regurgitating: A little on God

Just to see something complete on this blog. This is from the play, Overflow, which is up right now.

I was raised by a non-practicing Shinto Buddhist and, for lack of a better term, a Kansas atheist. My Dad hates Christians because, as Dad puts it, "In Kansas, Christians are real annoying." What’s interesting, is that my Dad is a military man so he believes in discipline. He said that one good thing about Southern Christians is that they believe in discipline, too. So, going on this assumption, for first grade, my parents dropped me into a Christian school. Not knowing there were different kinds of Christians, they just put me in the one with the nicest people.

Something I now truly believe, is that the nicest people are people who think the world is going to end. These people sang songs about people disappearing into thin air, plagues of locusts, monsters in heaven, rivers of blood and how cool all this was going to be. But really, they were really nice.

Here's the kicker. If you’re seven years old and you’ve been told that the Second Coming is right around the corner, likely before your, say, eighth birthday, your goal in life shifts considerably from baseball star or ballerina to the best little soldier for God. And that’s what happened to me. The plan was to spend my youth reading the Bible and avoiding boys. And when the real work of the second coming happened, just after the Rapture, I was going to stay behind and save the unsaved. This, of course, meant practice.

So I started with Mom. I said, “Mom, have you made Jesus your personal Lord and savior?” Mom said, "No. But I can. What should I do?" So we prayed and that was that. I had a gift! I was chosen to witness. I could amass a hoard of followers within days. Was my calling truly to save the world? I had to come to terms with the reality of this. Saving the world is a lot of work. Should I throw away the Barbies and shrinky dinks? There’s no time for easy bake when the world is ravaged by sin.

One thing to know about the Shinto religion is that it is not exclusive. It is a very open religion that, in Japan, when Buddhism moved in, instead of denying it, the Shintoists simply allowed Buddha to be part of its already extensive pantheon. So I had no idea my first project was so easy. Mom wasn’t going to deny the millions of gods she already had, Jesus was just one more little guy to add to her god menagerie.

I thought I had talked Mom into making Jesus her one and only spiritual companion. All she heard was the religious equivalent to “You want fries with that?” I had no clue that she never changed religions until I was well into adulthood. As for me, it was my life and it was monotheistic, exclusive, downright necessary. And on this glorious day, I thought I converted my own mother.

So Dad was next. I started by excitedly telling my father the story I heard in school. King Solomon and the mothers who almost let their baby get cut in half. Dad thought Solomon seemed pretty smart, "We need a man like that to clean up the Welfare department. People coming from Mexico and Africa or wherever come to this country and they..." blah blah. I didn’t know what any of that meant, but it seemed like a great sign, so I asked Dad if he wanted to make Jesus his personal Lord and Savior. "Eh...maybe later, hon."

As if I asked him to play catch with me! This was salvation we were dealing with! My Dad just bought a one way ticket to hell. How could I let that go? I lost sleep. I had panic attacks.

To which, Dad said, "Maybe it’s time for public school."