Who Would've Thought...It Figures?

In October I decided, rather on a whim, to order a genetics test from 23andMe.  It’s a company that compares your DNA to populations all over the world and lets you know where your ancestors likely hailed from.  I didn’t do this because I doubted my parentage at all (did you hear that, Mom?  I believe you.  Maybe other people who see us together assume I’m adopted, but I do not.  Anymore), but I wanted to see my father’s side of the family tree more clearly.

My dad passed away when I was very young.  His mother passed when he was very young, and his father died almost exactly two years after Dad did.  So while I had a vague idea of the Benson family heritage as communicated to me by my mother and aunt, I still felt a bit rootless.  I knew we were Russian and Polish Jews, but that’s it (and to be honest, I wasn’t even sure how Polish we were.  I came across a family tree partly filled out in my baby book, and it traces my paternal grandfather’s heritage to Russia and my paternal grandmother’s heritage to Turkey, but it went no farther back than that.)

When I decided to take the test, I realized the results may not tell me anything I didn’t already know.  After all, they wouldn’t tell me who my ancestors were or what they were like or when or why they immigrated.  But I still thought it would be worthwhile.  I mean, if I had a nickel for every time someone asked, “What are you?” I’d have...a lot of nickels.  Enough for an ice cream cone at least.  Or a pizza bagel (I am so HUNGRY.  I don’t know if you can tell.)  And while I answered their inquiries with varying levels of truthfulness (more on that later), it always bothered me that I didn’t know the specifics of my dad’s ethnicity.  Lately, I’ve summed it up by saying that half of me is Asian and half of me is some mix of Eastern European Jew.  The genetics test, I hoped, would bring my paternal half into sharper focus.

Fast forward to December: The results came in, and they were...wrong.  I was on the phone with my mom at the time, and I think the first words out of my mouth were, “I’m Irish?!”  I would have thought it was a fluke if the rest of the report hadn’t corresponded to what I already knew.  Japanese?  Check.  Southeast Asian?  Check.  Native American?  Check.  Ashkenazi?  Only 2%.  Eastern European?  0.6%.  And then there was the big number at the top--British & Irish 17.2%  Something was very wrong.  I wasn’t supposed to be Irish (or British).  Or Western European at all.  I was supposed to be a Russian, Polish Jew.  I was flummoxed.  My mom was flummoxed.  My aunt was flummoxed.  I really like the word “flummoxed.”  So descriptive.  

Altogether, the test pegged me as being about a quarter Northern European (17% British/Irish and then about 5% broadly Northern European, which I guess means they can’t pin the DNA down to any specific group within Northern Europe.)  This all pointed to my having a British/Irish grandparent.  Only that couldn’t be.  My mother’s parents were both accounted for, and neither were white, let alone British/Irish.  My father’s mother was named Esther Abolafia, which doesn’t scream Irish to me.  And my father’s dad, Philip Benson was supposed to have descended from Russian and Polish Jews.  Years ago, my aunt had even flown to New York to speak with my grandfather’s family, and they had confirmed that this was true.  We were Jewish.  Jewish to the core.  Only now it seems, maybe not so much.

Frustratingly, my search for answers had only turned up another mystery.  Even more infuriating, I couldn’t see a way of solving it.  The pertinent players were all long dead.  I could only figure that someone had fooled around on somebody in my family’s recent history and gotten away with a doozy of a lie.  Perhaps a milkman by the name of Cormac O’Shaughnessy had, um, serviced my great grandmother and she had passed the child off as her husband’s. (Looking at my fantasy scenario now I can see that the math doesn’t really add up, since the adulteress would have had to be Irish as well to make it work, but I think it’s pretty well documented that arithmetic and I are not on speaking terms.)  Anyway, that’s about as far as my speculation got.  The only logical explanation, to my mind, was that one of my grandparents was begotten of a randy, Irish milkman and never knew it, and no one was ever going to know it because the truth was lost to history.  Or so I thought.

One of the features of 23andMe is that they match you up with possible DNA relatives.  I have a whole list of 3rd to 4th and beyond possible cousins who share small segments of my DNA.  But my closest relative in the system was a predicted second cousin, whom I only knew as P.  I didn’t contact P because I have nearly crippling social anxiety, and it’s a bit of an awkward conversation to initiate (Hi, I think we might be related.  Do you have any idea how?)  I hate awkward conversations like I hate the Patriots.  It’s true antipathy.

This is all kind of important because a few days ago (has it really only been a few days? What a short, strange trip it's been) I received an email, not from P himself but from his cousin, Alice.  I’m so grateful that Alice was brave enough to ask those awkward first questions.  She asked if I had any known connections to the Collins family, and I answered that I didn’t. I've never heard of any Collinses.  And then, interestingly, she asked me if I had expected my genetics results to report a sizable Ashkenazi component.  I had expected it, I told her, but it turns out, I’m not very much Ashkenazi, but I am Irish, which was unexpected.  And that’s when everything started to get a little weird.

Alice wrote that a few years back she had ordered a genetics test.  She had expected the results to report that she was Irish, but instead they uncovered that she was half Ashkenazi Jew.  She figured there must have been some mistake, but all of her brothers and sisters received the same results.  P, her cousin,  however, did not.  Alice’s cousin, P, was not Jewish and was in fact not genetically related to Alice at all.  This was a stunning discovery.  Alice, being apparently more intrepid and persevering than I am, went searching for an explanation to her strange test results.  After consulting a renowned geneticist, she came to the realization that her father and P’s mother were not biological siblings as they had always believed.  The evidence was incontrovertible.  Alice’s father, James, was Jewish.  James’ parents, John and Katie Collins, were not.  What could explain it?  A baby switch, Alice told me.  She believes that James was born to a Jewish family and somehow switched so that he ended up with John and Katie.  The Collinses left the hospital with James and James’ biological parents left with the Collins baby, and they were all none the wiser.

It was an incredible story, I thought, but I didn’t fully understand what it had to do with me until Alice asked if it was possible that my grandfather, Philip, had been born at Fordham Hospital on September 23rd, 1913--the same day as her father, James.  Unfortunately for Alice, I had very little knowledge of my grandfather’s life.  A quick Google search of Fordham Hospital revealed that it was in the Bronx, and I knew that my father had grown up in the Bronx, so the location checked out as a possibility, but I didn’t know when my grandfather was born.  Again harnessing the power of Google, I looked through the Social Security Death Index, and it had Phil’s birthday recorded as September 24th, 1913.

Could it be just a coincidence?  I was well and thoroughly shocked.  Could my grandfather have really been switched at birth with Alice’s dad?  As far-fetched as it seemed, the theory held such explanatory power I had to take it seriously.  With this puzzle piece in place, suddenly Alice’s strange genetics results and my own made sense.  Not only that, but the baby switch theory also made sense of what I guess we had all taken to be little family quirks.  For instance, Alice’s father was quite short at 5’4, while the Collinses tended to be on the taller side.  My aunt reported that when she met my grandfather’s family in New York she was taken aback because they were all very small people and our branch of the Benson family is fairly tall (Seriously.  I’m 5’6”, and I’m the shortie of the bunch).  Obviously, none of these facts necessitate a baby switch to explain them, but it did cause me to wonder.

Alice very quickly sent me pictures of her grandfather, and I perused his face looking for a resemblance to my grandfather, Phil.  Was John Collins Phil’s biological father?  I couldn’t be sure.  I thought I saw some resemblance around the eyes, but it wasn’t like Phil was his spitting image or anything.  And don’t all white people look the same at any rate?  (I kid.)  Alice also sent me a picture of her father, and then we all waited with bated breath for my aunt to locate a picture of my great grandparents, Sam and Ida Benson.  Admittedly, Alice’s father, James, did not really resemble John Collins at all; would he look like Phil’s parents?  And the answer to that is...I’ll let you decide for yourself.  

This is my grandfather, Philip Benson (with my dad)

This is Phil with his father, Sam.

Philip Benson

John Collins (I don't have a picture of Katie)

James Collins (Alice's father)

Sam and Ida Benson, sitting together at the top

This story is, of course, still unfolding.  Nothing is absolutely certain, but Alice is pretty confident that she’s found the answer she’s long been searching for, and I’m inclined to agree.  It’s a very strange, nearly incredible premise, but who knows how rare such a thing really is?  After all, if Alice and I (and P) hadn’t all happened to take the same genetics test, I would have never known any of this.  It’s like a solution has landed in my lap to a mystery that I never even knew existed.  If this is all true, then my grandfather Philip was an Irish lad raised among Jews who married a nice Jewish girl and pretty much lived a life that was meant for someone else entirely.  That moment when my grandfather was placed in the wrong hospital bassinet completely changed the destinies of two men.  Not just changed, but displaced and transposed them.  And because of that, my father and his siblings were born and all of their children, and their children’s children.  In a way we’re all descendants of a strange quirk of fate or whim of providence.  It’s a little humbling to consider it.

So rest in peace Mr. Cormac O’Shaughnessy.  I feel like I hardly knew you, but so it goes.  Before I leave off, I want to make good on my earlier promise to explain my tendency toward mendacity when people asked about my ethnicity.  Rather than rattle off the dauntingly long list of ethnicities I (thought I) was--after all, as a friend once told me, if you’re so many things, you’re really nothing at all--I decided to just choose an ethnicity that I liked, one tied to a country and a culture that I felt a kinship with for no discernible reason, and see if people believed me.  They always did without fail, and it became a bit of a private joke.  If you caught me in a bit of a puckish mood and had the temerity to ask, “What are you?” I might well have answered, “I’m Irish, of course,” while inwardly chuckling at my terrible lie ,which it turns out, may have been an improbable truth after all.  I guess the joke was really on me the whole time.  Isn’t it ironic?

The Confession of an Erstwhile Sheep

First they came for the sodas
But I only drink diet so I remained silent
Then they came for the movie theater popcorn
But I don't go to the movies so I remained silent
Then they came for the milkshakes
But I'm lactose intolerant so I remained silent
Then they came for the bacon
And...for the love of all that's holy, NOT THE BACON! 

--A terribly bastardized version of a clever comment I read in response to a newspaper article I read a bit ago and can't be bothered to look up now.


So yesterday I got the news that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act.  To be honest, I wasn't expecting that.  I was sure the individual mandate at least would get thrown out as a laughable bit of federal overreaching.  Alas, my faith was misplaced.  It was a sad day, as I realized anew just how much power the government has accrued to itself.  I was furious.  I was frightened.  I was ready to revolt.

I was told the strange sensations I was experiencing were something called "emotions."

 But then I realized that this is nothing new.  The government has been pulling shit like this all along.  They tell us what we should eat, what we should drive, what medications we should be allowed to take.  Their hegemony grows ever larger and always at our expense.  What freedom do we really have if The Powers That Be can "encourage" us to buy something for our own good and then tax us when we don't obey their "suggestions"?  What limits exist on federal power when the Executive Branch can unilaterally make a de facto declaration of war, order drone strikes on suspected terrorists with no due process, wire tap the phones of American citizens with no warrant, and detain suspected criminals indefinitely?

Yeah, this individual mandate has got me bent out of shape.  I don't believe the government, or anyone, should be able to coerce me into buying something I don't want to buy.  But really, this has been a long time coming.  We the people have been the doormats of our elected officials for a long time.  When we went into Iraq illegally and under tenuous pretenses, I defended it.  When the Patriot Act was signed, I thought only those with something to hide needed to be afraid.  When I heard the stories about torture and drone strikes, I winced slightly but figured that our wise leaders were only doing what was necessary.  I was a sheep. 

Now to my rage I join a new and uncomfortable emotion--shame.  I should have known better.  I should have spoken up sooner.  Talk of "collateral damage" should have engendered at least as much passion as the idea of mandated health care.  I lacked judgment, and I lacked compassion.  I can't say this isn't the government I deserve, but I want to do better.  I want to be better.

I want to be the sort of person who can be counted on to fight for liberty and against oppression.  Always.  I want cherish the rights of all people, whether they live in my neighborhood, speak my language and share my religion or are across the world from me, whatever customs they follow or whatever god they pray to.  I want to live my life in such a way that no one will have to wonder how the marginalized will be cared for in a truly free society.  I want to care for them now. 

I have been a sheep, and I repent of my sheepish ways.  I think it's time to evolve.

The kind ministrations of the nanny state

This

Health panel talks about wider food ban - New York News | New York Breaking News | NYC Headlines

cracks me up.  Buncha comedians in New York, I'll tell you.

The Tyranny of the Telephone

Something there is, in me at least, that doesn’t love a despot.  Sometimes I feel as though I’m in a constant state of revolt--against government overreaching, against church traditions, against societal expectations, and authority of all kinds.  Technology is normally my stalwart ally in my quest to understand life on my own terms.  I shudder to think back on those dark ages before the internet did come forth to share the glory of Wikipedia and Lolcats with an ignorant and barbaric people.  But as The Twilight Zone, Frankenstein, and numerous other works of science fiction have pointed out, technology is not always benevolent or even benign.  While it doesn’t make much sense to say that anything lacking a soul can be evil, inanimate objects can be burdensome or even--dare I say--downright importunate.  Case in point: the telephone.

The Poot doing her part to make the world safe from telephonic terrorism.  She's a hero and a patriot.

Now I realize that my antipathy for Mr. Edison’s invention probably puts me in a class of crazy all my own.  I am unbothered, for my grievance is righteous.  I don’t deny that telephones can be useful and, at times, very necessary tools for communication.  However, is there not something a bit presumptuous about a telephone call?  Perhaps for some people the ringing of the phone represents the affection of a far-off loved one or the tidings of eagerly awaited news.  But for me, an introvert with the soul of a true curmudgeon, that dastardly ring hails the demands of a person who would have me pause the very special episode of Boy Meets World that I happen to be watching so that I can be enthralled by his/her dulcet tones.  You see, implicit in the use of the telephone as a means of conversing is the assumption on the caller’s part that what s(he) has to say is more important than whatever it is I am presently doing.  Sometimes this is true, but those times are rare.  Few people trump the magic of Corey and Topanga.

Voicemail really does little to address the injustice.  For one, I’ve probably already missed crucial bits of dialogue between Eric and Mr. Feeney while being first distracted by the ringing of the phone and then further distracted by my intense annoyance at being distracted by the ringing of the phone.  While yes, I can rewind (I have a dvr; I don’t live in a cave), it totally breaks the flow of the narrative.  For two, voicemail puts me in the uncomfortable position of having to become that most imperious of creatures--a telephone-call-initiator.  It seems when people call you and leave a message they often expect you to call them back.  But I’m a Christian, and I rarely repay evil for evil unless the evil people super deserve it, so often the calls go unanswered--for the sake of principle, doncha know.  Surprisingly, my status as a conscientious objector to telephone calling does not shield me from charges of rudeness and psychosis.  It’s almost too much to be borne.  This must be what people mean when they talk about oppression.

What can you do about this?  You can do as all civilized people should--use email.  It’s elegant and egalitarian.  The sender writes at a time that is convenient for him and the receiver reads the message and answers when it is convenient for her.  (Do you see the excellence of this invention?--Gimli, the Indiana Jones ride)  Email is the great equalizer.  In addition, the written word could also prove quite helpful for people who get terribly bored listening to others talk (if only there were a way to aurally skim in real time...) or for those who tend to shout, “F*** the wankers!” rather inappropriately at random intervals in conversation which can cause great consternation among grandmothers and republicans alike.  To the doubters: foot-in-mouth disease is a real thing, and it is very sad.  So for the attention span-deprived, the inarticulate, the lazy, the verbally spastic, the misanthropic, for the outcasts that God loves even if you do not, please remember that email is your friend.  And that the telephone should be used solely for life-and-death emergencies and also sometimes for Fruit Ninja.

Thank you.

What I'm Reading--Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton

...or more accurately, what I’ve just finished reading.  This is the third time I’ve read Orthodoxy, and this time around it was a bit like coming home.  It’s one of the books that I carry with me, in a metaphorical sense; one that’s been enfolded into the melange of who I am.  Its words come to mind in quiet moments, and when I despair (to despair is to turn one’s back on God, or so says the ever-wise Marilla Cuthbert) it is one of the first places I look to to refocus myself and reinvigorate my faith.  Yes, I realize I should probably look to the Bible, but we have a complicated relationship at the moment which is not conducive to spiritual quietude.

  

                                             Aww.  She's judgy, but I love her.

Anyway, this time around I realized that what I find so striking about Orthodoxy are not the apologetic arguments, which aren’t all terribly great, to be honest, but the prose itself.  Chesterton is a rhetorician and a visionary.  He has a way of imagining the Christian life that lifts it out of the quagmire of doubts and doldrums and into an entirely new context.  It isn’t quite mystical and it certainly isn’t Christianity-by-the-numbers, but Chesterton’s words sing for me.  They tell a story that resonates with my soul and call color back into the religion my incorrigible and contrary mind has rendered in ever-deepening shades of gray.

It may not have this effect on everyone (or so my mother tells me), but because I consider it one of the most important books I’ve ever read, I want to do it the justice of letting it speak for itself.  So without further ado, some of my favorite quotes from Orthodoxy:

“What we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it.  We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent.  We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.  No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on.  Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?  Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence?  Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair?  Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist?  Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it?”

“Every man has forgotten who he is.  One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.”

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.  They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

“Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is.  Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”

“Christianity came in here as before.  It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another.  It divided the crime from the criminal.  The criminal we must forgive until seventy times seven.  The crime we must not forgive at all.  It was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly kindness.  We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before.  There was room for wrath and love to run wild.  And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”

“That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever.  Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete.  Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king.  Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator.  For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point--and does not break.”

“[God] passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism.  When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God.  And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power.  They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt.  Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god.  They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.”

“To the question, ‘What are you?’ I could only answer, ‘God knows.’  And to the question, ‘What is meant by the Fall?’  I could answer with complete sincerity, ‘That whatever I am, I am not myself.’”

“The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world.  Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room.  We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce.  We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels.  So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.”

Up Next: The Evangelical Universalist by Gregory MacDonald

Losing My Religion

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”

―The Fellowship of the Ring

I’m not gonna lie.  Life was easier when I had all the answers.  It was a point of pride with me really, since I was that kid.  Maybe you’ve met her.  The one who got all the prizes for memorizing the most Bible verses.  The one who endured the mockery of the other kids as she defiantly read her Bible during recess.  The obnoxious little punk who had a compulsive need to correct the Sunday School teachers if they misremembered even the most minute detail of a Bible story.  That girl was me.

That's me on top--the holiest in the land.

Looking back now, it’s kind of hard to believe.  The person with all the conviction of an Inquisitor--that’s not someone I recognize anymore.  And despite my choice of metaphors, I don’t want to belittle her.  She had her good points.  The most interesting and, from my current perspective, most alien virtue she had was faith.  She really believed.  In all of it.  In seven day creation and a God who loved mankind as His own children.  In an imminent rapture and water turned to wine.  She was certain that asking Jesus into her heart would preserve her soul from a literal torture chamber of eternal flames.  That girl didn’t doubt, and she didn’t waver. Her faith pointed true north.  And I’m sure if she could see what I’ve made of her, she would be so disappointed.

I don’t think I’ve read my Bible--really read it--in a decade or so.  My “relationship” with God, if it even comes close to deserving the term, is...troubled.  I attend church when it’s convenient for me, and I pray when I need something or get guilted into it.  If you asked me what happened to turn a good, solid Christian into a functional agnostic, I couldn’t tell you.  Doubtless, I have my reasons.  I find I usually do.  But they’re opaque to me.

Don’t get me wrong.  God’s still a huge part of my life.  I think about Him a lot.  I put Him under a microscope and peruse Him for flaws.  I spread Him out on a table to dissect His parts, maybe try out a few different permutations--tinker with His omniscience, reconfigure His justice.  He’s the ultimate cosmic puzzle, and pondering Him takes up a lot of my time.

But loving God is hard.  He is inscrutable.  He is hidden.  And in a world like this I just can’t make sense of it.  Why the big secret?  How can I have faith in the face of all those scientists with their big brains and fancy words who tell me they’ve uncovered the truth about everything, and at the bottom of it there is no magic at all?  The sun rises and sets because it has to, not because some god pulls it across the sky in his chariot.  Life is no miracle; it’s an inevitability when we are one of billions and billions of worlds in the multiverse.  How do I take comfort from stories of seas parting and people rising from the dead when everywhere I look nature runs its predictable course and death ultimately claims everything--the young and the old, the faithful and the wicked?  What do the promises of God mean next to the inexorable monotony of life?

I feel alone.  I feel afraid.  I feel as though I’m hanging on to faith by my fingernails.  And I don’t know if there’s a happy ending in this for me.  I was raised to believe in things, and somehow I’ve just lost the ability.  Like Peter Pan, I think I was supposed to stay a child, but while I wasn’t paying attention I must have accidentally grown up.  Let me tell you, the view from up here sucks.

Older but no wiser

For years I’ve been in a holding pattern with God--a standoff, a war of the wills.  And now I’m exhausted and ready to blink.  The way I see it, either the questions of God (i.e., does He exist?  What is He like?  What does He want from us?) are the most important questions or else nothing matters at all.  So I want to figure this thing out.  I want to see if the frayed strands of my erstwhile religion can be rewoven into something new--a parachute I can cling to so I don’t dash myself on the jagged rocks of hopeless, atheistic existentialism.  I want to believe, and as C. S. Lewis once averred, I hope that desire alone holds some meaning.  For years I’ve been angry at God and almost pathologically suspicious of every earthly institution supposedly dedicated to His cause, but maybe all that time being torn from my religious foundations was time well spent after all.  Maybe the creation of all that negative space was necessary so that I can be filled with better things, truer things.  Maybe it’s time for me to leave the spiritual desert.  Maybe I’m being led, at long last, to a mountain top.  At least, if this were a story that’s how I would write it.  I guess we’ll see if God’s artistic vision and mine overlap.

I think I’m finally ready to seek the Most High, wherever He may lurk.  Even if I can’t commit to the doctrine of inerrancy or original sin or any kind of eschatology at all, I intend to commit myself to this pilgrimage.  If He is willing to be found, I am willing to find Him.  Best of luck to me.