Ironically despite the thousands they had spent to initiate us into this new incense laden club, only on Easter and random Sundays did we ever attend Peterborough's Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. My mother was not Greek and she had come to prefer guilt in the Pentescotal variety, as my father couldnt stand anyone in the Greek community anyway, except when he could, we as children more often went to the evangelical and charismatic Calvary Pentecostal Church. To further convolute our upbringing my mother was horrified at the lack of prayer in public school and unable to afford private schooling opted instead to put us in the government funded Canadian Catholic School Board. So there you have it I was raised as Greek Orthodox, Pentescostal, and Catholic and told by my mother that all I was was a christian and denomination didn't matter. When I asked her if this logic extended to Jews, Muslims, Hindu etcetera, she prayed vigourously and told me dear God no, Jesus is THE only way to heaven. The Bible is THE only divine word of God and it is infallible, and whether lighting incense, getting spanked by nuns (this never happened in my day but its a great image n'est pas) or watching people speak in tongues ultimately the only thing that mattered was the bible. Thats what I came to believe, and so as a child I believed the bible to be a bearer of absolute wisdom.
As a child I was also ostracised, I was an outsider. This was especially true during the sacraments, imagine as a child being in grade two and having all the other kids go to their first communion classes and you and the one united kid got to colour pictures of Jesus instead. ( The Catholic Jesus didnt look like the Orthodox Jesus by the way) I was also not interested in sports and loved musicals, I know cliches abound. I cried easily was scrawny as hell and I let my mother part my hair and put me in overalls. Until my voice broke I squealed when I spoke, and I had one volume loud, if I needed to whisper I simply yelled with a hoarse voice directly into someones ear. I believed in God though and I prayed he make the other kids like me.
As high school approached it came to my attention that the evil public school board (the one that didnt have prayer) had a local school for the arts. The program made so much sense for me and I asked my mother to let me go. Shockingly she said yes without a fuss. I went through the application process, was accepted and was off to create a new life. It was within the first week that I met my first pagan, and my first homosexual, I also got more involved in community theatre at this time too, so all of a sudden they were everywhere. I also met another first, an atheist. Not only that but I found out they too were everywhere. Naturally I didnt tell my mother lest she send me back to the Catholics who hated me but I needed to pray and pray hard.
I also had questioned my own sexuality for awhile already, as the bible was the absolute truth I knew God didnt make gays and that with enough prayer he would help me. I set myself apart in high school and became the holier than thou kid who tried to save everyone. I did that until I didnt. Eventually I realized God wasnt making me crave the men any less and that the gay people, atheists and pagans I knew seemed like decent, moral people. How could this be? They were intrinsically evil! Werent they? This is when I came out at school, I also denounced God. Eventually I told my mother who called every pastor at Calvary one by one. Eventually she figured one of them would get through to me. So there was pastor Victoria (name changed), a mother of three who admitted that as a woman she should only ever be an associate pastor, pastor Dave (name made up, dont even remember the real one) a father of twin toddlers who was really cute and hipsterish, he was supposed to win me over by peerish coolness, this too failed, I also got the intellectual guy, who came to Jesus after a lifetime as an atheist, and ultimately the big guns I got to meet an ex-gay who told me he was engaged to a woman and was almost into her. All these people ironically only made me feel more confident in that I was gay and God was BS.
I dont believe God is BS anymore. Through conversations with progressive Christians and other faith leaders and through a recommitment to prayer in my own life, I have come to take on a different view of God. My current view of God is very much shaped by my muddled religious upbringing. I have come to believe God meant for me to be gay and that he did that to take the blinders my mother had installed off, perhaps it was for her too. God is the force that drives life. Throughout history we as humans have struggled to understand him, her or it. We all created narratives for God, this is something that connects all cultures and why I find denying God to be so difficult. A belief in the higher seems to be in our DNA.
I do believe though that ultimately what ever narrative we are most comfortable with, they all lead to the same God. God is too large to be explained by a Bible, a Torah, A Rumi, or a Qu'Ran. God is personal and through meditation, prayer and an open mind we can come to understand only a small piece of this awesome power. All of these faiths understand some piece of God but none of them completely have it. Whats more I believe if we put them all together into one giant faith we may but graze the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I guess my point and I do have one is that we need to adjust our conversation and language in discussing God. We need to stop compartmentalizing ourselves as people of faith and we should all come and worship and explore together. We should drop what divides us and embrace the fact that we are all ultimately searching for the same thing. Hell even the atheists. I spoke the truth as I see it, nothing I have said is an absolute.
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