Several years ago, when I'd worked for Levi Strauss and Company, I was asked this question by a colleague:


       

"Got faith, Deb?" George asked.

"In what?" I asked.


                      


I was nineteen at the time.  And sure, I answered a question with a question.  But, c'mon.  It didn't take a genius to realize that the question George was proposing lacked something integral.

"THANK you," he said.


                      


Again with the missing integral part.

"For what?" I asked.

"You're the only person who's asked me that."

Apparently George had gone around the office and store, asking that question to everyone he could corner.  And this is what he got:


                               "Yes, I have faith in God."

                              "Of course I believe in God."

             "Yeah, I gots faith!  Check out the cross around my neck, yo!"

                           "I go to church, dude!  Sometimes."


These responses didn't really disappoint him, he explained. 

George was testing everyone at work. 

"Isn't 'faith' a belief?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said. 

"Then why do people confuse faith with a belief in God?"

George didn't know the answer to this either.  But he was as reasonably annoyed and insulted about this mash-up of perfectly good terminology intended to soothe the egos of certain groups in our world as I was. 

At the time, to be honest, I really couldn't come to grips with a belief in God.  I tried in earlier years, but could not.  I believed in some stuff.  I believed in very, very few people.  But God?  Not somuch. 

It was difficult to come to an ultimate decision considering my Jewish, then Catholic upbringing.  The truth, though, was stronger than indecision.  And the truth was that I'd seen enough happen within my family, outside of it and all around the world to know that it was pretty pointless to believe that some honcho spirit in the clouds would step down to Earth with a sword to keep everyone in-check, "someday". 

Besides, that "someday" came and went with all the announcements of the end-of-the-world.  It lost its shiny intrigue.

Beneath all the layers of teachings and masses, I didn't believe in God, much less in a just God. 

         

                           Leave it in the hands of God, Deb. 


Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.  Because God wasn't going to do a damn thing about any injustice, personally and not. 

Why?


             

                              Don't question God, Deb!

Exactly.

I also didn't believe that heaven only existed in the afterlife.  Heaven?  Really?  So if I'd suffered another fifty or sixty years of abuse (which I put to a stop in my very early-twenties), I could then celebrate with all the angels in heaven for all of eternity as a reward?  Really?  Well, someone needed to tell me what it was that we'd be celebrating in heaven because, I don't know, another sixty years of awfulness sounded pretty horribly unforgettable to me.  It wasn't something I'd want to celebrate.  Not in heaven.  Not with angels.  Not with God.  Not with champagne.  Not ever.

Why would I wait for "heaven", anyway, when there were actually moments right here on Earth, and in my life, that were nothing short of heavenly?

Finally, the concept of serving and suffering for the entire duration of my life, and being consistently grateful for it all, just didn't sit right with me.


             


Suffer, give money, suffer, suffer, attend mass every Sunday morning, suffer, sacrifice, suffer, THANK GOD, suffer, give up your favorite thing in the whole world for lent, suffer, suffer, keep THANKING GOD, asshole, suffer, suffer, croak, die. 

Right.  It all sounded as insane as anyone who's tried to sell their religion to me, usually raging alcoholics, drug or sex addicts, recovering alcoholics, drug and sex addicts.  Greedy types.  The needy, loopy, confused, fearful and vulnerable.  With spaced-out eyes and stuff. 

Not everyone has tried to make a sale, though, and I respect that. 

So what do I have faith in?  My loved ones.  Myself.  Our temporary cat, Milo.  And sometimes humanity.

I have faith in everything having its reason.  That some of that everything is out of my control, and that I needn't dwell on it.

I have faith in our spirits, that they never die alongside our skins. 

I have faith in being on the right track.  That I'm being watched over, namely by my mother and brother, because, just as I was feeling defeated today, I came across an opportunity that was natural and felt like destiny.