It was the year of the bicentennial, 1976, when I was a sophomore at a private boarding school in Pennsylvania called Mercersburg Academy. It was the first day of the semester and the teacher was 15 minutes late for class. He was the reverend of the old large grey stone Methodist church on campus. Thirty students in the class were talking loudly when suddenly, the door flew open.
The teacher ran into the room, slid across the floor, and in one giant leap, jumped up on top of his desk. He had long dark brown hair and a thick mustache. He had that 1970s famous celebrity handsome look about him. He resembled Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds to me.
He threw his hands above his head, leaned back as if looking up at the ceiling and began screaming, "Who the hell is God!?"
He looked at each student and yelled, "Do you know who God is? Or do you? Or you?"
Looking back up the ceiling he continued screaming," I want to know who in the hell God is? Who in the hell does he think he is!?"
We all looked at each other wide-eyed and wondered if he'd been smoking pot. He didn't even tell us his name and he was on top of his desk screaming. Another teacher from down the hall opened to the door and asked if everything was okay, obviously concerned about all the screaming going on.
He calmed down for the moment then told us his name. He then instructed us to introduce ourselves, and state what grade we were in and where we were from.
This class was reserved for seniors only because of the heavy reading load. He asked us to state our grades because some of us were allowed to take the class even though we weren't seniors. The class was called Religion 101. I had to beg and plead for weeks to get into the class directly with the school's headmaster. There was, and never would be, any other courses like Religion 102, 201, or anything like that. The only course was 101.
There were students in the class from all over the country and all over the world. Half of the class spoke English as a second language. After the introductions, Reverend Murdoch had a stack of giant poster boards in the corner. He instructed us to come up and each take one.
When everyone was seated again, he leaned back in his chair with his arms and hands locked up in front of him like he was ready for a fight and said, "This is your homework assignment. I want each of you to write, draw, or put anything on the poster boards that you think has anything to do with your religion. Be prepared to come to class tomorrow and explain what you put on the posters to the entire class. That is all for today. Class dismissed."
The next day, he was in the classroom before we arrived and waiting for everyone to take a seat. One by one, he called us up to the front of the class to explain what we had put on our posters. There was a wide range of symbols, words, drawings, and even money taped to one person's board. They were all totally different and represented Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Muslim, and even one Rastafarian.
I, having not grown up in a church or in any religion, didn't know what to put on my poster. Growing up in a very huge family, I had a wide range of people telling me what they believed but never had any thoughts of my own. Many dozens of older relatives around me always speaking in proverbs, metaphors, and adages that they learned and repeated life long. When I say huge, I mean huge. I had a dozen aunts and uncles and over 50 great aunts and great uncles all preaching at me constantly.
As I walked up to the front of the class and held up my poster, I had drawn a giant circle and colored it in solid with a black magic marker. That was it. I said, "Whatever religion is, it all somehow goes into this one big giant circle, but I have no idea what's in there. The whole class laughed at me, but I was serious.
When everyone was done with their explanations of their religion, Murdoch passed out rubber bands and instructed us to roll up our posters, but a rubber band around them, and follow him.
We walked out of the classroom, down the long hallway, then down three flights of stairs. We walked across campus towards the big stone church. We walked around the old grey stone church and into the woods behind the church. Deeper and deeper, we went into the woods up and down hills on a small trail. We were off campus at this point and had no idea where he was taking us, or why.
Fifteen minutes into the woods, he turned and stopped. From behind a tree, he pulled out a shovel. He handed it to one boy and told him to start digging and pointed to a spot on the ground. "Dig right HERE." he said.
For the longest time, I know everyone thought what I did. That there was something buried there he wanted us to uncover and find. It was the way he pointed to a specific spot and instructed the boy to dig in the particular spot.
When the boy got tired of digging, Murdoch told him to give the shovel to someone else. After about 20 minutes of digging, this hole was now very deep and large, but we kept digging. When the hole reached the size that one of us could easily be buried in it, Murdoch said, "Ok. That's deep enough. You can stop digging now."
Murdoch stood next to the hole and looked down into it. He remained motionless and quiet for a very long time. Eventually, quietly, he spoke.
"Now, I want each of you to come forward one by one and toss your posters into the hole. When you do it, I want you to visualize burying everything you've ever known or thought about religion to be buried in this hole forever. Don't talk. Everyone needs to remain quiet. Say goodbye for eternity of everything you think you know about religion."
One by one, each student came forward, tossed their posters into the grave, and stood by the grave for a moment quiet of reflection, not knowing how or why we had to do this. Confused. Sad. Questioning. Mixed emotions on everyone's faces in total silence. When all the posters were in the grave, Murdoch instructed us to pass the shovel around and throw the dirt back in the hole.
Everything now buried, he instructed us to stand around the grave in silence and process our thoughts and emotions for a few minutes.
I honestly had never experienced anything like this before. I wanted to laugh but my mind told me it wasn't a good idea. I remembered on the way into the woods we passed some daffodils in bloom. I slipped to the back of the students and snuck away for a minute. I returned with a bouquet of golden yellow daffodils and placed them on the grave.
I looked at everyone and said, "Well I'm glad that's over with. Rest in Peace. Now I guess we all need to move on, huh?" I was actually hungry and wanted to get out of the woods and back on campus to the lunch hall.
As we left the woods, Murdoch turned and gave the class one final instruction. He said, "Do not talk about this to anyone and do not tell anyone what we just did."
In my mind I was thinking? Yeah, after lunch all of us are going to go smoke some weed and try to totally forget this ever happened at all. We don't know if you're nuts, or if you're going to make us nuts!
The next day when we got to class there was a huge table set up in the middle of the room with tall stacks of paperback books, magazines, and other printed material. Murdoch instructed us to take one of each. Our desks couldn't hold this many books so each of us had stacks of books on the floor at our feet.
Breaking it down, there were 4 thick paperback novels to read, along with a dozen other long magazine articles in periodical reviews, as well as other printed material three inches thick. That was just for the first week. They were all written by historians, philosophers, experts in religion, and religious teachers from around the world we had never heard of.
Murdoch then dismissed the entire class. It was Monday and he said not to come back to class until the next Monday when we had completed reading all the material. We all struggled to gather the reading material up off the floor, juggle it in our arms, and walk to our dorms with it.
The reading comprehension level of these works was like nothing else I'd ever read. There was a vast amount of terminology and references and asterisks all over the place referring to other works. It was the equivalent of telling someone to read the whole bible in a week, then read it in 3 other languages.
All of us had to use dictionaries every 30 seconds. Words we had never seen or heard before. Places, dates, and locations to memorize, as well as contrasts and comparisons to other references and religions.
The next Monday, the very instant we were seated in class, Murdoch passed out a test. It was 100 questions and it was not circle the best answer or any choices. They were questions like: Name three major differences between Christianity and Hinduism. Who wrote the Bible? Whats the main differences between Judaism and Christianity?
It was a 2-hour long test. Then, on our way out the door, we had to take another 4 novels and more periodicals and print outs and instructed to come back next Monday. Each week, he never graded the tests or gave them back to us and this went on for 8 weeks.
The next 8 weeks there were no more tests. We were in class everyday now and he would open each day with a topic for everyone to openly discuss. Conversations grew louder. Debates became heated and yelling and arguments ensued. We were the only class in the whole building yelling!
It was at this point it became very obvious to me that no one had buried their religion in the woods. Each person was still adhering to core beliefs that irritated and contrasted their inner mind set. It was a daily endless battle of words for 2 hours 5 days a week.
There were a few occasions when I spoke up and what I said had the strange result of shutting everyone up. One time I said, "Cant you see? They are all the same stories attempting to teach the same principles?"
Another time I said, "How can you believe in any religion at all when they are all about invisible deities, future predictions, control of laws, rituals, and emotions- all structured through something that isn't there yet written by men? They are all delusions or illusions. Human thoughts only. But ordered by a higher authority, written by them?" I didn't know how to say it, and didn't know at the time that I was trying to describe the intricate aspects of gas lighting.
Yet at the same time, we were all also experiencing the effects of gas lighting on each other when those raised in Christianity said things like the Bible has never been proven wrong, or Jesus is the only living God, or the Bible proves evolution doesn't exist.
No one was really angry or mad. Fights didn't break out. But, everyone was seriously confused. Lost. Didn't want to argue and didn't know what to believe anymore. But it went on, and on, and on like this ad nauseam.
The last week in class, I was so tired. Hadn't slept in 16 weeks, let along able to keep up with 8 other courses. At that point I was regretting taking the class because it was exhausting and very confrontational with no end in sight. I remember during one really heated confrontation in that last week, I walked up to the chalkboard and drew a big circle and stood there for about 5 minutes and colored it in. Soon, the whole class was quiet and no one could see what I was drawing and their attention was diverted to the chalkboard.
When the circle was colored in, I turned to the class and tapped the chalk loudly on the chalkboard and said:
"It all goes in this one big circle. All of it. Its not a square or a triangle, but a circle and inside the circle it all keeps going round and round for eternity. It's all one, and it's all connected. It will not stop and it cannot change. Nothing is wrong and nothing is right. It's a hole that defies time, logic, philosophy, and science. It actually doesn't even exist, but you just think it does."
Murdoch grinned at me while the whole class laughed at me. I was the only freak in the class who never had a religion to bury in the first place, I guess.
Murdoch stood up and on this last day of class, he instructed each one of us to form a line and come to his desk. On top of his desk were 30 neatly piled stacks of papers. They were our tests from the whole semester. He never gave and tests back to us or graded them the entire semester.
One by one, as we each filed past his desk, every student stopped and flipped through the tests manically and gasped. Murdoch scored every single test for every student with a big red magic marker F for every test for every student. It wasn't until later around campus that we all learned no one ever got a passing grade in Religion 101.
Fast forward to the year 2020 some 44 years later and two of my male classmates found me on LinkedIn.
They were roommates and remembered me well. They were both Italian and Catholic. One was married with 5 kids and worked in the FBI his whole life. The other was a recovering heroin addict who was a very high-in-demand neurosurgeon anesthesiologist who was always on a plane flying to hospitals around the country. He also had his own band and played bass guitar and he had a grown son presently in heroin rehab.
In separate phone calls from each, they both were excited to find me and recounted several occasions when I had done special nice things for them.
The FBI agent pulled out his year book and sent pictures on his phone to show me what I had written along with a drawing of the mountains. I told him something to the effect that he was going to go far in life and had everything within him to accomplish all of his dreams, plus a few personal compliments.
His roommate expressed great excitement of how I came to his graduation, but didn't have to as he was two years in school ahead of me. He remembered exactly what I was wearing. A full-length white chiffon strapless dress with a wreath of flowers in my hair. He also recounted a similar message I had wrote in his year book. He said he could never forget me because I reminded him of Stevie Nicks.
They both wanted to get together with me again, but I declined the offer as our lives had grown far apart and rekindling relationships from many decades ago wasn't anything I wanted.
Suddenly, just a few days ago, I realized something else. I live in a 100-year-old craftsman cottage. Ive spent 7 years renovating this old house. The exterior has the original shiplap wood siding that I painted dark grey. I built shutters for the house and painted them golden daffodil yellow. My bedroom? Same color scheme.
It never occurred to me until just now that those colors, they always stuck with me. Friends and lovers came and went, but those colors never faded or grew apart from me.
