Not a Zealot

I have some really interesting talks about faith with a good friend of mine.  She has pointed out that, as soon as you mention you're a Christian, most people get nervous.  They begin to look at you askance, waiting for you to whip out a pamphlet and begin witnessing about Jesus.

I never thought much about this reaction, but I guess it's true.  In my old neighborhood, Jehovah's Witnesses would regularly knock on doors to talk about God, and rather than deal with them, I'd fall off my couch, hit the floor, and crawl into another room.  In fact, people coming to my door to talk about religion has always made me angry.  Why?  Am I afraid that, just by listening to them, I will suddenly leave behind all my possessions, put on a dress stitched together from empty potato sacks, and live on a commune?  Is it because I feel each person's spiritual life is a personal choice, and therefore something deeply private?  Or, is it because I'm afraid of being ridiculed for my beliefs?  I'd like to say I don't care what anyone thinks about me, but really, this is not true.  Even now I feel like typing in all caps that I'M NOT A RELIGIOUS ZEALOT.  Really, I'm not.  I don't even know if I consider myself a Christian.

So why are we afraid to admit what we believe, whether it's Christianity, Judaism, Wiccan, or Reiki?     I don't have an answer.  But I do have a story.

I work with a young man who shelves books at the library.  He is thin and wiry, with male-model cheekbones, dark brown eyes, and artfully messy hair.  He's a nice kid.  And through work gossip, I know that he has an older brother who is dealing with a serious illness.  A few nights ago, I noticed he was wearing one of those religious bracelets, the kind that have pictures of saints painted on little wood squares all linked together by a stretchy band.  Before I could stop myself, I took his wrist in my hand and examined the bracelet.

He became noticeably embarrassed.  "It's...um...the rosary," he said.

"Are you Catholic?" I asked.

"Um...no...I'm Lutheran, actually.  But, you know--" he began to look everywhere but at me as he spoke, gesturing--"it's something good, right?  If you can believe in something good, well, why not?"

My heart contracted for him, for many reasons.  Here was a boy dealing with something immensely painful, who found solace in an object--an endowed object, we writers call it--yet he felt the need to explain it away.

He didn't know how much that cheap little bracelet on his wrist affected me.  Neither did he realize that he'd just boiled down my whole blog post to its very essence:

If you can believe in something good, well?  Why not?