Act II
What I Don't Believe
Posted Aug 27, 2007 by Lyn May
When I was 14, my mother and I cut a deal: I could go to the movies on Sunday afternoon IF I went to church on Sunday morning. I thought it was a fine arrangement because I got to see my friends at church, I loved communion because it was so lively, with at least one church lady promised to fall out in a fit of faith, and I liked Welch’s grape juice.
And, I loved the sermons because, black of skin, large of body and full of faith, Reverend Shaw was the very embodiment of righteous indignation. He spoke for God and his son Jesus Christ on this earth and in this moment -- and you’d better listen up or be damned. It was thrilling. But I didn’t believe anything he said to me.
It wasn’t even a conscious -- and certainly not informed -- decision not to believe. I just didn’t. I was smart enough to know that just about everyone around me did believe, so I kept quiet and clapped along with the crowd.
My first wedding vows taken a half-century ago, at 18, should have tipped me off to my inner voice. The night before, with my future husband’s cousin who was also the Baptist minister who would marry us hovering, I edited our wedding vows, deleting just about everything -- especially anything that smacked of obeying anyone.
By 20 I’d read Huston Smith’s "The Religions of Man" and decided the only religion that came close to making sense to me was the Unitarian Universalist Association. There I rested, easily for the most part, for nearly two decades. You know you’ve wandered off when you begin identifying as an apostate UUA.
When I accepted that I was done with religion, I felt a sense of peace and comfort. For many, to say you do not belong to any religious faith is to assume that you chose science over religion, that you are an atheist or angry with God, that you are “new age,” whatever that means, or mysteriously plugged into the Universe, or that you are content to describe yourself as “a spiritual person.” I check none of the above.
I love reading about religion, I follow the wars started in the name of religion with distress; I’m fascinated by how lucrative religion is for some; I’m moved by individual spiritual experiences; and, I admire some of the convictions of the deeply faithful. I must say “some” here because, for me, not all religious convictions are admirable.
I have no idea what will happen to me when I die, and I am unconcerned about it. I am concerned with how I behave while I’m here. I try every day to be better than I was yesterday. I’m disappointed in myself when I feel I’ve fallen short of what Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad or other great religious thinkers define as good and right.
I know I’m part of a mysterious world with no certain answers. I think that, no matter what we believe or do not believe individually, we are on an amazing journey together -- all of us, and that, peacefully or not, we spin through the cosmos -- locked tightly together for all time.
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Act II
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Lyn May
Lyn May got on the work wheel late - in her mid-30s when the '70s were blazing with opportunities for women and people of color. Stepping through that open door, she's spent the last three decades making up for lost time. In addition to being twice a wife and the mother of two very adult women and stepmother to three more, she's been a television reporter and anchor, a speechwriter, press secretary and organizational crisis manager and consultant. These days, she does a little TV, a little housekeeping and a lot of reading, writing and thinking - all from the Connecticut woods where she lives happily with husband, Lee, also a writer and fine gardener, and two very crazy cats.
