Day 4: Searching

Day 4. Your views on religion.


There was a time in my life where I went searching for answers in religions.

Answers...

I remember sitting on the floor of my room with an abundance of books spread out. All with different pages circled and paragraphs and sentences highlighted and underlined. I was looking for something, but I didn't know what. What questions were the ones t I wanted answered? I still don't know what it was I wanted to find in ancient texts and their translations.

Some may say I went through a phase but I say I was searching and making sense of it all. A phase seems so superficial. A passerby. But it was not a phase. Sometimes I still catch myself wandering through a book store in the religion section. Reading about all the things people believe in. All the things people have fought for. All the things people blamed this thing called God for. I catch myself read about the philosophers from  China to Chile. I catch myself reading at Barnes & Nobles for hours. Sinking into their way too comfortable chairs and reading and reading, searching. I ignore everything and everyone and it's as if I am still in my room, on the floor, searching.

I never go in planning to go and read about these things. I sort of just browse. I love book stores and libraries. The idea of not knowing what great book you might find. The idea that so much has been written. The idea that I can learn about so many people and places in one building. I like that I can hold something and be holding a whole different world than the one I live in. I love that, and so I never have a plan when I go in. I just let the books guide me with their interesting titles and well known and unknown authors, and sometimes I end up there. Sitting in that chair reading of how our wants and our needs can make us unhappy, and how we should pray five times a day, and how we should meditate, and how we should love our neighbors. I read about why we should or shouldn't cover our heads, or cut our hair, or wear certain clothing, or why it matters how strictly you follow these different guidelines to this or that. I sit there and read about these things because they are interesting...but I know that I am still searching, even if I don't admit it aloud. I am searching for something. Something that I no longer think I will finds in the words of these books.

When people ask me if I believe in God I say, no...then I say maybe...then I say it's complicated. Because it is.

Because I don't know if I do, and I don't think it matters if I do or do not. Then in my head I start to question the person who asked me and their intentions. Not aloud of course but in my head. What does it matter what I believe in, why do you want to know? To categorize me? To judge me on a sole question? To say you know my type of people if I say I don't and to trust me if I do? Or perhaps the opposite? To say I am naive and have been brainwashed in to believing there is a God? Tell me why it matters? What do you think if I say, I don't know? Am I lost?

See religion is so complicated. There are rules and meetings. I don't think it should be that complicated. And after reading so much about all the things people have to say about it I started to think about how religion tries to explain the inexplicable. Religion is used for authority. Religion is used for power. Religion is used for reassurance. Religion is used for hope. Religion is used for so many things and nowhere will it read, Yerika believe in this because of this and this. And even then if there was such a text, I would question it because who are they or him or her to tell me what to do and what to believe in?

Why does it matter what I believe in?

And sometimes, to shut people up I say well if you want to categorize me I think I am currently agnostic. It might change one day, maybe even tomorrow, it might never change. I am not sure.

I am still searching, but I am no longer searching in the isles of B&N or at my local library.

I always try to remember three things
Be Kind 
Be Knowledgeable 
Never Give Up