The pastor of that huge Southern Baptist congregation threw me a curveball when he said that religion was designed to make us feel bad about ourselves. He said that Jesus didn’t want us to feel like shit. No, maybe those weren’t his exact words, but that was the gist. I loved that message. I was ready to sign up to watch the Sunday streams when I returned home. Still, when I tried explaining to my friend that I thought her pastor was awesome, she brought it straight back to religion. She heard a totally different message. She felt that I needed to believe in Jesus to believe in God and that faith without Jesus, without her God and her religion, was meaningless. I was all for her having her beliefs, but why wasn’t it okay for me to have mine?
At the Southern-BBQ joint, we were sitting with a member of the local college football team. He was a hulking guy with a forearm bigger than my thigh. Probably an offensive lineman. I wanted to ask him about the athletes who thanked Jesus after a victory or an actor who thanked God after winning an award. Does this mean that God wanted that team or actor to win more than others? Were the deeply religious athletes on the other team thanking God for the loss because that also was God’s will? Was it really God who caused that fumble? What did faith mean to them? Was it better luck next week or next time? Or keep working hard and your day will come? Maybe I can ask God about that at dinner. Hey, my dude, which are your favorite teams?
Yet, as I was leaving my friends in the South when it came time to fly back to California, I did what I always did whenever I boarded an airplane. I prayed. I closed my eyes and made my silent deal with a God I didn’t know or couldn’t define. Dear God: Please deliver us safely. If not for me, please do it for the babies and young families on this plane with me. Or something like that. This prayer was repeated on take-offs, landings, and especially during turbulence. I know it was totally passive-aggressive. Fine if you don’t want to save me, but please save the women and children. My hope was that it was easier for God to save us all in one fell swoop.
Flights weren’t the only time I regularly prayed. Once a year, I went on a weeklong backcountry backpacking trip. I always prayed on these trips, as every one of them included some do-or-die moment when life could easily become death. There were snowstorms, bears, rockslides, river crossings, and simply fatigue. Even as I thought about the immortality that would have come from dying in such a way, I prayed to live. I prayed as I drove past car accidents. I didn’t make wishes when I blew out birthday candles; I prayed. I prayed when I meditated. For someone who didn’t understand his faith and distanced himself from religion, I prayed a lot. Especially on that rock in Joshua Tree.
But to what? To whom? And again, did it matter? Should it matter?
This was my “to be or not to be” moment. In absence of any comfort with defining my God, I sought to find some comfort with my spirituality. I wanted to learn to accept and honor it. I believed in the Universe. I believed in energy and its power. I guess, as I think about it, I had developed a kind of faith in that. But, still, I wanted more. I wanted to believe in some bigger God, but I simply didn’t know what that meant or even why I wanted it. Or needed it. Was God the old dude with the white beard and flowing robes? Or could God be a young black woman, or any sex or race for that matter? Could I be God? Not in any kind of narcissistic way, of course. Why would God even need a gender? Or even a form? I felt I could only define my spirituality by better understanding my God.
It’s what brought me to the temple. It wasn’t the religion. It was the pomp and circumstance. It was the rituals that tied us through generations, creating connections and memories. I thought it could also help quiet the voices in my head that came with my depression.
I had tried to talk to Timmy about spirituality and death at different times, but he would have none of it. Timmy was a scientist in the purest sense—a surgeon who believed in death as the end and humanity as evolution. Survival of the fittest. There were no spirits, no miracles, and certainly no universal force. He wasn’t quite Alec Baldwin’s surgeon character in the movie Malice, where he declared on the witness stand that he was God, but Timmy was an unapologetic atheist. I read about a doctor who said the “white light” at death is just some brain stem thing. That was Timmy.
We once sat on the edge of the Grand Canyon shortly after I had graduated from college. Timmy was already in med school and on his way to becoming a celebrated orthopedic surgeon. I had dreams of becoming a writer, even as my inability to find “a real job” had me on the verge of spending another three months working at a summer camp. As I took a final hit of the joint we silently passed between us, the sun was shining a warm glow on the walls of the canyon, creating unimaginable shades of reds and oranges. The textures created a kind of multimedia explosion that artists try to recreate but never can. It’s humanly impossible to capture something that’s so far beyond human. I couldn’t help but feel inspired.
“There’s no possible way that this moment is simply the result of water, wind, and time. It’s too perfect. This canyon was shaped by a sculptor that you and I will never understand. The river was God’s hammer and chisel, but this isn’t by chance. This is heavenly art. It’s a vision that—”
Timmy interrupted me with, “—is created by you being fucking high. What the fuck are you talking about? Jesus Christ. Shut up. I’m hungry. Let’s go eat. And I clearly need to get you laid.”
No wonder I shied from expressing myself. While Timmy didn’t necessarily judge my attempts to find meaning in everything, he didn’t exactly encourage them. He tolerated and accepted them, often introducing me as his “spiritual friend.” I wore that as a badge of honor. Even if he laughed at my search the same way my sister laughed when I told her Blondie talked to me. Only it didn’t feel as mean. He just couldn’t let himself go where I needed to go. To be fair . . . neither could I.
As a kid, I went to Jewish camps and spent a summer in Israel. I loved the bond, the brotherhood, the belonging that I felt around other Jewish kids. We were a community. Friends for life. But on one Saturday morning, I didn’t feel like going to the services and praying. I was forced to go. Soon thereafter, every Star of David that I scribbled on paper included a question mark in the middle. That was when the religion was lost on me and with it, the culture. Because it was all rolled up together, in one fell swoop, I turned my back on all of it. It was far easier to discount any connection to God than it was to have one. When I got back home, I refused to go to High Holiday services. I was far from a rebel Jew, but that was my revolt.
There I was, though, praying on airplanes and as I blew out my birthday candles year after year. And to what?
Still, over time, I’d come to think of God as a collective. I prayed to the collective voices of my friends, mentors, and teachers. I prayed to nature and the aspen trees in the Colorado backcountry. God was the moments when I learned important lessons about myself. God was feelings. God was love, pain, joy, and anxiety. God was anticipation and passion. God was my best version of myself. And, yes, even the worst. For me, God was all of these things (and more) mixed in a blender. That’s what I was talking to when I was feeling scared, alive, and vulnerable. That’s what I was speaking with when I needed help and gave thanks.
When I really thought about it, my faith came from these people and these experiences. They collectively created the energy source that provided me with the knowledge and power to believe. So when I prayed, I was hoping that one of these voices from my past would be awakened to respond and remind me that I had made it through a situation like this before. Remind me that the turbulence—real or metaphorical—would stop. These experiences kept me alive. Even Timmy and his atheism on the rim of the Grand Canyon were part of my God.
I still didn’t have reasons for unspeakable tragedies. I didn’t chalk it up to “God’s will,” but I couldn’t discount any existence of God or ignore my longing for faith simply because these tragedies happened. Bluntly, two-year-old babies were going to die unexpectedly. God wasn’t my answer to “why?” And, conversely, discounting God’s existence wasn’t my answer to “why?” God was just there to lean on when it happened. The collective of my experiences was there to help me accept what couldn’t be understood. The answers weren’t in a book. They were in me. I had to learn to trust them. Because that’s what faith really is. Nothing more than Trust. With a capital “T.” I think the Bible said God made us in his image or something like that. Maybe it’s actually the other way around.
But if that’s my God, how can that God have a house?
Back in this strange, new reality, I still had questions about this dinner. If God were a collection of my life experiences, what would the house look like? I had no idea what to do or where to go. So I did the only thing I could do. I got up, dusted myself off, and got ready to walk down the path where the wizard appeared and then disappeared. Okay, I thought, answering the call of this test. I have faith that this is the way to go.
“Come on, girl. Let’s go get ready for dinner at God’s house.”
Blondie let out a howl that I had never heard before. I think she knew more than I did. That answered another question: wherever and whatever this dinner was, Blondie was coming with me. As we started walking down the path, I kept talking to Blondie. “I wish you could have met Jess. You would have loved her. But maybe not as much as she would have loved you.” As Blondie barked and took off down the path, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to remember everything about Jess.
The smell of her long, dark hair.
The depth of her deep, brown eyes that sometimes looked green.
Her olive skin was like velvet to the touch.
My happiest, safest place was sleeping with my head on her bare stomach. In the grand scheme of things, we weren’t together long. It wasn’t perfect. Far from it. I lied to her. I tried to sabotage the relationship repeatedly. She just accepted it. And me. When I was over whatever I was doing or feeling, we’d simply talk about it. Or we wouldn’t. It was amazing. It was the most adult thing I had ever experienced in my life. And, my God, did she support me. She had a sense of perspective that was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. She lived and breathed forgiveness. I grew up with her.
She wasn’t perfect. But she knew that too. She accepted herself. How do people do that? I never figured that out. Her parents weren’t good people. Her dad was a drunk and abusive to her mom. Her mom didn’t drink, but she passed down the abuse. So, Jess never wanted kids. She was afraid that somewhere inside her was some hidden rage, and that scared her. That’s why she started practicing meditation and yoga long before it was cool to do so. It’s why she prayed. She was afraid. Except she wasn’t afraid of life like I was. She was just afraid of a version of herself she never saw but which was likely lurking below the surface, waiting for its chance to be exposed. I never saw a hint of the rage. She either hid it, managed it, or it really wasn’t there. Somehow, she figured out how to channel that fear into art.
I wish I had figured that out. I wouldn’t have had to run from fear. I could have used it. Channeled it. Even though I was gone, I knew Jess would keep working on her fear, whittling it like a broken stick found in the wilderness. Before long, it’s no longer just a stick. It’s a tool. It’s art. I liked that idea of turning fear into art. Maybe that’s what singer-songwriters do. What writers do. What all artists do. She was full of surprises. Who was I to say that she’d never be a mom?
She was my happily ever after.
I kept walking and, after a while, whistled for Blondie.
I missed Jess.
CHAPTER SIX
A young girl releases a balloon at her grandparent’s fiftieth anniversary party with a note including her address and a request, “Please return to Laura Buxton.” The balloon is found two days later by a different girl, also named Laura Buxton.3
Although I loved the colors of aspen trees and the smell of fresh mountain air, the sounds of the backcountry were always my favorite part of a long hike. Among all the sounds, including the thunder of towering waterfalls, cool breezes that played trees like virtuosos, or the chorus of wolves at sunset, my favorite was the crunch of the trail beneath my boots.
On the trail, my feet became a kind of metronome, methodically pacing my journey with a measured, consistent cadence. Step . . . step . . . step . . . step. Each crunch of rocks, dirt, and leaves meant forward progress. Adventure. Each step was a reminder to stay present and marked a moment on the way to some destination. Sometimes, those steps were less about something ahead and far more about what I was leaving behind.
As I walked with Blondie, I closed my eyes and just listened to the duet of my boots and her paws. Her cadence matched mine perfectly, and our steps created a heavenly harmony. I didn’t have a map or compass, and while I didn’t think either of us knew where we were going, I could always trust the sounds. Listen. Step . . . step . . . step . . . step. We were going the right way.
I was overcome by the beauty. My God, I love the colors of aspen trees. This was my happy place. Even though I’d never actually been in this place—among aspen trees with Blondie. Even though I didn’t understand where I was. Until now, I had never thought about one’s “happy place” being less about the place and more about the happy. Because, in a strange way, it gave me the same sense of calm that I felt when I watched cars.
I remembered the first time I watched the cars. My mom and dad got in a fight, and I snuck out of the house with Blondie. Using the sash from my robe as a leash, I walked Blondie as quickly as I could up the street outside our house. The hill we lived on wasn’t particularly long or steep, but to a pudgy seven-year-old kid with short seven-year-old legs, it felt huge. It was a daunting monster that I climbed every day to go to school, the local shopping center, or just to play with friends. Years later, of course, as an adult, I’d look at the hill and laugh. It wasn’t as much a monster as it was a playful puppy. Perspective. Experience. Growth. Nobody told me that all the really big things would someday seem small. Exams. Performance reviews. Even break-ups. I had to learn that on my own. Maybe I never did. Another of those lessons that I knew but struggled to live by. The really big things would someday seem small. That is, except for my parents’ fights. Even as an adult, with all those decades behind me, they remained huge. Especially this one.
At seven though, the hill was a monster. After what felt like an hour, Blondie and I crested that hill and began our descent down the other side. Making it over the top was always a source of great achievement. The feeling at seven was the same as when I would later climb 14,000-foot peaks on my backpacking trips. Euphoria. I always raised my arms in the air with the thrill of victory. Like I had achieved a great challenge. Soon after, we came to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. It was less than half a mile from my house; but, again, in the experience and perspective of miniature me, I could have been miles and miles away. I was spent. Probably more emotionally than physically, but I needed to sit. I leaned back against the concrete wall of the house on the corner. There was a time when I knew the owners, but they had moved away. Blondie put her head in my lap, and for the first time ever, I watched the cars.
The first car to go by was one of those crazy, small, new cars from Japan. I had heard about them but had never actually seen one. It was light blue and looked funny. It sounded funnier. More like a lawnmower than a car. It was driven by a little old lady who had the seat pushed far forward and was hunched over the steering wheel. She gave me a gentle smile and a wave. I needed that. I told myself she was a good person.
I mostly watched. Sometimes, I’d wave if a driver waved at me. I began to make up stories of who was driving and where they were going. I shared them all with Blondie. The man in the yellow Corvette was a doctor on his way to perform a life-saving brain surgery. The woman driving the big station wagon was on her way to pick up seventeen kids from soccer practice. They would all fight to cram into the back, without any seatbelts, while the mom smoked a pack of cigarettes in the front. I saw a couple of parents I knew and tried to appear like everything was perfectly fine. They didn’t need to know that I had run away from home. Three or four cars had dogs sticking their heads out of the windows, and I assumed Blondie was making up her own stories. That one is going to the beach. That Golden is going for a walk on trails. Hey, I know that guy!
