Losing my Religion.

Before my grandmother died 2001 I wasn’t a religious person, really, though I did believe there was a heaven, a hell, and a God up there watching us live our lives, maybe pondering why we, as humans, did some of the things we did.

When I was a little girl my mother sent me and my sisters to Sunday school. I remember the classroom in the basement, for the children 8-13 (I think… my sisters, being younger were in a classroom upstairs). There were wooden pews on either side and I always sat on the right side… mostly because I didn’t want to sit under that damn picture on the wall. On the wall over the pews on the left side was this huge painting. The earth was ripped in half and fire was shooting up out of the gigantic crack. There was a cross connecting one side to the other, a bridge if you will, and the frantic people in the painting were running across this cross, trying to get safely to the other side, some made it and others fell into what was meant to be the pits of Hell.

I hated that painting. It scared the shit out of me.

Anyway, when my Grandmother died, and I was always close with her, there was this hole in my heart that I can’t even describe. At her wake (funeral?), which was of course held in a Catholic church (she was raised a Roman Catholic, though her parents disowned her when she married my non-Catholic Grandfather), I felt completely out of place and felt no comfort. I felt lost and confused, even while family surrounded me and photos of my Grandmother in her better days were at the front of the room, along with her ashes… was she in Heaven? Did I believe she was in Heaven? I didn’t know.

When we got home I found myself obsessively searching the Internet for answers. What happens, exactly, when we die? I read everything I could find, on as many religions as I could find (up until that point, I’d had no idea there were so many). I read for days and days.

There was only one in which I found comfort: Wicca. And so that’s what I decided to believe. It spoke to me, comforted me and it made sense to me.

It still comforts me, although not the way it did. I’m not sure I believe anymore in the Gods and Goddesses. Though I still believe and find comfort in the rest. Our bodies die but our souls live on, not in Heaven or Hell, but in the nature that surrounds us.

I believe that because my mother died not so many years ago, and there are times I can swear she is in the room with me. There have been times when something bad should have happened and I’ll be damned if my mother didn’t stop it from happening.

Am I a bad person because I don’t live by the rules in a little black book? I don’t think I am. I live by the laws and the morals I was raised on. My heart and my conscience dictate my behavior. Am I a bad mother because I don’t make my kids go to church? I don’t think I am. I am raising them to know what I know, and that is to treat people with respect, love without restriction, we are all equal. They will find their own way, the same way that I did. Something will capture them and speak to them, the way Wicca did to me. Maybe it won’t be Wicca, maybe it will be Christianity, or Catholicism, Hinduism even. Whatever it is I’m okay with it as long as they find comfort and remember the things I’ve taught them.

Do I still call myself a Wiccan? I don’t know… I don’t know what I am anymore. I don’t know if there is a label for it.

I am no longer what any would call a religious person. No religion. And yet I still hold certain beliefs, most of which are Wiccan beliefs, but not all.

What does that make me? I don’t care. Label or no, I’m a good person, a decent person, and I’m raising some pretty great kids. What else really matters?