I have been thinking lately about 'faith' and how it, or the lack of it, has affected my life.

My father claimed to be an atheist.
He had become ordained as a Methodist minister and had a religious radio talk show in Morocco during the Korean War. When he died in '81 of a brain hemorrhage he had been planning a cross country trip with his sons. Just the guys. Perhaps an apology for having left them to start a new family that eventually would include me. I found him on the kitchen floor mumbling to himself in a small pool of his own vomit. There was a faint glimmer of recognition in his eye when I turned him over to ask who I should call for help. He had knocked over my African Violet, the first plant that was ever mine to nurture and grow. It died too. I left it neglected, unwatered, and unloved for the 9 days my father lay comatose in his hospital bed. After his death I couldn't touch the plant, it had become a witness to the final moments of my fathers waning lucidity, the only witness, and for that it had to be punished. It was nearly 20 years before I could look at those plants without a tsunami of unexamined emotions powered thorough my soul forcing me to turn away and shut off recognition...'let them all die'.

I sometimes wonder what was going through his mind as it was being flooded. If he ever reconciled with faith. If, as the prospect of death loomed ever closer, he recanted his godless proclamations.

I have never believed in anything. Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Jesus all seemed like simple games I'd play to please the adults in the family, knowing in my heart none of it was true, but playing along for the reward of their glee. I sometimes think it's hard when you are the youngest to have beliefs in petty childhood icons, the elder children in the family having spoiled the potential for any blissful ignorance by deeming the fairy creatures silly. Silly.

Silly. How silly it would be then to believe in myself, to have faith that I have the potential to create the life I want for myself without having to succumb to another's belief that a career in the arts is nothing more than fanciful thinking.

More on this later.