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Journal Entries, Spring 2021

Life Cycle – Conversion

What did your religious upbringing look like? How has your religiosity evolved through your life?

My religious upbringing was less than ideal, and very scattered. Also very culturally and spiritually Christian. My dad’s family attends services at the Church of Christ in Humble, TX and they are very involved in the community. I have never really felt a connection to the place or the religion they teach. I loved the singing and the time spent with my dad and my cousins. I was taught primarily by men, and men lead services and singing. Women could teach the littles, but starting at middle school, all Sunday school was for men to teach.

The version of God and Christianity I learned there was also not super appealing to me. Our paster was focused often on the question of Authority (who has it, who give it to them, etc.) I was also an ADHD kid with a lot of questions. (example: We learned that divorce was only okay if the woman was unfaithful and I had a lot of uncomfortable for my dad that day.) I was often fidgety and tired and not looking forward to sitting still for so long.

I only attended church on the weekends I was with my dad, and Wednesdays during the summers I stayed with him. My mom has always been kind of a spiritual person, but very jaded to the religion she grew up in as well. She saw a lot of hypocrisy in her small town Southern Methodist church. She also holds onto the idea that the truth about God and religion is all sort of split up in different pieces of different faiths. So she taught me a lot of openness and tolerance and she gave me some of the tools I needed to look for hope elsewhere.

One Wed service when I was in middle or early high school, a member of the congregation did a guest sermon about how being gay was bad and accepting gay people is bad and I was just at the beginning of realizing and accepting my own bisexual identity, and I was done. That was the day I decided I didn’t trust that church and never wanted to go back.

I’ve spent the intervening decade or so somewhere between rejecting the idea of God and slowly realizing I’m mostly rejecting that idea of God. I reject Christianity as I have known it, as  a religion that manipulates and excludes and isolates. I reject keeping children totally away from the world. I reject a religion that hates me for the fundamental aspects of who I am. But I don’t think I reject God the concept anymore.

I’ve spent years talking about “the universe” as a thing that can send signs, as a thing that can send signs, as a thing that can arrange coincidence. I’ve talked about the universe as something semi-sentient, I’ve spoken of believing that there is ~something~ bigger and wiser and smarter than me kind of running the show.

At times this has been tongue-in-cheek or ironic or something that I said without fully exploring what I meant by it. I still don’t know what I believe about God, but I know what God I don’t believe in and I know there are other options to explore and I want to do that.

I’m not afraid of examining spirituality like I have been in the past. I’m not afraid of being thought  of as less intelligent for believing in a higher power. I also know I love ritual and reverence and intentional practice.

If you are considering conversions, what are your thoughts about the process up to this point? What are the barriers left in your life preventing you from feeling authentically Jewish?

I am considering conversion. I become more and more certain of my desire to convert every day. The process so far has been a mixed experience. I’m ecstatic to be moving toward this goal, terrified of committing to it, worried that it’s “too easy,” sad it isn’t going fast enough.

I feel like I don’t know enough yet, like I haven’t spent enough time thinking about it (which, frankly, both concerns are a little absurd). I feel like I don’t know what to do, what I’m allowed to do. I don’t feel like I have the community connection and validation that I want. I’m deeply missing the experience of in-person services, I wish I had knowledgeable people to share Shabbat evening meals with.

I want someone to hold my hand, I want someone that I trust to say “it’s okay for you to do this thing.”

I have struggled all of my life to find a place that I belong and to believe that I belong in the places I find. Feeling embraced by a community, feeling [anything] enough to claim labels or support has always been a challenge. I know I will face that challenge here as well.

I’m also not sure yet what I will have to give up or walk away from in order to live a Jewish life as I want to do. I don’t know what to start doing or stop doing yet to make that change.

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