expresses what in my heart feels most honest.There was a period of time, where when someone would tell me “I’m praying for you” it would upset me, because I felt that their prayers were to pull me toward their faith when I wasn’t yet ready to declare myself. No fear: I have now accepted this as well meaning, understanding that someone keeping me in their thoughts and heart is one of the kindest things they can do. I still pull away from people proselytizing their views, however. Prayer I’ll accept — engaging me into a “truth”, I am not.

    So where does this leave me? As best as I can tell I’m a blend somewhere between a Buddhist and a Christian: somewhere between striving to find the power of understanding our world through myself, and yet seeking the comfort of a Greater being, and relishing and pulling strength from my large (extended) family network.

    What’s *my* God like? Someone (something?) kind, and compassionate, caring and empowered to adjust the outcome of the path I set on. A being that I can love, be loved by and never fear.

    Do I believe in evolution? Hands, down, yes! It makes greater sense to me that both God and evolutionary science exist in unison. As beings we can be self determinate. What is evolution but a being’s long term path to become stronger, better and more resilient?
    And how can science deny the existence of a higher consciousness purely by it’s absence? Gravity and Higgs boson were themselves hypotheses until human’s eventual understanding of our world allowed us to prove them correct. Yet though they were hypotheses, they were also popularly accepted. Why is God any different?

    This week my ties to a greater deity have somehow strengthened. Mostly because I have been talking to God in my head a lot. Almost constantly, to be honest. It started when the 6 year old daughter of a close friend was diagnosed with an acute, terminal, and incurable tumor. While there is room for a miracle, the odds are not in her favor. Since these news, I have been angry with God. Angry over why this cruelty is inflicted on this amazing family and this great kid: cruelty that MY god shouldn’t allow to happen. And then instantly penitent, and pleading, that our family should never know the same anguish. Requests that my children be kept safe and healthy through a long and content life. I fight the urge to ask our pediatrician for regular MRIs. To question how I can be certain that this won’t happen to them… only to really I can’t ever be certain. That I can’t be given comfort through a medical guarantee… only through faith. And this is very hard for me.