Someone once told me that I do not have faith. He was not trying to be cruel; he was simply defining my life by looking at his. He believed in a higher being; I did not. I took this piece of information and leapt, blindly, into a defensive position. I do not need some invisible something! I am fine, fine, fine! I could not accept that my entire existence was worthless without a guiding force. I mean, I'm no superhuman genius philanthropic hero, but I've accomplished some stuff. And I kind of like who I am.
I was raised to question. The main question being, "Why are all these Bible beaters shoving religion down my throat?"
I come from a rural area of southeastern Virginia. We have more churches than restaurants and more pithy WWJD sayings than Pat Robertson.
But even so, I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to church in my life, funerals included. My mother went to church 2-3 times a week for 18 years, left home and then left religion to grapple with other questions. My father's childhood was similar, except he only deserted the building, not the belief.
With no formal training in faith, even as I faced unfettered zeal being blasted at me by my peers, I high-tailed it in the agnostic direction.
Agnosticism is for quitters, or so I got from the novel "Life of Pi." Sitting in my 10th grade Honors English class, I was enraged. So what if I don't know? At least I'm trying! I figured searching was better than settling for any run-of-the-mill religion, or lack thereof.
Then and there I wrote Yann Martel off as a wannabe zoologist with no sympathy for the human mind. I continued to gawk at my gym teacher when he morphed into preacher mode; I still rolled my eyes at announcements for Bible Club. I was searching for some way to shut out all these crazy people and to get as far away from their proselytizing as possible.
I figured college would be different. I could walk around without any stigma attached to my un-haloed head. After all, everyone is some kind of agnostic after high school. No one really knows anything, let alone who created him and why. At U.Va., I would no longer be a minority recalcitrant - everyone would be on my side. Really, what educated person could commit himself to an intangible "presence"? Surely not my fellow Wahoos.
But I was wrong, sinfully wrong. I met brilliant, engaging, open-minded Catholics, Jews, Muslims, you name it. I still couldn't fathom the connection. How do they do it? How can they do it? I was certain if there was a deity, or multiple deities, they were laughing at me and my religious failings. Silly girl, she really is all alone.
I was playing solitaire with life's greatest meaning. In this isolation I had time to think about what my quest really entailed. As a certified agnostic, surely I had made some progress since my proclamation in ninth grade: "Yeah, I'm not sure if there's a God. But I'm looking." Was I really looking? Or was I just trying to eliminate as many potential answers as possible? I wasn't seeking out the best choice; I was trying to mold all the choices into my one firmly held belief: No one really needs religion.
Right? I didn't need rituals and symbols and sanctuaries, did I? I had my family and friends and interests. This amounted to something. I think? But soon my dedication to questioning turned on me; I turned on myself. If the answer is not out there, and it is not in me, maybe the search is fruitless. Maybe my search was fruitless. I was going about this all wrong, I thought. There is supposed to be some resolution after years of a journey. I didn't even have an inkling of one.
Then it hit me. No, not the booming voice of God and not the subtle touch of karma. It was an idea - an intangible presence, you might say. There was something I just wasn't grasping, the crucial thing. Faith. That person was right - I had no faith. I couldn't for a second allow that I was not in control. I could not let someone else take command of my question-asking, answer-seeking plight. I had to dictate the terms. Which left me with a lot of Mary Scott and not much else.
Maybe I will never be able to fall into religion. To leap, blindly, into the belief that I do not have all the answers, sometimes not even the right questions. But I will fall into myself and trust that sometimes I won't be fine - sometimes I will be alone and I can still prevail. I think I can have faith in that.
Mary Scott's column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at m.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com.
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