I wonder if the butterfly, after stretching her wings and taking to the air that first time only to be caught in the swirling vortex of a passing freight train, ever considers crawling back into her cocoon?
That's sort of the feeling I've had recently. Not that I want to go all the back to the caterpillar days but maybe just a reprieve somewhere between transitions; somewhere in that anonymous space between who I was and who I am becoming.
When we were in the middle of Christianity, I had a lot of views. One of those views was frustration because the church seemed to always be against things: anti-abortion, anti-homosexuals, anti-liberalism, anti-feminism, and so on. Even when it tried hard to spin things toward the positive (pro-life, support marriage, family values) I always found myself thinking, "No one is buying this. Hell, I'm not even buying it." And so, like many others have noted and proposed from within the church, I wanted my life to be defined by what I was truly "for" and what I truly supported, not backhanded compliments and slick semantics.
Now, I find myself on the opposite side of the coin but still struggling with the same issue. I don't want to spend my days fighting religion. I really don't. And yet, I strongly believe there are tenants of fundamentalism which need to be shut down. Permanently. I believe that there are good people living in unnecessary fear and guilt, and children being dangled over the flames of hell for no other reason than that they were born, and people being condemned for their sexuality, and women being confined to antiquated roles, and, and, and... And these things make me sad and angry and I find the late Christopher Hitchens and the current Richard Dawkins and those in their "aggressive atheists" camp to be of great value and justified in their logic that religion is a poison for humanity. There are days when "live and let live" feels like a giant cop-out.
But I don't want to be the angry atheist either --in part because I'm an agnostic (I realize that this distinction means little to nothing in our particular geographic/Baptist inundated sphere) and also because religion consumed the first 38 years of my life. I'd rather not hand over the next however many years I have left, even as its antagonist. I worried my entire life about those who didn't know the "good news" and who were living miserable lives apart from God and would some day suffer eternal consequences. I weighed every conversation in light of this belief and every relationship in light of this belief. It was exhausting.
And I could easily exhaust myself again trying to dig out and expose every landmine that fundamentalist religion has left poised for destruction against humanity or, OR,
OR...
I can follow the lead of those who've tiptoed through before me and I can grab the hand of those behind me and we can weave our way through together taking steps FORWARD. I may still stop and scream, "Hey dumbass! You're blowing people's legs off over here!" in the general direction of the religious world now and then. But I'm ready to stop spinning my wheels on spent arguments and to gain some traction on the things that matter to me now by supporting them, talking about them, linking them, celebrating them. And if someone wants to throw religion out there as an argument, I may or may not engage with it, but I sure as hell won't let it suck the life out of me.
Life that is so. very. good. without it!
Freight trains be damned -this girl will fly!
