Virgo, Skeptic Rising

There are two kinds of people in the world: believers and skeptics. George Bernard Shaw said: "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

Sober or not, I fall pretty comfortably into the skeptical category, though I'm not quite as jaded as my mother. She can't even watch a magician without saying: "It's a trick."

"Of course it's a trick," my dad says, "but the illusion is fun."

"It's just a trick," says my mother.

Her sister, my aunt, reads her horoscope pretty regularly. When my mother says that she doesn't believe in horoscopes, my aunt says: "Of course you don't. You're a Capricorn."

On the Zodiacal chart, I'm Virgo, often described as: perfectionistic, anxious, hardworking, self-sacrificing, reliable, logical, observant, helpful, precise, interfering. I am all of those things.

Virgo is also described as cold, fussy, inflexible, introverted, fastidious, health conscious, fit, and emotionally secretive. I am none of those things.

If I am sitting in a doctor's office and if there is no good celebrity gossip to read, I will glance at my horoscope. Sometimes I agree, somethings I don't. But do I believe? No. Nor do I believe a single word that tarot card reader told me at that party last summer.

In fact, the older I get, the less I believe in much of anything. The folly of youth seems to be to believe that things will simultaneously change completely (for the better) and yet never change. Experience shows that fashion and technology change, but that human nature does not.

The belief systems of the world's religions have never seemed particularly helpful to me. I worry enough about this lifetime to spend much energy worrying about the next. I'd like to believe, as many ancient cultures do, that everything has a spirit, but I don't really care whether a rock has an inner life and I don't want to have to worry about the soul of that mosquito I just snuffed. One of the big reasons that Judaism appeals to me is that it offers more questions than answers. That seems right. Answers are elusive, maybe even irrelevant. It's the questions that count.

On the other hand, some things aren't even worth questioning. They just … are. And despite a pervasive skepticism, I do believe in a few unbelievable things. Like most parents, I know for a fact that my babies are miracles. Life itself — the spark of it — is miraculous, even if it is just a random accident rather than divine design.

Part of this miracle that it is finite. Our lives are limited and unpredictable, and most belief systems seem to stem from our need to answer the answerable: where do we come from, how long will we be here, where do we go? I don't believe that anyone really knows, at least not for sure.

I don't believe in ghosts, either, but I do know that my grandmother came to say goodbye to me when she passed away 12 years ago. She was in Michigan when she died, and I was at home in bed in Chicago. She came to my room and told me not to worry, that everything was fine and that she loved me. I saw her standing there, by the door. She didn't speak, yet I heard her clear as day. My inner skeptic didn't even question it.

You don't have to believe me. It doesn't matter whether you do or not. If you need proof, however, I did wake my husband to tell him. He patted my hand and told me to go back to sleep. When my mother called at 6:30 in the morning to tell me the news, my husband was wide-eyed and my mother had no idea what I meant when I told her I already knew.

This week, my father's sister passed away. I was lucky to get to visit her one last time a few weeks ago. As sick as she was, it was still a shock to hear that she had died so soon after our visit. I'm glad I got to see her in person, because she did not visit me when she died.

I've been lucky — my direct experience with death has been limited primarily to elderly relatives who have lived long lives. Perhaps that is why I haven't looked for further explanations.

I know people who have experienced traumatic or unexpected loss — through illness, accident or senseless violence. They often seem to want answers, or at least reasons. I have one friend who lost so many family members in such a short time, that when they moved to a new town, the first thing her son wanted to see was the cemetery. I have another friend who lost her dear husband of more than 60 years, but talks to him regularly … and he talks back. I have no doubt that she hears him.

My friend and fellow writer Shari Brady recently wrote about her belief in the paranormal, and how she uses it as inspiration for her fiction. In many ways, I think fiction writers are all trying to work out our control issues. Through writing, we have the power of life and death. Even better, we can write an entire life and then change it in rewrite.

Maybe it's a Virgo thing, since there have been many famous Virgo writers including (to name just a few): William Rice Burroughs, Taylor Caldwell, Agatha Christie, Craig Claiborne, Eldridge Cleaver, George Fenimore Cooper, Roald Dahl, Robertson Davies, Theodore Dreiser, Johann von Goethe, O. Henry, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ken Kesey, Stephen King, D. H. Lawrence, H.L. Menken, William Saroyan, Mary Godwin Shelley, Edith Sitwell, Upton Sinclair, Leo Tolstoy, H.G. Wells, William Carlos Williams and Richard Wright.

And lest we forget that other Virgo writer, Robert Benchley, who capsulized the whole two kinds of people belief system in his Law of Distinction:

"There are two kinds of people in the world, 

those who believe there are two kinds of people
and those who don't."

My Aunt Phyllis was a Libra. Although I don't know if she followed her horoscope, I do know she held deep religious convictions and I hope they brought her comfort. I also know she was loved and will be missed.

Please share your own beliefs or close encounters with the other side here.

Image credit: Virgo by ~Miss--Dee at deviantart.com.

Children and Religious Diversity — CMB Post

Originally posted on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog.

We are a very liberal household. We chose our community in part because it is diverse — racially, ethnically, socioeconomically and, presumably, politically. Many residents who have the financial ability to live almost anywhere frequently cite our city's diversity as a major draw.

Yet few of us are naive enough to believe that we have achieved true integration of these diverse populations. There is still a pronounced achievement gap in most of our schools. There are neighborhoods that are considered "better" or "safer" than others. Children who play together in preschool and elementary school drift apart in middle school and high school — often along racial lines. Still, we try. At least our children know that not everyone looks alike or comes from the same background.

In our home, we talk a lot about tolerating differences, even within our family. My children are so different that I sometimes think they aren't even members of the same species. But we strive for acceptance (except when it comes to college football, as we are devout Michigan fans). So imagine my surprise when my middle boy came home in second grade and asked if it was OK that he was friends with someone who didn't believe in God.

I was stunned by the question. We are Jewish and our children attend religious school, but we are not particularly observant and have certainly never implied that we had a corner on the religious market. In fact, within our own extended family we have plenty of believers of different faiths, as well as our fair share of nonbelievers.

"Of course, you can still be friends," I assured him, and we had a wonderful discussion about how freedom of religion also includes the freedom not to believe. The First Amendment suddenly made perfect sense to this logical child and he moved on to being intolerant of his brother touching his stuff. I patted myself on the back for another parenting job well done.

So imagine my surprise when, a few years later, my youngest child encountered an even more disturbing form of religious intolerance at school — in third grade! A big playground brouhaha arose when ugly words were hurled at a child who said that his family did not believe in God. Parents and social workers were called in, and the school conducted a "Cool Tool" lesson in the classrooms about tolerance. I was proud of the school for addressing the issue directly, and yet something still did not sit right. I was particularly struck by the fact that both these instances of intolerance were directed at children and families who did not believe in God. Differing religious beliefs did not raise an eyebrow, but non belief seemed to be a huge issue.

One of the things I like about Judaism is that the religion itself encourages questions, debates, even arguments (at least within the Reform community). There is a constant quest for knowledge and understanding. We made the conscious choice to bring our children up within this religious setting because most of the people I knew who were raised without any religious affiliation grew up to believe in nothing. We felt it was important to give our children some background that they could learn about, rebel against, embrace or reject — but come to their decisions from a place of interest, knowledge and questioning.

I worry now, however, that by providing specific religious instruction, even in a tolerant congregation, we may inadvertently be teaching them that our beliefs are somehow "right", which almost by definition implies that different believers must somehow be "wrong." I hope this is not true. I hope these examples of intolerance will lead to more discussions, more growth and more tolerance. I hope my children continue to question — us, their religious teachers, their friends and their community — and I hope they do it in the spirit of achieving true diversity.

This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post. When Susan isn't pondering the big questions of religion and politics, she can be found writing at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog.

Photo courtesy of Jeanne Levy via flickr.com; the chalk art was done by Liza White and Kary Taylor at the Forest Grove Chalk Festival.

Diversity in America

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who ignore our differences and those who embrace them. 

Today, on the Moms Blog Group, bloggers from all over the country are tackling the topic of diversity head on. It's a conversation long overdue. Click here for my post on Children and Religious Diversity. Then spend some time reading the other posts on the topic by clicking on the listings on the left side bar. 

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Photo courtesy of Jeanne Levy via flickr.com; the chalk art was done by Liza White and Kary Taylor at the Forest Grove Chalk Festival.