I Am Legion

So a few days after the devastating Japanese earthquake (apparently the hard work of prayee McGee over here), I reluctantly/fervently got embroiled in an end of the world debate with two of my co-workers.

One of them, I'll call him Francis (because I've always wanted to rename someone Francis), was convinced that the quake, along with the mass deaths of birds and the Mayan 2012 calendar, was proof that SOMETHING huge was about to happen.

Now, let me state upfront that I like Francis. He's a great guy, funny, and really good at his job. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't lose a thimble of respect for him as his argument jumped from one disconnected myth to the next before ultimately ending in a rather heated defense of aliens building Egyptian pyramids; "They have hieroglyphs of aliens on the pyramids!" he raged.

My other co-worker, Alphonso St. Drucker III (not his real name), took the opposite position, or what I called, the Sane Approach. Al (for short) argued that the earthquake was no more a sign than any other natural disaster that we've seen this year alone, let alone since we've been recording such things. He laid out, in a lengthy email, the literal HUNDREDS of people -- mostly apocalyptic Christians -- who've unsuccessfully predicted the end of days. But the real capper happened with this paraphrased exchange:

Al: They're all myths. You can't apply myths and made up stories to the world we live in.

Francis: Well how do you know they're stories? You weren't there to witness them.

Al: Do you honestly believe that Noah's Ark was an accurate story?

Francis: Well, no but by that standard you'd say the whole bible was made up?

Al: Precisely.

I'll admit this to you now -- I came a little bit when he said that.

Not because I was touching myself (lesson learned HR department, let's move on please). No, it was because with one word, I found that I was not alone at work. It's a strange isolation to be Black and atheist. To a very large degree, believing is one of the cultural cornerstones of the Black identity. It goes without saying that without church there would not have been the Civil Rights Movement. Watch any Black comedian and within 10 minutes you'll get a joke about loud preachers, sticky-fingered parishoners and some foul-mouthed old lady in the pews. I can probably count on one hand how many Black people I've eaten with who do NOT pray before grubbing. Long story short, Black folks are religious.

I don't want to get in a whole big thing here (you know -- like devote an entire blog to it or anything) but my lack of faith has often put me on the outside of mainstream Black culture, a perch I've learned to love as I've gotten older. But that doesn't make it any easier, especially working for and with Black folks who can be judgmental and even fearful of non-believers. Quick story: I overheard two co-workers discussing dating and one said she ALMOST dated an atheist. The other woman literally recoiled saying "Keep them away from me!" So you kind of see where I'm coming from.

Needless to say, within minutes of the debate's end, I was calling Al asking him to come to my office. Once inside, I shut the door and opened the floodgates of my heathen soul. And he did the same.

And thus the opening minutes of this year's most unlikely romantic comedy "Struck by Lightning."

Seriously, though, we do snicker a lot now. Shooting each other looks and rolling our eyes when co-workers say things like "death always comes in threes." It is positively gay, but I'm not complaining. At least I've found someone, right?

Death Sucks

I lost my father two months ago.

Well, he's not lost. He's actually in a very classy, muted black urn sitting in my closet at the bottom of a white Macy's shopping bag.

Not exactly the beautific afterworld one might imagine, but for a man who never expressed (at least not to me) any clear location of where he thought his soul would end up, I suppose taking residence next my shoes and a half-full bag of guinea pig bedding is just as fitting as any ending.

Truth is, my father isn't in that urn. He is not dust, collecting dust. I know that as sure as I know my father wasn't in the stilled body that lay on the gurney on that horrible day in May.

So where, pray tell, is he?

That depends on what you believe. Or more precisely, what I believe. Not an easy task when tagged a non-believer. Not that I believe in nothing, a common misnomer for us heathens. Truth is I believe in many things, even things I can't see -- love, gravity, black holes, radio waves, the goodness of humanity -- I just don't buy many (OK, all) of the world's religion's viewpoints and thus, I am a "non-believer."

As I said in my last entry, death is one of the biggest tests of one's committment to non-committment. And on May 25, 2009 my test came in the form of a brutal pop quiz entitled: "Where's Your Dad Now?"

Well, were I a christian, I suppose I would believe he was in heaven. Indeed, many at my father's service (hold on, I'll get to that), spoke of my dad being in heaven, or at least "looking down." I admit, heaven is a great idea. An endless sky cruise for the great people of the world. Assuming you're not Hitler or R. Kelly, admission is pretty much gauranteed by most folks' reckonings. And honestly, not even Hitler's cousins think he's in hell. No one goes to a funeral where the minister/pastor/guy at the podium says "too bad he was a galatic asshole who's now hotfooting it in hell." I mean, no one looks down and says "I wonder if mom is looking up at us now."

Still, my father was not a hypocrite and he read the bible, so he knew there was only one real way to get to Christian heaven which is ACCEPTING JESUS CHRIST AS HIS LORD AND SAVIOR (that sentence just begs for all caps, right?), an act I'm sure my father never did. Now, I can't be sure that he NEVER did this, much in the way that I can't be sure he NEVER stuck a cat in the microwave, but it just feels wrong.

(Honestly, my plan was examine each of the world's religious views of the afterlife, but the closest any of my family got to one was Christianity and since we all know how that turned out, I'll save you some reading time.)

So, back to the question at hand -- where is my dear old dad if heaven is only for Christians? And what kind of service do you have for a non-believer?

First question first: I don't know where my father is or even if he still "is." I know physics dictates we are all energy and energy cannot be destroyed which is only reassuring had my father been a light bulb. Alas.

The worst part is, I know he isn't here anymore. I cannot call him, email him or laugh with him again. But I do hear him, like a song in my head that is both with and without sound. So perhaps that is something. But I hold no illusions that we will reunite on cloud nine for glasses of Coke Zero and Snyder pretzels. I mean, it's possible but at this point it feels more like self-deluding fantasy than a real occurence, but hey, I never thought we'd have a Black president either.

As to the question of what kind of funeral do you throw for an athiest (actually he claimed Agnostic)? Simple, you throw a kick-ass party. So that's what we did. We invited his closest friends, co-workers, family -- everyone who loved him -- and we ate, drank, laughed and shared stories at a restaurant. Yes, there were tears but they were outweighed by the smiles and hugs. Gone were the dour processions, the ghoulish open caskets and too-long renditions of "His Eye is On the Sparrow." We replaced them with a digital slide show, the "Star Wars" theme song on replay and an open bar.

Even if he went nowhere, I like to believe we sent my father off in a way that made sense of the man he was. Fun, a little crazy and very loving.

HEATHENS!! They're . . . EVERYWHERE; sorta

Apparently, I'm not alone.

In all my travels, I have yet to meet someone else like me -- A Black American raised without any specific religious faith or practice. However, according to a new Pew report, 16% of Americans consider themselves "unaffiliated" with any faith. Were the Right Wing nuts actually right? Is the progressive secular "movement" really taking over this great, faith-based world of ours?

More importantly, how can my blog sustain any of its niche cool if there are 48,568,033 fellow heathens fucking up my property value?

And while getting company should bring me comfort, it oddly does not. Don't get me wrong, I do like company (even if my wife is a little "company shy"), but if there are 50 million people like me what does that say about "me?" What does that say about my specific outlook on life as a person raised with no faith?

Unwilling to let my individuality go without a fight, I did what very few people do -- I actually READ a Pew report.

What I found was very reaffirming.

So what does "unaffiliated" mean? Pew says "secular unaffiliated" is described as "those who say that religion is not important in their lives." Hmm, OK. The report goes on to, uh, report another subsect called the "religious unaffiliated," or "those who say that religion is either somewhat important or very important in their lives."

Huh? So unaffiliated is based upon how important religion is to you? I eat food everyday but if you were to ask me how important carbs are to me, I might be an unaffiliated eater. This Pew guy seems less than accurate.

Out of the 16% unaffiliated only 1.6% are TRULY unaffiliated a.k.a atheists. 2.4% are agnostic. So . . . .yeah, no big news here, at least not for me.

The media, even the usually level-headed Bill Maher, saw this report as ground-breaking but it only confirms what I know to be true. Even as people pick up, try on and put down various spiritual hats, they still feel compelled to wear them. Mostly due to the fact that they've been wearing hats since they were children. But what about those without any baby hat-wearing experience (OK, this analogy is getting out of hand)?

The MOST interesting, though least shocking stat, was that "black Americans are the most likely to report a formal religious affiliation. Even among those blacks who are unaffiliated, three-in-four belong to the 'religious unaffiliated' category."

As I said before, when it comes to Black America, I am a dying breed. And if my reluctance to pop my eldest daughter's "God" bubble persists, I may really be the last dragon after all. But as Yoda says, "there is another" -- my 3-year old who has yet to ask about death or draw pictures of her dear old dad taking a dirt nap.

Bless her heart.