Patrick Flanery | New York | Seeker

I was spiritually doomed from the start. Descended from a long line of Huguenots and Anglo-Irish Protestants, and raised by a lapsed Presbyterian agnostic and muddled Unitarian, I couldn't help but question everything from very early on.

My parents were admirable in their open-mindedness. They allowed our staunchly Lutheran neighbors to take me to church when I was very small — until my mother started coming along and heard the pastor explain on Mother's Day that the woman's place would always be in the home. We tried other churches — Methodist, Congregationalist, even Catholic — but spent the majority of our Sundays in a warehouse-like shed in the suburbs, sitting on aluminum folding chairs listening to the female Unitarian pastor who was married to a Jewish man, was a vegetarian before it was fashionable and eliminated the word God from all her prayers.

I had more than a small crush on Jane and at the age of five, asked her after a particularly moving sermon "why are we here?" I did not mean, merely, why are we here in this room, or why I am here when I could be at home reading? I meant, why do we as human beings exist here on this earth as a component of the universe (I had my National Geographic map of the cosmos at home), what is our purpose and what do we contribute? And, having watched Nova, (which educated me in the inevitable demise of our planet), I wanted to know what would happen to everything that we as a species and civilization had created, amassed and learned when we ceased to exist as a species and civilization. What, I wanted to know, is the point of us?

Unfortunately, my ideas at five were greater than my ability to verbalize them. Perhaps if I had been more eloquent, Jane would have been able to tell me. But she said, very honestly, "I don't know." I'm fairly sure she had understood the question. I was a demanding child. I did not give her time to ponder. Perhaps she would have a better answer today.

From that point on, and for many years to come, I was a self-described atheist. I could not enter a church without my feet swelling to the point that I had to remove my shoes to avoid cutting off the circulation. I became militantly atheistic. In fifth grade, I went public. My classmates denounced me as a Satan worshipper. I tried to explain that an absence of belief in God should not be interpreted as a belief in the devil, much less a worshipful attitude towards Satan. If I had eschewed belief in the greatest good, why would I choose to believe in the greatest bad? The logic escaped them and until I went to high school, I was "the devil worshipper," "the Satanist," and "Damian." I hadn't seen The Omen, so the last reference was lost on me for a long time. I thought Damian might have been one of Satan's chums-in-flames, or a kind of evil, lurking gallowglass.

Throughout high school, I tempered my public attitude, and began describing myself as an agnostic, because that didn't seem to make people as uncomfortable. I avoided church, except for Christmas. Every Christmas Eve I would go to midnight mass in the chapel at the Jesuit-run Creighton University. I told myself I was there to appreciate the pageant: the music, the colors, the architecture, the incense and the ancient traditions behind it all. But I did not, I was sure, believe in anything like a god. A power? Perhaps. A Chi-like Force? Perhaps. An energy? Yes, quite possibly. But nothing as organized as a god or a deity or even a cavalcade of deities.

I spent one summer of high school in France, living with a devoutly Catholic family. I saw every significant Catholic site between Toulouse, Narbonne, Carcassonne and the Spanish border, with the inevitable trip to Paris and Sunday mass at Notre-Dame. The incense was so thick I had an allergic reaction and had to flee to the tourist-infested courtyard. Afterwards, the eldest son of my host family called me a heretic, explained that the Pope had the final word in all wisdom and that I would definitely be going to hell. I asked him if we could go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. He had never been. We went. He was sick and made rather a mess in the elevator on the way down.

I spent my first year in college at Georgetown. All of my friends were Catholic, except for one Protestant who was convinced he was really Jewish. (He has since converted and is reportedly living very happily with his Christian boyfriend.) My beliefs were challenged daily and I had to admit that yes, for whatever reason, I suspected there was something greater at work in the universe than fallible humanity. I didn't know what to call it or how to describe it — that's the privilege of being an agnostic. But I went to mass every Sunday with my friends and found some solace in the camaraderie and the ceremony and the methodical, meditative pace of it all. That came to an end when I discovered that the priest whose mass I'd been attending was one of the most active anti-abortionists in the D.C. area.

I had been on the brink of considering conversion, but I realized that my beliefs in the social issues that the Catholic Church condemns are so great that I could never willingly convert, pomp and grandeur notwithstanding.

I spent the rest of my college years dabbling in Eastern religions. I read a great deal on Tibetan and Zen Buddhism. I meditated. I was very happy for a while. And then my parents got a divorce and nothing made sense any more. There was no substance in Buddhism to fall back on — at least none that I could see, so I turned inward for strength and found unexpected reserves and insights that I had never found forthcoming in religion.

Today, I try to live without labeling myself. I have never known anything like "god." I think I may have danced around the fringes of greater understanding, but have yet to hear the tune. If you haven't been raised with Faith, I think it's impossible merely to flip the switch and believe. My fundamentalist Christian aunt would disagree; she would say that it's not for me to decide. But I think it is. I'm reasonably certain that any belief I embrace will come only after years of meditation and self-analysis, and not in a blast of blinding conversion. I'd like to think that we live multiple lives and that something greater eventually happens to the knowledge we amass as a species. I'd like to think that I'll someday reunite with people I love after they and I are dead. I'd like to think there's a purpose behind this living, this great tedium of the quotidian paces we put ourselves through. But I'm not sure. And so I seek.

And as for everyone else in the world: Protestants, for the most part, terrify me with their zeal. The Church of England is a notable exception, but they're practically Catholic anyway, and I regard them as I do the Roman church: as an institution I can admire from a distance but never embrace as my own. Atheists are too spiritually ascetic and existential to fit into my more romantic leanings. Agnostics are typically too smug and self-congratulatory for me to want to be included in their ranks. As for the rest of the world's religions, I know too little to judge them fairly, but I suspect that if I looked hard enough I would find the same disappointment and disillusionment I've discovered in the more domestic varieties. So I seek, and will continue seeking until I know.

E-mail Patrick Flanery at pdflanery@hotmail.com.

— graphic by Jeffrey Avila