When I was a kid, in Ukraine, my life involved a lot of walking, as it does now.  Walking is one of my favorite things about life.  The path often intersected my hometown’s central square, where a big Ukrainian catholic church stood. I often asked my mom if we could please stop in there for a few minutes.  Most of the time, no matter how stressed out she was or how late we were running, she’d let me. 

I liked the darkness, the quiet, the echoing of my footsteps, the flickering of candles, the overpowering wall murals.  I liked the ritual of walking in, crossing myself, kissing the pierced feet in the picture of Christ by the entrance, folding my arms on my chest, moving to the center of the empty church, and saying a prayer with a bowed head.  I usually recited the Lord’s Prayer.  I liked that prayer and have known it by heart since before I can remember.  Then I’d stand there in silence for a couple of minutes and walk out the same way I came.  The ritual was comforting.  But I was also a people-pleaser, I liked being liked.  And, to me, God was a lot like a person.  He liked it when I did things he asked and these were the actions that pleased him. 

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Religion was like nitrogen in the air.  It was overwhelming and everpresent, but not always noticeable.  Everything had christian undertones, but they were more cultural than religious – don’t shop or work on Sunday, don’t use vulgar language, cross yourself when you pass a church (thrice), give your bus seat up to an elderly person, don’t sing, dance, or eat meat during lent.  These conventions were on the same level of as “don’t shake hands over a doorstep, spit three times to prevent a bad thing from happening, don’t whistle in the house, knock on wood, fear the crosswind, wear a red thread on your wrist to ward off the evil eye (wearing your underwear inside-out also works), and smoke the devil out of the house each Christmas eve.  This latter list was leftover from my ancestor’s pagan religion in which nobody believed anymore, supposedly, but followed anyway.  Teachers, coaches, people on the street, shop ladies in the store, market sellers, all spoke and acted as if this combination of cultural norms is the one and only way.  The phrase “fear God!” was used in a the sense “be reasonable!”

Yet bible reading, church going, commandment keeping, and praying was kind of secondary.  We’d attend church once in a while, certainly on Palm Sunday and Easter.  The basic idea of christian “love towards all” was important, but only so long as it didn’t interfere with the first two tiers.  If you fit into and follow the cultural norms, then you are lovable. 

I was often frustrated with the selective religiosity of the people around me.  If we are supposed to listen to the priest and he says to come to church each Sunday and to pray each day, then why aren’t we doing that?  If the bible story teaches to be kind to those different from us, why are people saying nasty things about the gypsy on the street?  If the story of Adam and Eve teaches us to…. wait, what is that story teaching us? Wasn’t Jesus mad about people selling stuff near the temple, why is our town ok with that? What does “do not take the Lord’s name in vain” mean if “oh god” is such a prevalent part of everyone’s language? 

To get the maximum love from God, I decided that I was going to do things as fully as I could.  I’ll go to church, I’ll be nice to people, I will pray every night, and I will definitely stop using “oh god”.  There was a period of time when I walked to church on my own, to the 7am service, which I found particularly holy due to the smaller crowd and the lack of young children.  I was probably ten years old and felt pretty hard core.  I tried to push back all judgement of “I’m doing this better than you”, because, well, it wasn’t allowed.  At the same time I couldn’t logically make sense of the discrepancy “aren’t we constantly told that we need to be doing all these things? Why am I the only one who’s doing it?”

The fervent churchgoing at 7am didn’t last very long.  I may have gone only twice.  Other than being good for God, I wasn’t really getting much out of it, and overtime, my fervency wavered (God knew when he made me that I was not a morning person), but I said my prayers, and continued to stop by the church as I walked by with a deeper intention.