Earlier this month, Newsweek published a rather controversial and thought-provoking edition gay marriage. I flipped through the pages over dinner one night…religious case for same-sex unions.

Yep. I’m feelin’ ya.

I’ve been wrangling with the Catholic Church’s position and mine for years. I’ve pretty much racked it up to “let’s agree to disagree” and it’s become one of those bones of contention that I pretty much ignore unless directly challenged by it (which is largely why my husband and I opted out of a ministry that was actively supporting California’s Prop 8).

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I would like to be able to tell you that I am one of those perpetually peaceful people who seem to radiate a slightly smug contentedness from deep within their soul. I would like to be able to tell you that I write in a gratitude diary every day, right after my 6am Yogalates session and bowl of organic muesli. I would like to be able to tell you that I am able to handle anything my children throw at me – figuratively speaking – because I am inherently calm and happy and balanced. I would like to be able to tell you I’m like that because I would like to be like that but the thing is, I’m not. Maybe in a parallel universe, but not this one. I’m just not good at relaxing. During the birth of my second daughter, I tried very hard to breathe deeply through the contractions, to focus my energies inward and breathe the pain out. My husband later told me that I sounded like a horse.

In this universe, I’m just your average, garden-variety ineffective parent whose favourite method for calming down involves a large glass of shiraz and an even larger block of chocolate, and whose body would simply snap in half if made to do the downward dog.

When my mother was a stay-at-home-mother of four she went to yoga classes once a week – we used to say she was going to Yoghurt Classes – and she once told me that yoga saved her sanity in those days. So one day I went to a yoga class for new mothers and stretched for about 50 minutes before being told to lie down and listen to the lovely music and breathe deeply and just as I felt the tension melt away and the thoughts leave my troubled mind and just as I reached that state of blissful contentment… I fell asleep. I might have snored. Well, at least I didn’t neigh.

I really love the idea of meditation, but although I have tried I just can’t do it without the snoring. So, like all good mothers, I am living the life of a calm and contented human being vicariously through my children. My kids are learning to meditate. In our house, every day ends with reading from a book called The Wishing Star: Meditations for Children by Marneta Viegas. There’s a good reason why this is a good thing.

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If you haven’t heard the appalling news about 11-year-old Madeline Neumann’s tragic death of diabetic ketoacidosis last week, you can read about it here in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  The gist of it was that her parents decided to pray over her body instead of take her to a fucking doctor after she had been sick for two weeks and, at ten or so days in, COULD NO LONGER WALK OR TALK.  Madeline was healthy before her episode.  At her death, she was emaciated, as the body eats it own fat to raise insulin levels during diabetic ketoacidosis.

Around the same time, the idiot parents of poor little 15-month-old Ava Worthington of Oregon were indicted in Ava’s death for their attempts to ”faith-heal” the baby of her bronchial pneumonia–which led to a blood infection that could have been treated with antibiotics. 

As the article about Ava notes, laws were passed in the 1990s that struck down legal shields for faith-healers after the deaths of several children whose parents were members of the fundamentalist church.  The Worthingtons were indicted on Friday on manslaughter and criminal mistreatment charges, but it is unclear whether the Neumanns will be charged.  According to a Chicago Tribune report, Wisconsin law says that a parent cannot be accused of abuse or neglect of a child if “in good faith” they selected prayer as a basis of treatment for a disease.  An investigation has begun into whether the Neumanns had a “a good faith belief” that their daughter could be cured through prayer.  

My thought is that if Madeline was FUCKING BEDRIDDEN, there’s no way in hell the parents could have had a good faith belief she would be fine if they lit some candles and said a few Hail Marys.  Fucking assholes.

I believe in God, and I pray.  I pray more when I need or want more, which sucks, but you can bet your sweet ass that I’d be praying to my God, everyone else’s God, the real doctors and the people that play them on TV if my babies were that ill.  If my babies were lethargic and wanted to stay in bed for a few days, and they appeared to be getting thinner, and they just wanted me to hold them, I would probably have a Civil Protection Order against me to stay AWAY from the doctor’s office because I’d been there too many times.  

My son had a five-day fever last year and the doctor’s office staff was probably referring to me as “Norm” from Cheers I had been there so many times.  I’m not saying I drugged him up with everything under the sun, but I wanted a professional medical person overseeing my child and informing me thoroughly so that I could make proper decisions about his care.

My son ended up losing five pounds with that fever and looked so thin that I burst into tears when I put him in the bath at the end of that week.  I called in my husband so I could run out and buy milkshakes. 

What about the Worthingtons and the Neumanns?  I wonder what they’re feeling now.  Milkshakes aren’t going to bring back their beautiful daughters, and I hope all their asses get locked up for so long they forget what ice cream tastes like.  

I was raised as a lazy Catholic. Sure, I went to a preschool that was on Church property, and yes I went to Sunday school (until I was old enough to realize smoking pot and sneaking off to breakfast at Friendly’s was a better way to spend my time than learning about Jesus) and my family went to church…well, sometimes. I hated church because my mom would make me dress up…”GOD doesn’t care if I’m wearing jeans…” happened to me one of my favorite lines on Sunday mornings.

My fathers not religious and over the years God, Jesus, and Catholicism was never discussed in my family. Christmas, check. Precious Moments bible sold at family garage sale, check. I’m not sure what I believe; some days I like the idea of a big guy in the sky, some days I want to rub my little turquoise Buddha, and sometimes it’s a woman in the sky complete with sheer tunics and lavender essential oils. The bottom line: I believe in something, cause I wanna. Since having a daughter at least fourteen people have asked me if I’m going to baptize her and each time I just sort of glance wearily at my husband and go uh, no. As in, uh no I’m not going to pretend to be Catholic even if you want me to “do it for Great Gram…” No WAY.

But last night I found myself whispering to Paige my childhood mantra:

Now I lay me down to sleep, Pray the lord my soul to keep, Love stay with me Through the Night and Wake me By the Morning Light..

It sounds nice. It’s comforting, kinda. I might replace the Pray the Lord part with “Mommy Prays you sleep through the night…” Which has yet to happen, mother fuck! But seriously. I want Christmas and Easter but no bible. And I want spirituality but not Sunday school, and I want heaven but no sins that prevent you from getting in.
I’m confused. I’m confused about religion and spirituality and I don’t want to confuse Paige. Does she need to grow up with “something..” like the Grandparents are convinced or can we just enjoy comforting prayers before bed and presents on December 25th?

Which is worse — that funding at an esteemed university went to this study, or that an editor found it newsworthy? As being reported in the Chicago Sun Times, researchers at the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital conducted a survey and found that many doctors out there will care for poor patients, despite the doctor’s religious leanings:

“We can say a lot of doctors are doing a lot of good, whether religious or not,” said Dr. Farr Curlin, one of the authors of the study, published in the Annals of Family Medicine.

The study is based on a survey of 2,000 doctors with a 63 percent response rate. Thirty-five percent of non-religious doctors, compared with 31 percent of religious doctors, said they were likely to care for people with little or no health insurance.

Possible headlines for tomorrow’s edition:

“Atheist Fireman Rescues Child From Building”

“Atheist Police Officer Doesn’t Kick Puppies”

“Atheist Target Cashier Gives Service With a Smile”

“Atheist Parent Raises Happy, Kind Children”

It’s that last one that troubles, because for me, a “devout” atheist, it doesn’t read as a joke. If the pervading thought is that doctors, who have taken the Hippocratic oath, will not be altruistic merely because they shun religion, what must people think of how I raise my children? It’s the same, tired argument that if one doesn’t have religion in their life, then there’s no “moral compass” to dictate what’s right and wrong. That raising children without religion will simply turn them into selfish relativists, apt to do whatever they want, whenever they want.

I won’t rehash that debate and how incredibly insulting it is, because quite frankly I’m tired of it. But I will say this — try and reflect on people that have treated you with kind acts in your lifetime. Take notice of the warm smiles and friendly gestures you encounter in your everyday life. Now be really honest and ask yourself if any of those people would have treated you any differently if they were atheists. Because maybe they were. Your neighbor, your kid’s teacher, the corner grocer — any one of them might hold a humanistic view of our life here on Earth. Even your doctor.