Religion for me has been like trying to follow a line of spastic lightbulbs down a hallway.  They keep flicking on and off, on and off, drawing me in different directions until I've turned around at least three times and have been running around trying to figure out where I should go and how I should get there.  I have done my best over the years to find my way to the end of this hallway that so many have told me about--"Find the light at the end of the tunnel, Hannah", "You'll be saved down there, Hannah", "It'll change your life, Hannah"--but the fact is that erratic lightbulbs don't make for the easiest roadmap.  I've even looked for the devious controller of the light switch, but he or she or it or they is referred to by so many names that I can't figure out how to find he or she or it or they and I've decided to simply plant myself on the ground in this hallway and let the damn lights flick on and off around me like a Disneyland lights show where the conductor has lost the directions and is just 'winging it!'.  It's a comfortable place, sitting here on the ground.  But I suppose, you wouldn't really agree with me on that unless you knew how I got here.  With my childhood and adolescence, I think you'd agree with me on the fact that a sedentary position in an epileptic-nightmare environment is far better than an aerobic one chasing the lights.

My dad came from Southern Jewish roots.  VERY Southern Jewish roots.  Jewish deli, matzah ball soup on Saturdays, and Mezuzah by every door Southern Jewish roots.

My mother inherited a family Bible from her great grandparents when she married my dad.  But she was dedicated to being a good Jewish wife for my father from day one of my memories.  Apparently, Christmas and Chanukah were dually celebrated before I was born, but by the time I came along we were absolutely, 100% Jewish.  I have no nostalgia for believing in Santa or leaving food out for reindeer that trample your roof or for a man that breaks into your house annually.  We didn't celebrate Christmas exclusively until I was about 11 and by then such customs seemed irrational.  

Lightbulb #1

From my first introduction to religion to year eleven I was immersed in the Jewish culture.  I found something hauntingly meditative about the Mourner's Kaddish.  The week of Passover, my mom made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on matzah instead of bread, observing the no-yeast tradition.  I went to Sunday school every week and I had a Noah's ark mezuzah on my bedroom doorway.  When I went to visit my uncle and his, then new and unheard of, jewelry company, he made a pink Star of David for me to bring home.  

I still have it.

But when I turned 11, my dad moved out and my mom, searching for independent pleasures that did not remind her of her separated husband, decided that we would all (those of us still living at home, which no longer included my sister at this point in time) start going to church.

Lightbulb #2

That December we had a tree in our living room. My mom hung stockings I'd never seen before above the fireplace.  One had a fat man with presents and my name in glitter gel on it.  My brother and sister each had one too, with their names printed at the top in the same silver gel.  Mom pulled them out of the box along with red bows and sparkling snow globes and wooden skiing Santa figurines and Christmas movies: a whole other life she'd boxed away long ago.

I was eager to learn about this other religion, about this Jesus guy (someone I knew nothing about but seemed pretty important to these Christians).  And I dove head first into Christianity.  I enrolled in a Christian middle school at the start of sixth grade.  My mom and I went to Barnes and Noble and we each bought a Bible.  She bought me a golden cross for Easter.  We went to church every Sunday morning.  I started praying.  I helped her pack away the Menorah and I forgot my Hebrew letters.

Halfway through sixth grade, though, my classmates and the rest of the members of the church we attended--connected to my school--found out about the divorce papers my parents filed that year.

Divorce is a sin.  Love is eternal.  Mark 10:11-12 "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

You're not Christian enough to be our friend anymore, Hannah. We can't trust someone that comes from a family of so little faith.

And the Christianity lightbulb went out for the first time.

Lightbulb #3/ Lightbulb #4

I suppose that lightbulb #3 was just a flicker and the same can be said for #4.  The flickers were more like exposures, options you could say.  I didn't commit wholly to either one of them, but the lights in the hallway still went on and I was distracted by them all the same.  Lightbulb #3 came when I went to visit my grandmother on my dad's side.  We went in December when I was about nine.  It was a collective celebration of holidays, something she did every year apparently but since my mom was Christian it took my grandmother some serious convincing to invite us.  This is the only reason I can think of to explain why we were only welcomed once every decade or so.  I was told to expect a smattering of religious holiday symbols: a Christmas tree, a Menorah, turkey and stuffing for dinner and bagels and locks for breakfast (a Jewish tradition that I never did develop a taste for, even in my most devout days).  She invited a lot of people I didn't know and even more that thought they knew me, called me by my sister's name, and then ignored me altogether out of humiliation and confusion when my sister introduced herself.  I was prepared for all of this.  But my grandmother, for whatever reason--maybe it was her impending death that she felt creeping up on her in the form of cancer or maybe it was the impending dread that she felt as my mother's arrival approached--she invited someone new to the celebration that year: Buddha.

In the gaudy living room, next to the Christmas tree, on the same table as the Menorah, sat a laughing, fat Buddha.  

My grandmother informed us later at dinner that she'd found peace in the fat little totem and was contemplating converting to Buddhism. I had not a speck of knowledge of what this little man symbolized or why she deemed him important enough to display in her home.  For all I knew she thought his confidence in his obesity admirable. 

Lightbulb #4 came several years later, after the church shunned me and my mother.  By then I was an agnostic, I suppose, though I was unaware of the title.  My aunt, a descendant of the crazy grandmother on my dad's side, declared that meditation and the spirits in her home were getting her through a particularly rough patch in her life.  She'd found a positive energy and with it, her spiritual center.

Lightbulbs 1 and 2 flickered on and off throughout high school when most of us seek answers to the horrors that our adolescent peers inflict on us.  Isn't it reasonable to want to believe in something better when you have barricaded yourself in the stall of a bathroom instead of facing the high school cafeteria?

Remember that spot on the ground?  The sedentary acquiescence to the erratic light show around me?  It's not looking so irrational anymore, now is it?

If it is, if you are one of those lucky souls that has found the he or she or it or they flicking the lights on and off and know exactly where you're headed down this religion hallway; if my decision to sit on the floor and simply watch the lights seems ridiculous and, dare I say, immature to you, then congratulations.  

But may I also say that you probably didn't have spirituality, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and meditation thrown at you all while you were trying to navigate puberty.  I'd like to see someone in my shoes try and define which religion was right for them while trying to figure out what boys were thinking, when bras were ever going to be comfortable, and why the hell we had to take Freshman health when we still found typing 'Boobies' into a calculator Comedy Central worthy.