My Religion's Past

If human beings were not as averagely intelligent as we have evolved to become, then we would have gone extinct thousands of years ago. If one takes away the tools and the shelter and the clothes and we are so terrifyingly weak. This fact is no scarier for anyone other than us, and having faith in something larger than your existence was and still is the way people battle away a lot of this fear. Therefore, everyone on Earth holds some set of beliefs. If we feel that humans are here because we have some higher power that is more terrible than our predators and more awesome than the diseases, then our existence is justified and we are safe. Whether they be religious or not is up to them, but no one lives without them. My personal set of beliefs and religious practices was established over my entire lifetime and is still vulnerable to change even now.

Daddy was born to two genetically predisposed Methodists. His daddy fought in World War II, and survived three gunshots for his wife, not G-d. Granddaddy and Grandma did not really actively practice or believe in being a Methodist. They attended church occasionally, except for Dad, who threw a tantrum at age 8 and never had to go again. After enduring his service in the Korean War, he followed his father’s example in what to believe. He didn’t really stick to a religion growing up, and sired seven children and one half son.

When I was five years old, Mom became pregnant again. This was my father’s last child. She went into labor on Christmas Eve. I remember asking our nanny when the new baby, Aurora, was coming home. They managed to hide it from me for two weeks before they told me that Aurora died during labor. The umbilical cord had gotten wrapped around her neck and she had choked to death before they caught it. They were devastated, both of them. I was too young to understand the true gravity of what had happened. Daddy told me that in order to get him out of his depression, some of his closest friends took him on a road trip. They gave him a story called the Shack by William P. Young.

“Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his "Great Sadness," Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever.”

The road trip and the book helped Dad to recover. He tells me that today he believes in the eagles, high cirrus clouds, coronas, deer, and that book that helped recover himself from his loss. This unique view on life makes my Dad an interesting person, but does not really affect my life that much anymore.

My mom, Beth R. Koenig, was born a reform Jew and was raised as a reform Jewish person. She attended Hebrew School until after her bat mitzvah or Jewish coming-of-age ceremony. After that, she attended the holidays and she did little events and services. Otherwise, she did not practice. I suspect that her religious choices have to do with her family. I used to visit and stay over, but now, only my brother talks to them. Over my lifetime, I have seen her grow into spiritualism. I am not completely sure on how this happened, or why it did, but her transition changes my life irrevocably. The rules of her life didn’t stop with her. My younger sibling and I were given gluten free and dairy free diets all the time for “a healthier lifestyle” even though we had no allergy. Homeopathic remedies are go-to medicinal routes. She nags me even now to visit the chiropractor every other week. The problem I have here is this: I am not a spiritualistic person. I do not believe even in half the ideas that she does. Unfortunately, I depend on this person to feed and nurture me. I live with her and see her everyday. I think that it is better for me not to fight with her about her beliefs every other day. I let a lot, and I do mean a lot of issues with her go. I often will nod my head along with her words, or give an empty agreement. Due to this relationship I have in my life, it is actually sort of difficult to slip a belief into my head. First, I will identify that it isn’t what I believe, and then I will tear it apart and find everything that is wrong with it. Finally, I will kick it to the curb. However, when surrounded by others who believe differently than I do, I am able to respect their ideas and do my best to tolerate and understand.

In sixth or seventh grade, I learned that later reports of the tragedy of a super eruption due to the majestic Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii suggested that Pompeii’s citizens believed that the Roman god of fire, Vulcan, was angry with them. On the day of this infamous catastrophe, it was said that about half the entire population actually tried to give offerings and prayers to the mountain. His name later gave fruit to the name for the never before seen erupting mountain, volcanoes. The decimation of an entire city that believed that if they could appease Vulcan, the sky would come back proves that every belief can evolve, fail, be challenged, and or change.

My first “official” religion was Reform Judaism. In second grade, I moved away from my best friend. That was not acceptable, and so I began attending the Rodeph Shalom Synagogue. That was not the only reason I became a member. My first and favorite part of the entire religion is Sunday morning services. The music and unity of this this ceremony was like nothing I had ever seen before. I felt out of place until I started singing along with everybody else. I felt a positive connection to everyone around me. I fell in love with that connection, and I graduated from Hebrew School last year. Zooming in on the more religious aspects of Judaism, I am a very loose practitioner myself. I attribute this to how I was raised and also my personal philosophies.

The highest power that I believe exists is the balance of the universe we exist in. To be more specific, I think that our entire world revolves on the balance of opposites. Life and death, good and bad, action and reaction. I believe that every single loss has an equal and opposite gain and vise versa. That is what I think drives the world. Everything has a price, everything. I can’t really believe in a god because I haven’t experienced anything that could make me believe in them. As to the contents of the Torah, the Jewish holy book, I agree with most of the philosophical content and think a lot of its history actually happened. However, there’s a lot of the Torah that’s disagreeable or looks to have- a covert reason of existence. I found most major religions to have this in common. So until my way of thinking is challenged on Vesuvius level proportions, I plan on maintaining this personalized set of beliefs.