Let your prayers go drifting into space

I was raised Roman Catholic. That is to say: we went to church every Sunday for the first four years of my life, because we could walk there. Once we moved to a rural area, we became Christmas-only Catholics. I never had a First Communion, never went to Sunday school. I was baptized Catholic, and that’s the last time I had a meaningful interaction with the Catholic church. The brilliant comedian Cameron Esposito invented the term and concept of being “ethnically Catholic,” which I find quite clever and now use to identify myself. There is a culture to Catholicism that is hard to shake, especially given the fact that my generation was largely raised by people who were raised by devout Catholics.

As a kid, the concept of religion and god was a foreign one to me. To make it make sense to myself, as a tiny kid, I decided that the idea of god and the bible were stories that grownups told themselves and each other. I still have never been able to grasp the idea that there are many, many people who believe literally in the words of the bible, believe in the idea of a single patriarchal figure literally creating the universe from nothing. It’s a level of faith I cannot achieve. I would define myself largely as an atheist, with a lowercase “a.” I’m not aggressive, I don’t debate people of faith (I think it’s rude to challenge someone on their faith OR the lack), and I don’t talk down to or think less of someone with a religious faith unless they use it as a cudgel to harm others.

With those caveats firmly in place, I have found myself wanting as I’ve grown older. Wanting to believe in something, even if it doesn’t fit a conventional model of Abrahamic or any other religion. To me, what is most “miraculous” in this life is the beauty of nature. I find it incredibly beautiful that all of this could just happen because of scientific evolutionary processes. Look outside! I feel moved by the existence of the earth and all its inhabitants as completely random more than I jive with the concept that someone specific “created” all of it.

I have become more interested in reform Judaism as it relates to a view of the world and our role in it as human beings, stewards of the earth and the human race. Something I really appreciate about the Jewish faith is the belief that we should be good to one another and do good things while we are here because it is the right thing to do–not because we will reap rewards after we die. It’s the way I have always striven to live, despite my previous complete lack of faith. It’s also the only religion I know of that asks and encourages questions, and then offers answers. Not only does it offer answers in the form of the Midrash, it doesn’t present these scholarly interpretations as absolute. It doesn’t demand unwavering, literal belief in scripture. I’m in the very early stages of researching the conversion process, and have been reading the five books of Moses over the last few months.

One of my siblings has been on a similar journey: searching for faith after being raised a skeptic. They recently made the decision to start covering their hair unless they’re in a private home with loved ones. For this sibling, homemaking is a spiritual practice. I don’t pretend to understand that, but they talk of their head covering as “always having their home with [them].” Before I learned that this sibling made this decision, I had considered it myself for a little while–though for reasons far less spiritual: I thought about covering for sensory reasons. I feel so calm and centered with a weighted blanket on me if I’m stressed out, and I have always loved the feeling of being squeezed–because of autism or because I wasn’t hugged enough as a kid, one never knows (¿por qué no las dos?). I saw a woman on TikTok who was demonstrating how she wraps her tichel, and was enthralled. Something warm, gently squeezing my head? Not having to fight with my curly hair every morning? Where do I sign up?? I should note that neither hair-covering nor this Jewish woman were the impetus for my interest in Judaism; they were purely incidental. After mulling it over and talking with my sibling (and–of course–asking them to demo their covering on my head), I’ve made the decision to try out covering my hair. Still not for religious reasons, but for sensory ones. I may love it, I may hate it. But I’m kind of grateful for this endless quarantine because it has allowed me to explore so much of myself and the world in the privacy of my home.