Do You Think I'll Get an A?

God and the Human Condition: What’s in it for Me

There is something to be said for good parenting. As a young reader, prolific beyond my years, I would often come across a word with elusive meaning. I’d follow the trail of cigarette smoke in my search for my mother to ask for help, and often found her sprawled out on her bed, a heavy book in her free hand. When I questioned my mother about the troubling word, she would ask if I’d identified any Latin or Germanic clues; “There are none”, I’d respond, sure even before my approach. “Well then, look it up” she’d say, and lower her head back to her Margaret Atwood. As I got older and became determined to write the great American novel (I think I was nine), my grammar school spelling would betray my Steinbeck vocabulary, and I would find my mother again and ask for help. “How do you spell dispassionate?” I’d ask, so afraid of her standard answer. I was in a hurry to get back to my thread, and our dictionary often went missing, shared by six siblings! But no, ease could not be mine, and “Look it up” she would say, a pen between her teeth, smoke around her head, as she worked her way through a dimestore collection of New York Times crossword puzzles.

Such has been my experience in this class. As I study the world’s religions, I am motivated to answer the very many questions of “why”, “how”, and “where” that nag at me with each chapter. Many late nights I was motivated to “look it up”, the connections that lead us through time and culture. The study of religion is not simply to find comprehension of a particular dogma; for me, religion is part of the world’s historical whole. Who found faith in what, where were they going, from where had they come, why were they motivated to find answers to their human condition at that point in time…for me, all these questions relate human beings to each other over time, generations, boundaries created and re-created, and human experience. In my opinion, there is no other subject which can teach us so completely about history, literature, art, ethics, culture, and philosophy, all under one empirically accurate roof. The study of religion to me does not point out our personal differences, but unifies us as world travelers, muddling through life the best way we know how. Really, to me it’s all the best way, as long as the path is kind, fair, and promotes the independent spiritual growth of followers. Do no harm, do unto others, feed the starving, teach what you know…it’s all really very good.

An objective look at a religion different than one’s own allows insight to another lifestyle, and maybe greater appreciation for one’s own lifestyle once educated. I am not at all uncomfortable with the Catholic who thinks of the Jew, “Well, that doesn’t sound right”, as long as she finds no hatred in such difference. Unfortunately, there are too many of that type of bigot, and it was obvious that such ignorance got in the way of objective learning while I sat in our religion class. There are those so cloaked in their religion they wear it like a self-righteous burqa, with only small slits cut out for limited vision, lacking a peripheral view of the world. Their education is inadequate by design; if another person’s reality lies outside their field of vision, it cannot be reality, and may even seem ridiculous. Thus I am motivated to return home and “look it up”, the how’s and why’s of man’s personal motivations, cloaked as religious behavior. My annoyance at some classmates’ blindness serves to illuminate my own illiteracy, and through the study of religion, I am enlightened. And that is why I am here, as a college student, aiming for a degree in higher education. For this experience, I thank my classmates, my professor and, of course, my mother.

Excuse Me Sir, That Seat Was Taken

How do we DO this?! How do we stay sober?!

Big exam in Psych Statistics tonight, the kind where I pull out my hair while working my pencil, and end up getting an A. Killing myself, because that is what I do. (Let's remember, I did not get A's in college the first time around. I was into blackouts, cracked ribs, stealing cigarettes. And there was a tail-gate party that, as good drunks, we didn't party out of the trunk of the car; we rented a U-Haul cube to hold the kegs. I got mud in my braids, puked all over, and had to ride home in the back of the cube, which was scary and made me even pukier.) These days, why do it unless you do it right, which means full throttle, pull-your-hair-out-late-night-statistics.

There is an Indian dandy who comes in late when he comes to class, which is almost never. Wild hair and gorgeous black eyes, and a smell you'd imagine comes from his car, gassy and smokey and boozy. His skin should be lovely, too, but it's not, it's yellow, and there are bits of tobacco-like things in his hair. He chooses to sit by me, probably because it's the easiest seat to take when late and leave when early. (Some of you might say a higher power put him there, but I believe it's just a matter of logistics.) He takes off his coat and his smell comes to me, lets me know what he's been up to. On lecture nights, he raises his hand and asks questions that no one but the professor can understand, and she dismisses him because his questions will be answered two chapters down the line. The kid is in overdrive on some crazy Jim Beam-and-speed math ride, and the teacher can't keep up. Tonight is exam night, and he's drunk again, swaying again, and getting an A...again. How does he DO it?

And why couldn't I? That's what still can piss us right off. Why can't we be like "other" people? Why can't we drink like normal, and act normal, and have normal relationships with normal expectations and disppointments? Have a drink at Friday happy hour, toast the bride and groom at a wedding, have a few beers from the trunk in the Giants' parking lot? Well, we can't. We just can't. We've proven it over and over. We don't know more than we know, and we know we cannot drink at all if we are to live like "other" people.

Besides, the sotten Indian is not one of the "other" people, he is like me. He just doesn't know it yet.