5 ways I can complete the sentence, “I’m an athiest but…”

1. I got married in a Catholic church. Hubby told me it was very important to him, even though he hasn’t set foot in a church, except for weddings, funerals and baptisms, since.

2. I love Little House on the Prairie. Come on! Pa, Half Pint, Nellie Olsen. Who doesn’t love it?? I’m so glad they’ve started showing reruns everyday at 5pm on CTS. I even tolerate the nauseating ads to watch it.

3. I love the saying, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” It’s such a poetically beautiful saying, don’t you think? When considering the plight of someone else enduring a hardship, I often find myself thinking “There but for the grace of …. something I believe in…. go I.” Somehow it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

4. I am learning that I can be spiritual. When I was a kid I thought of God as some white haired guy hanging out in the clouds looking down and judging everything I did. As I got older and the implausibility of this notion grew in my mind I began rejecting all things religious. The pendulum swung past agnostic, over to atheist and stuck there for a while. But these days the pendulum is starting to swing back. Or maybe not back but over. Over to the idea that, just because I no longer identify with this notion of a bearded man in robes residing in the heavens, doesn’t mean I necessarily reject the idea of a guiding force or a oneness to humanity. If I sound very “New Earth” it’s because I love that book! In homage, one of these days I plan to write the list “5 reasons Eckhart Tolle could never have a Facebook page.”

5. I wish my kids said grace before a meal. Or maybe not grace. But showed appreciation in some way. In Japanese one says “itadakimasu” before a meal which literally means “I receive” but is generally meant to express gratitude for the food one is about to eat. Maybe I should start this tradition with my kids. To make up for the tradition I started in my family…

Okay, true story: Even though I didn’t have a particularly religious upbringing, we always said grace before a meal, followed by itadakimasu. When I was about 20 I began to feel a bit hypocritical about participating in the religious part of this practice. So I mentioned to my mother one day that I would no longer be saying grace with them and explained why. I meant to just quietly sit and respectfully wait while they said grace. To lighten the situation I joked with her that I was sorry her daughter was such a heathen. Well. The next time they went to say grace they looked at me somewhat awkwardly until my dad laughed, pointed at me and said, “Heathen!” So now, not only does my whole family no longer say grace, but after saying itadakimasu they follow it up with simply yelling, “Heathens!” I know, it’s unbelievable that lightening doesn’t strike me down.