Let there be kvetching

I took the SelectSmart.com Religiomatic test per my friend Crystal's recommendation.
Here are my top ten scores of which religions best fit my answers:

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Theravada Buddhism (93%)   
3. Neo-Pagan (91%)   
4. Mahayana Buddhism (84%)   
5. Liberal Quakers (80%)   
6. New Age (78%)   
7. Secular Humanism (71%)   
8. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (71%)   
9. New Thought (64%)   
10. Reform Judaism (64%)   

I found it weird that, while I've been calling myself "a heathen since the Reagan administration" (I became an atheist in 1988 but I've lapsed a bit since then, tending to knock wood), the test ranked my "nontheism" just below Scienfuqyngtology. Gah!

I should've known it would catch up to me. All that banana nut bread. All those Sundays my mom would drag me up to Barneveld. "We are part of the Mother, part of the Father...". More dessert breads. Then back to Catholic school the next day.

I can't help but think my parents overexposed me to conflicting religions as part of an innoculation campaign. "If we do this, he won't join a cult like [my mom's youngest sister] did."

I have a very unhealthy view of organized religion. I believe that a minyan is a fabulous idea. I believe one guy telling a bunch of other people they're bad but not as bad as the other people they know is a rotten way to spend a Sunday. Then again, I still like the Dead Kennedys.

What's the upshot? I don't have a formal religion. I feel that being alone in my neuroses is much more logical than inflicting my delusions on others and pushing it as fact.

"You're going to Hell!" So what? I lived in upstate New York -- even Southie can't top that. I heard the Hell-spiel a lot from people thinking a dry-walled bunker near the canal was a place for a community. Didn't that Jesu-book say something building on high, solid ground?

I've got more than a chip on my shoulder about religion. I don't like to talk about it anymore because I come away thinking about hypocrisy instead of community. Most people get involved in a faith because of the people they meet through that faith. I hear things like "you get a tattoo, you can't be buried next to your kin." Fuck that -- my body, my family, and I'm one of the few people my age with his own burial plot in the cemetery his great-grandfather surveyed.

I call dibs. Yes, it's all immaterial. Yes, when I die it won't matter. Yes, I'm whining and belly-aching. Yes, I may throw away thing I consider valuable right now. I still don't want a book telling me it gets the final say over my experiences. The Bible was written by humans -- us.

Butterfly ballot.
3/5ths clause.
Edict of Nantes.

I'm sorry, I got wicked lost. Okay, the point: I'm jealous of people deeply within religions. Jealous! I admit it! Why? Because they have a contentment I could only get with a lobotomy. It is my nature to question, incessantly. I could never stuff that back into the box and pretend everything is okay. I'd be lying to myself and that would shine through me.

There's a lot of good stuff in the Bible. However, I tend to think of it as a weird novel. "In the beginning, God..." Hold it. You're introducing a character but nothing giving us a clue about his background. I prefer:

God pulled out a cigarette. He didn't have a match, so He thought about light. The cigarette mocked him.

"Light, damn you!" The cigarette chortled more loudly.

"What the fuck do I have to do to get a smoke in this place?" he bellowed.

"You have to have a place first" the cigarette guffawed.

God furrowed his brow and twirled the cig around his fingers.

"Let there be light."

There's some primo blasphemy.
-fiat luxury, ps/d