THE SUMMER I TURNED TO GOD

It is the summer of riots and rumination, and I am feeling uneasy about the political climate of the country. The fascists are feasting on the corpse of justice and there is so little flesh left. Yet, we persist. 

I’ve been thinking of God lately. In school, they would coop us up in the hall, wonky lines of kids sitting cross-legged, singing hymns over and over, and at the end we would all bow our heads, kiss palm to palm and say a prayer. At the age of nine, I stopped bowing my head. I found it oppressive to be forced to pray when I didn’t know what I was praying to, only I wouldn’t have described it as oppressive at that age, maybe unfair. My resistance to religion grew parallel to me, as time teased nihilism between her wet fingers and lured me in. I thought I was smarter than religion, that it was merely some story with a big fan base, that anything in the Bible could and has been disproven by science. But then something changed. Maybe I’ve been manic or maybe (maybe, maybe, maybe) I have ran out of alternative sources of hope, but I have started to pray.

It started with a chest infection I was almost certain was sepsis (there is really no correlation; I’m a hypochondriac). I was downing cough medicine and drinking warm peppermint tea and giving myself lymphatic drains, but nothing was working, so, when western medicine failed, I turned to God. I kissed palm to palm, almost by muscle memory, like a pianist without sheet music, like a girl desperate for hope. And I asked, for hope that is, softly and quietly. I sat there praying, waiting for something, for what, I am unsure of. Perhaps the sky would unclench her fists and a torrent would pour through the clefts of her fingers. Perhaps a lightning bolt would strike a tree nearby, or I’d hear a gentle hum, the drone of divinity pulsating through me. But nothing of the sort, in fact, nothing at all happened. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, that I’d hope this small act of prayer would change the trajectory of my life in some small, yet fundamental way. But the sky was still grey and the ache in my chest weighed on. 

I thought consistency could be the key, so I said a prayer every day. And I suppose in some way, small miracles were happening around me. I overcame my chest infection (though I am tempted to give this one to the round of antibiotics I took), and the sun kissed my pale skin pink, and everything felt lighter. I suppose the point is more subtle than I originally thought; perhaps divinity is all around me, perhaps it isn’t coming because it already has, because it has always been. Perhaps all the divinity I will ever possess is already inside of me, waiting to be called by its name. Perhaps I do not need to ask in my prayers so much as thank, and perhaps (perhaps, perhaps) I will be happy. 

My new-found faith is one of instability and doubt, but perhaps in time, I will get better at not living by logic and find a sense of spirituality that works for me. Perhaps I will go to church like I used to after my father died. I used to sneak off during my shifts in the hospital and find the little chapel, spending hours in there just sitting, praying, imagining that my father could hear my prayers, that his dying in that hospital meant I could find him there again; that if there was ever a place to go, it would be there. But my skepticism cupped its cold palms around my warming neck and squeezed what little belief I had out of me, and I never went to that chapel again. I didn’t pray again, not until this summer. 

This summer I found God, and we played hide and seek and made daisy chains in the grass and cried to the wall and cursed our mothers and drank lemonade straight out of the bottle. Sometimes we don’t wake up until five and forget to brush our teeth and stay in the same clothes for days. Sometimes we are content, but we know the ebb of emotion so we do not hope for it to stay, or for sadness to leave; instead, we just observe, sit back and watch and try not to get carried out with the tide. This summer I found God, and we are trying to be okay. I don’t quite know what else there is to say. 

Happy Summering (or sad summering, I like the sibilance a great deal).

Love Em