Are You There God? It's Me, Mary.

Sorry for the long absence, dear readers, between the offspring, and then Hubby coming down with history's longest lasting cold, and various obligations over at the preschool (where they were dumb enough to make me president of the board), I have barely had time to shower, never mind write. Yes, I did find time to watch Drag Race, but let's not mention that.

The title of today's blog refers to a crisis of faith, or should I say, non-faith, as it were, that I am having. Hubby and I are both former Catholics. My last official religious act was my wedding mass, at the request (read:successful bribery attempt) of my father. Afterward, Hubby and I stopped going to church (not that we were), and stopped receiving communion whenever we were in a mass situation, and when our children were born, hosted "Welcome to our Family" parties in lieu of baptisms.

We figured that some day, we would find a religion that suited our beliefs and at such a time, we would become members of a new faith. Apparently, we thought religious representatives, of the non-crazy variety (seriously, I'm not home, Jehova's witnesses!) would come knocking at our door instead of our having to actively pursue a new faith, kind of like sorority rush, minus the name tags and lame, theme parties. And since a priest, a rabbi and a minister did not, in fact, all show up at my door begging for our presence in their respective houses of worship, we have been happy heathens for the past ten years having a relationship with God akin to a rich elderly relative who you only hit up when you need something - praying my babies would all be healthy as I went into labor, and that the weird mole on Hubby's back would turn out to be nothing. Until now. I have kids, and kids have questions.

While most of our religious discussions have piggy-backed discussions about my late mother and where she is, my eldest, now six, is entering the time of life when fellow class members begin formal religious education, and what I truly dread, the beginning of communion season. I'm sure my oldest would sell her soul to the devil to get to wear a white, frilly dress, and princess-like headgear of some sort and the mere thought of explaining this event to her makes my head hurt. We're going to my cousin's baptism this weekend and I am already doing a thesis-worthy amount of research in order to be prepared to answer questions like, "What is church?" Awful, isn't it? My kids don't even know what a church is. Never mind God. I think I'm going to need a Xanax...

Faith has really taken a backseat in modern life, for most of our yuppie crowd. Sure, most of us were raised in some sort of organized religion, but it seems, more and more couples I know are religion shopping. And when that proves to daunting, many of them return to the religion of their youth. Trust me, it is tempting. Hubby and I briefly considered it after watching a movie about an Irish Catholic family the other night and what we distilled out of our discussion and almost-return to the church, was that we miss the shared traditions, not the theology. We are sad our children won't know how bad your first communion wafer actually tastes, after months of preparation and anticipation. They won't experience the butterflies in their stomachs waiting in line for confession to rattle off your lame little list of seven year old's wrong doings, one of which was lying as you had to make up some of your sins to add to your pathetic tally so you didn't feel like you were wasting Father Flagherty's time with only, "I disobeyed my parents." The hardness of the kneelers, the lame music, how weird we all look on Ash Wednesday, all of this is a shared experience among my family and my kids will have no idea.

So we did not wind up running over to Saint Luke's the next morning to have our kids dunked, but I am still at a loss in the religion department. I am jealous of people who have a faith the were born into and actually serves their needs. I envy people, like my aunt, who can give things over to God in hard times and lean on their faith to get them through. Piety like that is frowned upon and sneered at among the over-educated as a lack of probative intelligence, to believe in a something you can't see, or follow a religion that doesn't make you feel like every little thing you do in life is great. Struggling with the nature of forgiveness in my life recently, it would have been nice to have an impartial third party, like a priest to talk to. But maybe that's what our therapists are now. Priests, minus the collars. And the pedophilia.

I have no answers readers, perhaps you have some for me. But I really want to find a way to get God back into our lives, at least so we can thank him/her for all we have. But for now I have to find a four-to-six-year-old-accessible explanation of original sin.