religion

Almost every morning I would pour myself a bowl of Lucky Charms, turn on the television, and press play on a cassette that was very familiar with the inside of the VCR. Wearing my green pajama ensemble with a heavy red Korean throw blanket wrapped around me while slurping and chomping on milk and marshmallow stars and ancient Celtic charms I watched the next scene in the sequence. Peter Pan.

Only for a brief moment could I fly across London in the fog of a morning and race against the mortal clangs of Big Ben and claw towards the second star on the right and dive in crystal seas with mermaids and fight in legendary battles on the Jolly Roger and search and find buried treasure and only then could I be a lost boy on an island with fairies and feet stripped bare. I was religious about it.

Religion, like watching Peter Pan, like words, like metaphors, take you places. Peter Pan was my window pane—with one step, fairy dust, happy thoughts and a push of naive hope could I fly into something pure and beautiful and freeing.

Religion is strokes on a page, man-made constructions of communication. As you read this, as you put these letters and words and work to form this run-on sentence into an idea, you form thoughts and judgments and wait for a closing premise brought by a concluding period. This sentence is religion, you reading it is Spirituality. Words are necessary for thoughts and ideas and imagination but are just words without them.

Religion is the scaffolding, not the building. By itself it is what it is, but the spiritual begins in the imagination—in the image of the word, in the blank spaces of the page, in the association of one thing to the other, in believing, not in watching Peter Pan, but the story he told and to dare believe that the story could be mine. I didn't believe religion, in sitting down with a bowl of cereal and watching a cartoon, I believed in Neverland.

I follow Christ not because I believe in following him, not because I believe in Christianity, but because I believe in him, in Christ—in God’s heart-compelled incarnation, in Love’s pure manifest—and the story his life told, the words he spoke, and dare believe his story can be mine. I hope I can always remember Peter Pan, Lucky Charms, Korean blankets and that it’s not about leading the life of a Christian but is all about following Christ.