God Homework

A little homework assignment I wrote for a writing class I'm in about God.

reader’s note: I ended up reading this last night after two old-fashioned’s in the Red Room at KGB, after being randomly selected from the crowd. Shoutout to my friend Magnus for taking me and for introducing me to NYC Writer’s Circle. The host, Nat, actually wanted me to read a poem, but #Idontdopoems so this was the shortest thing I had. Enjoy!

I was on the toilet when I thought about God for the first time. I was six years old and I prayed to God to rearrange the furniture in my room. My idea to move my lofted bed and dresser to opposite ends of the room would’ve allowed me to easily access the windowsill, which I considered to be vital to the feng shui of the room. Sure, I could’ve asked my parents to move the furniture. But I was testing a theory: if God existed, I would return to a new floorplan. It didn’t work.

I was raised agnostic by non-religious parents who didn’t know about God nor cared. The kids in my neighborhood went to Holy Angels, the Catholic school down the street. Taking breaks from the bike laps around the block, they used to whine about Bible study and sing songs about Jesus and how much he loved them so. Could he love me too?

My family tried the whole religious thing once. I even got baptized, something they didn’t bother with when my older brother was born. Despite my baptism, I grew up Godless, and by puberty I was spending hours on the atheist side of YouTube, studying debates between Christian fundamentalists and paleontologists. I felt that the factual nature of the scientists was the right side to choose against the heady metaphors and quotations spewed by the creationists. The answer was simple, God wasn’t real.

I became quite the contrarian. I instigated fights with the Catholics and Jews of my grade, taunting them with sly comments I memorized from thought leaders like Bill Nye and Hemant Mehta. I found salvation in the truth of a Godless universe where everything had an explanation, especially in a time where I was grappling with my parents’ divorce and repressed homosexuality. After all, the god fearing folk thought divorce was worse than suicide and that gayness could be prayed away.

When I was six, I didn’t know that you can’t just ask God for something you want, and he’ll give it to you. If that were true, I would have him create world peace by abolishing capitalism and have him revive Frank Herbert to make more Dune novels. And have him rearrange furniture, of course.

I’m 24 now and I believe God is real - just not in the way I thought he’d be. I see him on the train when children fall asleep on the shoulders of their mothers. I see him in Sycamore tree bark and in my reflection in the river when I do a lot of psychedelic mushrooms with my friends. I see him when the man at the deli gives me a couple napkins and a straw to go with my meal. I can’t actually see God, but he is everywhere, and believing that is much nicer than trying to prove everyone wrong.