I Found God in Colorado
By Rebecca Watkins
He stands at the lectern, just left of the baptistry. He has a bushy mustache, a gentle but commanding voice and reading glasses sliding down his nose. There is a small light affixed to the podium, but the sanctuary is dark on a rainy spring Sunday that could have been ten years ago or could have been twenty. The lamp doesn’t really matter because this man knows the words he is proclaiming to the congregation. He has been writing these words all week. I’ve seen him in the green and ruby office working late into the night and then again on the screened porch at noon on Saturday. I’ve seen him reading and “ah-ha-ing” when an idea sparks. I’ve watched as he reads to himself and to Mother, crossing out words or phrases that don’t sing as he desires. I’ve seen him watching the news and listening to NPR, connecting scriptures to current events. I’ve watched him. I watch him now, performing this week’s sermon to a congregation of eager ears who come in search of a little insight, a little hope.
I am a pastor’s kid, a PK. Many are familiar with the common stereotypes about PKs: rebels who struggle with the law, have lots of sex, and want nothing to do with religion. I was not a rebel; I was a virgin. I was not angsty, I was anxious. The only law-breaking I did was purely accidental: a speeding ticket, featuring me crying in a mixture of shock, fear and guilt. I did not do anything particularly wild, except for the time I used an airplane pillow’s vibrator in the minivan on a family vacation, which felt pretty rebellious.
There is more to being a PK than just being good. There is an unspoken expectation—a quiet pressure to exude religiosity, even if you have doubts. So, when I began to question religion and the God that our family and congregation worshiped, I continued to regularly attend church and play my role. I decided to tell Father, one afternoon after worship, that I identified as agnostic—a softer blow, I figured, than claiming to have no faith at all.
My faith disappeared around sixth or seventh grade after a couple who joined the church volunteered to teach Sunday school. They were young and hip and immediately hit it off with us kids. We felt comfortable around them—so comfortable that we began asking hard questions that had rumbled in our stomachs for too long. There was dissonance. We were familiar with an all-loving, all-forgiving God who was actively watching us at all times engaged in the world, and whose image was depicted in media, and Sunday in school. But we also were beginning to learn about the religious wars that span history and that various religious communities felt great hatred and fear of other people and religions—people who, according to the scriptures we read, would be accepted by God, no matter what.
One question spiraled into others: Was God responsible for bad things like death, poverty, and hunger? Why wouldn’t an almighty God want to fix those things? Surely the same God that got the Virgin Mary pregnant would have the power to feed the hungry and end the wars. Why wouldn’t fish and bread be multiplied today?
I had many talks with Father, expressing my concerns, and he was always willing to listen and use his knowledge of theology to explain that religion is more than just going to church and believing in God. “Think of it as a community,” he told me. Church is a place people go to reflect. “Sometimes,” he said, “church isn’t even a place, but a way of being in the world.” Father tried to explain that part of religious faith was about helping people become more humane and compassionate, through stories and lessons, some of which were repeated in family sitcoms—love your neighbor as yourself, forgive those who sin against you, practice compassion and generosity. And yet, I couldn’t accept the fact that this thing that was meant to be good was doing so much harm. I was learning that religion could be exclusive, and restrictive, requiring a devotion that would ensure salvation—a ticket through the pearly gates. It seemed that people cared much more about securing life after death than living life itself. Religion began to appear self-serving and fake.
I come out dressed in a white robe. I am wearing a bathing suit underneath and my toenails are painted red. I step into the baptistry and look for Mother. The burgundy velvet curtains are open to the congregation. I have been waiting for this moment. A rite of passage at ten, like the piercing of ears at nine, and my imagined inevitable marriage at twenty-two—all part of the checklist playbook I follow because it was the guide given to me on day one: read this and go straight to happiness. Keep the faith. I step into the cold water where Father awaits me. He smiles and says some words. I turn. He holds my head and dips me into the water. My grandparents fly from Florida to attend, and Grandfather writes a poem, marking this moment. In the poem, he writes that “she willingly waded in the water/on the strong arm of father/and plunged deeply into the purifying pool/then rose/cleansed.”
I wonder if the cleansing stuck, or if it washed off the minute I invited Gabriel into my freshman dorm room, lost my virginity on the floor, and let him tie me my first time.
My name, Rebecca, derived from the Hebrew name Rivkah, means “to bind.”
I remember rising from the baptistry, water dripping from my braids, taking in the promised new world, a new version of myself that didn’t feel any different.
I understood baptism to be a form of magic—a magic that didn’t work on me.
I remember feeling broken.
When I was young, religion seemed as magical as witchcraft. Water could turn into wine, the blind could suddenly see, the sick were miraculously healed, and Jesus walked on water. It seemed to me that Jesus was a wizard who, unlike the rest of the Harry Potter wizarding world, decided to show off his power and just so happened to be a “good” wizard. I believed so much in magic that I was sure I would one day have my own set of magical powers one day. Even when I discovered the Santa myth, I was still sure that witches and wizards lived among us and prayed that I might be one. I was sure that fairies were hiding in the magnolia trees in my backyard. I was sure that when I touched my bedroom walls, they could feel, remember, and know me. I was obsessed with imagining that inanimate objects were breathing. This magical thinking followed me into my first funeral—that of a woman we called Mrs. Ladybug, our Sunday school teacher. When I saw her open casket, I cried, not because she was dead, but because she seemed to me to be very much alive. I tried to show Mother that she was breathing.
My siblings and I grew up watching Seventh Heaven and other religious movies and TV series that were popular in the early 2000s: A Walk to Remember, The Prince of Egypt, Veggie Tales, even The Simpsons. We also grew up reading Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia where magic was possible and religious undertones abounded. Many of our Christian friends were not allowed to read these books because the bible has one line in Deuteronomy that condemns witchcraft. I had spell books, wishing rocks, and thought of prayer as a kind of magic because of the kinds of things I heard people praying for: getting the job, being healed from illness, passing a test, winning the game. Of course, most people in my church didn’t regard prayer as magic, especially my father, but as more of a faith ritual of care and support. I didn’t know this then.
I believed the things adults told me and even more so, what they didn’t, which turned out to be much more important. When I was told to memorize stories of Noah’s ark and Jesus multiplying fish, I believed them to be true because I hadn’t been told that they were metaphors and weren’t meant to be taken so literally. These stories, like Santa Claus, I figured out on my own—I was a curious kid and explored the house only to find the poorly hidden Easter baskets and Christmas presents, unintentionally ruining the magic for my younger siblings.
Agnostic as I claimed to be, I attended church youth group socially because my oldest friend went to a different school, and this was the only time we saw each other. I was the only one of my siblings to express any interest in attending. In youth group, there was little religious conversation, so it seemed like a place where people who happened to attend the same tiny church could get together and occasionally go bowling, play mini golf, or host a Valentine’s Day dinner for the church adults. I loved physically being in church—it became a home away from home. And youth group was an opportunity to explore that space further. We met in what we called the ABY (American Baptist Youth) room once a week, ate chips, soda, and often arrived in our Pjs and Ugg knockoffs because the basement was always cold. The room was like a college dorm common room, filled with a random assortment of mismatched couches, chairs, a foosball table, ping pong table, a white board, a mini kitchenette, wood paneling—basically, the room hadn’t changed since the 70s and looked a little like Eric Forman’s basement in That 70s Show. It was comfortable. It was safe.
I felt special because of Father’s position and power in t/his space. I even had my Sweet 16th birthday party at the church, complete with a coffee bar and karaoke in the narthex and I Love Lucy playing on the sanctuary projector. I had special privileges, special access.
I used to dream about the church in the same way I dreamt about our house—spaces, and rooms merging, connected by a secret hidden passageway in my dad’s office that often led to another, bigger sanctuary that was off limits to anyone else. In these dreams, I could crawl through tight spaces, and enter new worlds that, when I awoke, seemed all the more real. I would tag along with my dad to church and study. When he left the room to make copies or go to meetings, I examined parts of his office where I dreamt of the secret door.
But at church, Father wouldn’t look at me for more than five seconds. It was almost what I imagined it would feel like attending the red carpet with your famous parents. His vocation involved preaching, praying, singing, playing the violin for special music, and generally running the show. As the main performer, his kids were put on hold until everyone left. We learned to stay in his office or in the upstairs library until he grabbed his violin and briefcase, and our mom called us down. Then we’d go to Arby’s or McAlister’s Deli for lunch, and we would have him back.
I was eight when I had my first panic attack about death. I was sitting on our porch swing and the thought just burst into my brain as though someone with a foghorn was yelling, “YOU WILL DIE SOMEDAY.” In an effort to console me, Father told me that I would not be alone in death. And yet, when I shared this story in Father’s adult Sunday school class, noting that I felt relief at the thought of being reunited with our dead dog in death, one of the old ladies responded, “Well dear, that isn’t what happens when you die,” and then looked to Father and asked, “Did you tell her that?” Father shook his head “No, I don’t remember saying that.”
And perhaps he hadn’t. Maybe I had created this image by my own means of piecing together the bits I was given over time. I wondered what else I’d misunderstood or misremembered.
Years later, Father revisited the question of life after death with something about how whatever God is, God keeps us. “We have value,” he said, “and that isn’t lost.” He said that he liked to think we are passed into the realm of the sacred, and that we should not expect to have the same kind of consciousness that we do when we are living but can be assured that part of us is there—will be there. He tells me that he believes in something like an eternal energy that is not interested in death but moves from form to form, place to place, and person to person. He now speaks of prayer in this way—as a transfer of positive energy. We prayed a lot as children. I prayed mostly for my grandpa’s boat down in Apalachicola, Florida. I knew how much he loved it, and I tried my best to protect it from storms and thieves and barnacles.
One of our youth group activities involved the annual Youth Sunday, in which youth led the Sunday service, sermon and all. Sometime in middle school, I volunteered to do the sermon with Kevin, the second pastor of the church and our youth group leader. He was the kind of character you’d see in a show and wish you knew in real life because his presence was so warm and genuine. He had the kind of laugh that automatically makes everyone else laugh—a laugh that didn’t quite fit his body—almost like Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. Our church had not always been so progressive and when Kevin came out as gay, many of the conservative members of the congregation left, even though they had all watched him grow up and later mentor their own children. But the cohort that did stay stayed hard and loved harder.
We sat together in his office, discussing ideas for the Palm Sunday sermon. We titled the sermon, “Expectations & The Confidence of a Centered Life.” In the sermon, we talked back and forth about Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. We talked about why he didn’t come riding in on a white horse, and why he didn’t care to meet various expectations of others but stayed true to himself and his purpose. We discussed his purpose—one that required he confront the powers of both politics and religion at their very center and proclaim a new relationship with God—one that said to love God was to love the people that political and economic systems were oppressing and to speak out on their behalf. “To love God,” Kevin said, “was to care about people more than participating in showy exhibitions of self-satisfied prayer.” He continued by noting that this is the kind of love and action that can get a person into a lot of people in trouble, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who continued to preach and protest, even when he and his family were threatened.
I am with the youth group one Saturday morning, setting up a table outside of Meijer to collect cans for the church pantry. We see a man, hollering from a large black pickup truck, upon seeing what church we are from. We have developed a reputation for having a gay pastor. The man spits and shouts that he won’t help our church with nothin’, that we should be ashamed of ourselves. I turn my head to look at Kevin, who sits, still and reserved, unmoved. I feel a burning anger rising in my throat. I want to scream and yell at the man after the shock wears off. Kevin never becomes visibly angry. I try to imagine how he feels. I do not see his face on his drive home that day or hear him tell his husband about the encounter, but I imagine it, and I cry. I ask my parents when I get home how this could happen. How people can be so cruel? No answer will suffice.
The summer before my sophomore year of high school, I agreed to attend a national church youth gathering in Estes Park, Colorado. By this point, my siblings and I had perfected our appeal to often stay home from church, claiming too much homework and general exhaustion from school. With four stubborn kids who did actually have a lot of homework, Father eventually stopped pushing us to attend. We knew that this made him sad, but we told ourselves that it was just his job. But can pastoring a church ever just be a job?
Once I agreed to attend the Estes Park church event with our youth group, my parents planned a family trip out west. We decided that I would go with the youth group to the church camp for a week and then my family would pick me up and we would spend one night in the infamous hotel that inspired The Shining, and then camp while sight-seeing such western wonders as the Four Corners, the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde.
At the gathering, we were placed into groups with youth leaders just two to three years older. These leaders guided us through readings, led talks and took us from place to place. My group was led by a college freshman from Utah, who talked ad nauseum about his disdain for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints—the Mormons. As a high school freshman with mostly Jewish friends, and one Mormon friend, I quickly determined that he and I had a very different understanding of God. Were I to believe in a God, it certainly would not be the same one he worshiped.
Still, I played the role. I played the games, read the scriptures, and participated in the discussions. I did trust falls, made stained glass art, sang songs but remained largely unmoved.
And yet, over the course of the week, something shifted.
Perhaps they drugged the juice.
Maybe it was the altitude or the mountainous views.
I began to connect with the words that came from the pastors and speakers. I started to trust their sincerity, see that, mostly, they wanted us to find ways to be better stewards of the earth, of our communities, of our families and of those who were different from us. I found that I did align with much of what the adults had to say about grace, forgiveness, and growth, and so I felt myself warming to the idea of religion as a practice to become a better human.
At the end of the week, I sat next to Kevin, and listened to the Christian rock band (something I would have otherwise cringed over) singing hymns I’d heard my whole life. As the sound filled up the auditorium, the main pastor told us all to lift up our hands above our heads and “reach for God.”
When I reached and screamed “Hallelujah,” I felt something sweep over me—a tingling from my fingertips to my chest—a sudden lightness, as though someone had whispered to me that everything would be okay.
I wondered, “Is this the feeling people are talking about when they say they’ve been in the presence of God?”
When my family picked me up from the youth retreat, I cried because I was emotionally drained and because Father had shaved his mustache, so that I barely recognized him. I told this man who was Father but looked like a stranger that I’d felt something in the auditorium that I’d never felt before and that I’d maybe like to start thinking more about my faith journey. My brother, upon hearing this, let out a “HA HA” invoking Nelson from The Simpsons, and said, “What? So you’re religious now?” I turned to my mustache-less Father. He gave me a hug and said, “Let’s talk.”
I told him I felt something transformative, something I’d never felt before. He warned me not to get too lost in the feeling—to stay grounded and not get carried away. I didn’t understand. I thought he would be more excited that I got something from this experience. I expected him to be happy about my newfound interest in faith: He tells me now that he worried I was thinking solely from an emotional standpoint, absent an element of serious consideration. He was familiar with the theatrics that sometimes accompanied these larger gatherings. He called it the “Jesus Christ Superstar complex,” when the music, and energy masquerades as a kind of magic. He didn’t say that was necessarily bad, but that it was dangerous if it was construed as the basis of faith.
Looking back now, I can readily see that these were serious considerations for anyone wrestling with the place of religion in a life. But I was a teenager, feeling lost, as most teens do as they try on different selves, looking for the right fit. I felt conflicted about my future, my friendship, my faith. I felt so much on that mountain at fifteen, going on sixteen. I was about to enter my sophomore year of high school and feared what lay ahead. I felt that I did not know myself. I was still trying to find what my thing would be: would I be the smart one, the musical one, the religious one, the funny one, the artsy one, the stylish one? I wanted to skip ahead and jump into adulthood, into a completed self.
I did not realize that the self is never complete.
That night, I listened on my CD player to Regina Spektor telling me that “just because they can’t feel it too doesn’t mean that you have to forget.” I cranked the volume up and promised myself I would not forget this feeling. I would not forget that I may have touched God on this Colorado mountain. It didn’t matter that my emotions were likely manufactured, in part, by the big band and singing songs I grew up with in an auditorium filled with sweaty people radiating an energy I swallowed whole.
Perhaps part of me wanted to reignite my religious curiosity as a means by which to bond with Father. I was, after all, the only one of his four kids still asking these questions. I could feel that he wanted this connection—someone to talk to about his life’s work. I, too, wanted to remain open to his faith philosophy, as it was an essential part of him.
Years later, upon reminding him of the Sunday school event, Father explained that people assume things about a life after death—they fill the gaps in their own beliefs to ease their fear of death. He also reminded me that I have been afraid of death for a long time. “You used to hyperventilate at the idea of nonexistence, so I may have told you something of the sort to calm you down.”
People create what they must to survive being alive.
To this day, I identify as an atheist but tell myself I have spiritual leanings. I still wonder about death and think often about the cruelty and hate that can accompany religious doctrine. I do not have the answers, but I do have a father who remains eager and willing to take time and talk with me when I am feeling lost or have questions. He never pressures me or tells me what to think, and maybe this is the heart of his preachings—that we can learn from stories, old and new, and take from them what we can to help guide our way through this mysterious life.
Rebecca Watkins is originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, where she taught high school English for five years. She is a PhD candidate in the creative writing program at Florida State University. Her work has appeared in Touchstone, Pangyrus, WFSU, and elsewhere. Her essay “Blonde Sugar” was nominated for Best of the Net Anthology. She currently resides in Orlando, Florida.