I didn’t grow up going to church, but I did pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep. . .” every night. Other than that, I didn’t think much about God until I was eleven, an awkward girl with oversized teeth and ratty hair whose best friend was a red Dachshund named Dune. Dune walked me to the bus stop every morning and slept in my bed at night.
One evening Dune was hit by a car and died, and I was devastated, as you can imagine. My great Aunt Sue, whom I’d always found a bit frightening, tried to comfort me by saying that Dune was such a good dog that God wanted him up in heaven, and it crossed my mind that God might be a little bit selfish.
But the pain I felt about the loss of my dog was a pin prick compared to what I felt the following year when my Nana Pat died of cancer. Nana was not only my namesake but also a mother to me during my parents’ divorce. Nana Pat was the center of the Caspers’ family, and without her we fell apart. I didn’t see my grandfather again for fifteen years, and by then he was in the early stages of dementia.
I’ll never really know, but I believe now that my dad’s grief and regrets about the loss of his mother fueled the fire of his alcoholism and a drug addiction. He never recovered.
My dad’s wife, who’d been like a favorite aunt, left him and took my three-year-old brother and baby sister with her. It was years before I saw them again, and then our visits were rare.
When my nana died, I was angry with God, but when the hits kept coming I chose instead, not to believe that I was being punished, but rather that God didn’t exist. There was no one looking after me, I thought, so I had to look after myself. I thought I was alone in this belief -- or lack of belief-- and kept it a secret; I hadn’t yet learned the word atheist.
But as I stumbled into adulthood I realized that because I’d grown up without faith in God, it was difficult to have faith in anything: friendship, family, love, myself.
Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of hearing Mary Oliver read from her new book, Swan, at Wellesley College. When asked, “Why is there beauty in the world?” Oliver responded, “There is beauty in the world so that we may feel the ache of wanting to be worthy.” How that struck me.
I was 25 when my daughter Olivia was born. She was the loveliest creature I had ever seen, and for the first time I felt that ache, wanted to be worthy of that beauty. All that spring I felt as if I were waking from a long slumber, seeing brilliance in the world for the first time. Suddenly every tulip, camellia, flowering dogwood, was a small, every day miracle, a mirror of the miracle snuggled in a pouch on my chest. Nature was a continual reminder of my new aspiration to be a better person.
And that’s where I found God-- in striving to be a better human being, without the expectation of anything in return: no promise of heaven, no guarantee of love, not even a guarantee that I wouldn’t fail.
The poet and playwright Ntozake Shange writes, “I found God in myself, and I loved her . . . fiercely.”
When I found God in myself, I found faith in myself, and I was able to have faith in others, too—- to see that everyone around me is inherently good even when, just like me, they sometimes fail. Believing in the goodness of others makes forgiveness that much easier-- or if forgiveness isn't possible in this moment, at least acceptance.
While writing this, I started thinking about how envious I am of people who believe that when they pass beyond this life they’ll go on to reunite with all of their loved ones who passed before them.
While I love the idea of seeing Nana Pat again, I know that if there’s a heaven, by many Christian standards, my dad— a heroin addict who died in a car wreck, who took another man’s life— won’t be in it. What kind of heaven would that be for me if my dad’s not there?
So I don’t know what I believe about the afterlife, but I’m hopeful that if God is in our continual struggle to be better people, that when we pass beyond this life we all finally get to be our best selves.
This testimonial of faith was offered by Patricia Caspers.
