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I can never run for elected office. Not that I
have political aspirations beyond being the president the Parent Teacher
Association at my children’s school. But if I did, I wouldn’t have a shot…no
way.
It isn’t because I have a criminal record. It
isn’t because I’m dumb or can’t speak intellectually about the issues. It’s
because I am non-religious.
I am nothing.
I have no religion. Never did. When I was seven,
I began to wonder what all my little friends were doing on weekend mornings
in those big buildings with the fancy windows. So I asked my parents—Mom was
a non-religious Jew and Dad was a lapsed Catholic—a simple question: “What
are we?”
I was secretly hoping that they would tell me we
were Catholic because my best friend was having her first communion and she
had gotten a new white dress and a veil. Instead, in a moment of perfect
1970s hipness, my parents told me that we were nothing.
I was crushed, not only because the veil would
have looked so good over my stringy brown hair, but because I felt that
nothing was beinglessness. Plus, I feared that if
there was anyone “up there”—and I said I didn’t believe in “him”—I wouldn’t
get in.
I wasn’t really Nothing,
I was mostly Doubt and Guilt. I spent my early adult years avoiding religion.
Even when I went to Italy,
I didn’t enter any churches (as an art major, that
was quite a feat). I crossed Christmas off my calendar and got married by a
judge (to my atheist husband). I was no longer Doubt and Guilt, I had become
Indifference.
But then I met my sister-in-law, who was a true
cheerleader for Christ. She told me that we were all broken, that man was
inherently sick and that God sent us his only son to heal us. She also
pointed out that her God was the only God to ever sacrifice his son, which
made him a super-God, and made Christianity the only real religion. I
wondered why she couldn’t just accept me for what I was, even if I was nothing.
She said I wasn’t nothing;
I was something—I was “wrong.”
Her problem is that she mistook Nothingness for
Emptiness. I am not empty of spirit: I believe in things. I believe you are
here and then you are gone. I believe in taking control of one’s own destiny,
and not blaming everyone else when you fail. I believe in a beautifully
turned double-play. I believe in moving on when you fail. I believe in me.
Yoko and me.
Now, I have taken back the very notion of nothing—I
own the word instead of run from it. As for the Wrong part, well I just try
to prove to my in-laws that I am nicer than they are. I smile bigger at
family events, help out in the kitchen more and buy bigger presents for the
nephews. If I can’t be right, at least I can be better. Now that I am
comfortable with being nothing, I can celebrate Christmas (who doesn’t like a
birthday party?) and even enter churches when I visit Italy (they got nice art in those
places!).
But there’s still that higher office thing. This
is America, after all, so
if I did ever run, I’d have to omit the God Bless America at the end of my speeches
and not attend prayer breakfast fundraisers. But if I did manage to eek out a
victory (my opponent was a child molester, right?), I would never try to
legislate that there is no God. There are too many politicians around who
want to legislate that there is one.
©
Brooklyn Papers 2007
Reprinted
with Permission
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