It was more
than 40 years ago that I gave up the notion of a god. In the intervening decades, my
position concerning believers and non-believers has been, to put it
colloquially, "whatever floats your boat." If the belief in a god or the Buddha or the
Great Pumpkin gets you through the day, who was I to interfere?
In those
rare instances when the subject of religion came up among friends or family, I would simply say, "I'm not religious," and leave that to
the listener to decode. Occasionally, I humbly and somewhat disingenuously would add the palliative, "I envy
those who have faith, someone or something to turn to in tough times, but I
just don't have that in me." If the
result was a "poor Angelo" sentiment, that was fine with me so long
as the matter was concluded and the conversation moved on to a less dodgy
topic, like politics.
All by
way of saying, yes, I'm an atheist, but I never felt the need to wear it on my
sleeve. I was not about to go door to
door, with Darwin's The Origins of Species
under an arm, to knock and inform the annoyed, mid-meal resident of the good
news: there is no god! Proselytizing has
never been my thing. Not to mention I'm
not particularly clever on the spot. As
a playwright, I can sit down to think things through, organize my thoughts, and
then set them down in the form of scintillating dialogue. Standing at the door of a master of the house
who's still chewing on his pork chop, I would not be at my best.
A
person's religion was always irrelevant to me. In the wild and crazy 20 years between marriages,
I dated Christians, Jews, a practicing Buddhist, and even flirted with a Muslim
woman. I couldn't have cared less how or
what a person worshiped. All I looked
for were the three "Ys": pretty,
witty, and sexy.
Nevertheless,
on one occasion religion did rear its
ugly head, when I was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn. One sunny late afternoon, I packed up my portable
folding picnic table, some snacks, a couple of stemmed glasses, and a cooler
containing a bottle of chilled white wine, and headed out to nearby Prospect
Park for a free concert in the park.
When I got there, I set up the table, popped the wine bottle cork, and
poured two glasses of wine.
A few
yards away, on a picnic blanket, sat a blue-eyed blonde. I strolled over to the young lady, introduced
myself, and asked her if she'd care to join me for a glass of wine. (Yes, I really did that.) She smiled, said yes, and joined me at my table.
The
young lady, let's call her Betty, and I began seeing each other. But it wasn't long before she told me she was
a Presbyterian or Lutheran or some such Protestant denomination, very much
involved in Sunday services and Bible study groups and other church activities.
No
problem, I told Betty. I'm not
religious, but I do respect the beliefs of others. Naively, I thought that would be the end of the
matter. Not so. On my next phone call to arrange a date,
Betty told me she couldn't see me anymore.
Why? Because she could not
imagine being involved with someone who did not share her religious convictions. Period.
Since we'd only been out a handful of times, it was far from a crushing
blow, but it certainly was irritating.
Today, thanks to
the Internet and TV marketing, we know that there are online match-making
services that can prevent that kind of religion faux pas. I'm talking
about JDate (for Jews), ChristianMingle,
and CatholicSoulmates,
among others, helping to "find God's match for you."
Really? Lotsa luck with that. It wouldn't surprise me if, somewhere
in cyberspace, one might stumble across GreatPumpkinPartners.com.
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