Back during that summer after high school, I decided to not believe in God anymore. Not because of anything the Church did, mind you.  Polygamy, racism pre-1978, uber-conservatism in Anglo-Mormon discourse—I could not have cared less, frankly.  Against my Bishop or parents or youth leaders I had no complaint.  No drugs or sex lured me away, no great sin wracked my soul, no Evangelical or Atheist friend seduced me away.  No one had died.  And yet, no matter the rousing college conversion story of my Father or the passionate pioneer heritage of my Mother, I just didn’t want to believe just to believe anymore.  Besides, one can only sit through so many dull meetings, faith-promoting rumors, platitudes, sermons, game-theoried defenses of God, crying-games and lazy assurances that the Spirit will teach what words cannot throughout the umpteenth iteration of footprints-in-the-sand before one begins to think maybe it’s not me, it’s them. 

What’s more, the math was simple: If there was no God, then I was nothing, and being nothing, I was therefore free.  No more Saturday’s Warrior or Youth of Zion or One of the Elect Saved for These Latter Days. No more pressure. No more exaltation. There was no more Golden Child.  It felt so good to be nothing at all.

I was nothing, I owed nothing, and so was owned by nothing. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins/But not mine” I calmly felt without yet being able to articulate it, “My sins my own/They belong to me.”

It wasn’t until many, many years later that I finally heard Patti Smith’s “Gloria,” the opener to her legendary 1975 album Horses. And it was the first time I ever heard a song that understood exactly what I was feeling as an 18-year-old in 2001.

Yet strange to relate, back that summer: I never stopped praying—I couldn’t crawl into bed without falling to my knees.

Social conditioning, I knew, I’d deprogram myself soon enough, it would just take a little time is all. It would dissipate completely once I went away to college, where I would read new books and think new thoughts and learn new languages and travel to distant lands, I knew.  Besides, these night prayers were nothing more than moving lips by then anyways, there was nothing sincere behind them; the words, like all words, were just waves in the air, nothing more—

Yet still my lips moved.

I even kept reading the Book of Mormon, frustratingly enough.  I couldn’t leave it alone. It couldn’t leave me alone.  I felt quiet when I read it.

But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties it read, even to an experiment upon my words  An experiment?  But on what?

it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me

and your mind doth begin to expand, O then, is not this real—

“Sounds like a signal from you” I calmly felt without yet being able to articulate it, “Yes I do know how I survive/Yes I do know why I’m alive…”

It wasn’t until many, many years later that I finally heard “Spiritual High (State of Independence)”–specifically, the 1992 version by Moodswing’s ft. Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders^[1]The music video for which, while pretty cheesy, at least references Martin Luther King Jr. repeatedly, which feels strangely apropos of this MLK Day weekend. And it was the first time I ever heard a song that also understood exactly what I was feeling as an 18-year-old in 2001.

I stood outside the house, staring into the horizon, the sun shining through the evergreens.  Summer was ending, the leaves were falling to the ground, and I was tired of struggling with that which would not force me.

Is not this real? I say unto you, Yea, because it is light and whatsoever is light is good because it is discernible, therefore ye must know that it is good.

 I thought so hard I got a headache, then I realized that even thought is a feeling—

Then I will believe it, I decided.  And the wind rustled the branches of the evergreens, I closed my eyes, and without compulsory means I felt at peace again, felt at home, like I hadn’t in a long, long time.