by Brit Herz

Created on: March 15, 2009   Last Updated: November 04, 2010

Like ninety percent of people, I had taken the religion that was passed down to me from my mother. She was Catholic because my grandparents were Catholic. I went through CCD, Baptism, Confirmation, First Communion, Confession, all that without a hint of resistance until I entered middle school. Somewhere in there I became friends with a Buddhist, a Wiccan, an atheist, a few Baptists, a Mormon, and twin sisters that were Jehovah Witnesses.

As I became more and more involved with these people the idea started coming to mind that I was to believe these people weren't going to make it into heaven. It would plague me every time religion was brought up with in our group of friends. I was tormented as a child with redemption and thoughts of hell. One of my reoccurring night mares was me as a child, standing on a sharp mountain top that was surrounding by fire and all i could hear was screaming and crying. This is my vision of hell, and I couldn't bare with the thought that my friends were supposed to be cursed to such a place.

I renounced my religion at the age of fifteen. Coincidentally I was heavy into drugs and having sex, and saw no point to continue being a hypocrite and attending mass when I was completely unfaithful to the church and didn't believe my redemption was valid. I moved out with a boyfriend when I was seventeen and started attending college. I took two different World Religion classes (each teacher has their own slant on the subject) and study the religions of the world. The more I spoke with my class mates, the more I realized that everyone interrupted things differently. I could read a passage from the Quaron and take it totally different then someone else that read, same thing with the Bible. I started reviewing the texts all over again as though I had never read them or been told what they were supposed to mean.

I felt a piece of me missing. I tried practicing Wicca because I loved the idea that nature is the key to everything. The whole basis of mutual respect and understanding between people and that life forces begin and end with the world. However, I didn't feel that sense of wholeness. I tried Buddhism because being that I was so worried about the persecution of others, I dwelled on the fact that if you're a good person you will reach Nirvana. But again, just didn't feel whole. There was something missing. I wanted to believe in all these different things, but in my heart I knew I never would.

I started going to a little church about thirty minutes away from my apartment so that I wouldn't be questioned by the community and my mother. I saw that they had a Latin mass every third Sunday, so I started to attend them, to get back to the roots of the faith. The first mass was the most enlightening experience of my life. The sun shone in through the upper windows, just like in old movies that show someone receiving a blessing or having an epiphany. I could feel my eyes water as I sat down in a pew in the back and meditated on my own thoughts to the sounds of chanting in the back round. There was no cultish prayer, no professing out loud for the world to hear your faith that was pre written for you to say. No hymns that are repetitive and no sign of peace to interrupt the middle of the mass. Everything that turned me off about religion was long gone in this quiet and beautiful service. I regained my faith at 20 after being in exile for five or six years.

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