On Religion, Travel and Perspective.

I can count the few times I have been to church on my fingers. My family is a mixed bag when it comes to faith: my mom grew up in a pretty standard Christian household and my dad went to a Christian school for a number of years as a kid, but I don’t think those experiences affected either of their belief systems all that much. Both my parents are spiritual and have defined sets of values and morals, but they don’t often talk about God.

I don’t usually identify with a certain religion myself. Because I went to church for a short while when I was younger, I'm familiar with some non-denominational Christian beliefs. But when I was going to church, I wasn't old enough to seriously consider what I was participating in. Since then, I have sought out ways to educate myself regarding religion. I grew up in a well-off suburb in North Texas though, so most of my religious friends have been some form of Christian. Therefore, I’ve heard various sides of that belief system and, on occasion, have joined my friends in their celebrations.

On one particular night in my religious education, I went with my best friend Seth to his youth group on a Wednesday in middle school. We socialized for a bit, then found a place in a big auditorium. There was probably some kind of speaker, but I don’t remember what was said. I think the band that followed was the actual event. The music didn’t really do much for me, but it looked like the community of young people was having a good time. I looked around for a girl we had talked to earlier. She ate lunch with me and Seth every day before we went to high school. It wasn’t a secret — to Seth at least — that I had a crush on her, and she sometimes intimidated me. I was happy to see her outside of school that night, and I’ll admit I probably looked around for her to see if she was doing the same.

When I found her, she was close to the stage, reaching with her hand up towards the Christian rock blasting from the speakers. Her eyes might have been closed; she looked to be having an experience. I didn’t really understand what I was witnessing. I was confused. It made me uncomfortable, and, after that night, I didn’t really like her as much. I thought what she was doing was crazy, ashamed as I may be to admit it. There was clearly nothing in front of her, why the hell was she doing that?

Lets just say, up until recently, I have been pretty judgmental toward religious people, or at least unwilling to try to understand. These days I often find myself regretting that judgment, and I think I’m starting to get a clearer understanding of people I once wrote off.

In his Netflix special I Am Not for Everyone, comedian Pete Holmes shares a perspective on religion that made me think. In a joke that compared God and nothing, Holmes says that when you ask an atheist what created the Universe, their answer will be nothing. While I don’t think this is necessarily true, as I think atheists might often take a scientific approach and say “well, scientists aren’t sure,” the nothing answer is still somewhat solid to me. Nothing, like God, can't be quantified. It can’t be proven, seen, touched… nothing and God have a lot in common. And if nothing was around before the universe and the universe just began, swelling rapidly and slowly cooling, then that nothing is a “pretty goddamn magical fucking nothing,” as Holmes puts it. 

Holmes also points out that if you think there is no afterlife, that we cease to exist when we die, then we will essentially become nothing, and that would mean we rejoin the force that brought us into existence. With that logic, Holmes says, we would merge with our creator like a Christian does.

Neither of those perspectives makes sense to me. There's nothing, then something, then nothing again? Or, there's a magical, all-powerful god, there’s mortal existence, then we rejoin the magic? Both of those beliefs just don't track for me. To me, the idea that we just haven’t figured out exactly what's going on behind the curtain makes the most sense, and I might have to come to terms with the fact that we never will. 

The whole debate reminds me of lyrics by Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes: "I think I found something in common/With nothingness and God/You stare at either in the face too long/They’ll do each other's jobs."

Chances are, it doesn’t matter where you're looking for enlightenment. Those lyrics might mean that if you keep looking, you’ll find enlightenment wherever you go; George Harrison said, "If you don't know where you're goin'/Any road will take you there." But it could also mean that nothing and God can make you feel small, powerless and insignificant. Regardless, the takeaway here was that atheism and Christianity might be more similar than either side is willing to admit, which helped me start thinking about things with less pressure.

In my final semester of high school, I took an astronomy class with a teacher I had briefly worked with on a journalistic piece a few months prior, Mr. Bo Drews. In his class, we discussed things like the Big Bang theory, types of energy, dark matter and extraterrestrial life. Mr. Drews did a really good job of including all kinds of perspectives and how they fit into astronomy, especially considering he is a science teacher who spoke at length about universal mysteries. It seemed to me he might be so good at that because he had to work out for himself how astronomy and religion interact in his personal life, but he's also just a very considerate teacher. His consideration of multiple religious perspectives might have just been an extension of such.

Either way, learning about the Big Bang and the evidence for it, such as cosmic background radiation and red-shifting galaxies, helped paint a clearer picture of what the early stages of the universe may have been like. The topics that had me asking the most questions though were those that still require research. Dark matter and energy, things we don’t yet understand and can’t observe, sound awfully close to the nothing Holmes and Goldsmith may have been talking about. Scientists say dark matter and energy may be instrumental to understanding the universe, and yet we still can't say exactly what they are. They bridge the gap between the known and unknown, like the Big Bang and whatever came before and what will follow.

During that class, I spent time researching Carl Sagan and learning about his discoveries for a “famous astronomer project.” Sagan was not just an astronomer; he was also a spokesperson for science and how it can fit within our everyday lives. Sagan, to me, had a very interesting perspective about how religion and science may interact in ways we can’t understand. Had I heard somebody talk about the similarities between aliens and gods before Sagan, I would have thought they were a conspiratorial nut-job. But Carl Sagan asked the right questions.

In the movie adaptation of his book Contact, aliens and God are indistinguishable. The story follows Dr. Ellie Arroway, who goes on a journey more enlightening than any other, transported to a place beyond understanding. The alien she meets there appears as Arroway’s deceased father so they may communicate. He tells her that Earth must wait to learn the secrets of interstellar travel, a tradition that Arroway cannot yet understand. When she is returned to Earth, Arroway has no proof of the experience — all she can do is attest to what she saw on the basis of the same “belief” she once criticized religious individuals for. I won’t pretend the comparison is all that complex, but it raises some good questions about whether traditional religious beliefs and science are really all that different. Once again, the line was blurred.

I was also fortunate enough to hear Sagan discuss how beings residing in 4th or 5th dimensional spaces might interact with humans. Much like the beings that construct the tesseract for Cooper in Interstellar, beings of a higher dimension might share much more with gods than they would with humans.

To me, Sagan’s work asked, “why do religion and science have to be so detached from each other?” If we truly want to learn about the origins of creation and the secrets of the universe, perhaps evidence and belief must go hand in hand. In perhaps another one of Goldsmith’s best songs, he declares “And in my constant quest for truth/I am condemned to facts alone.” What can be done with only facts? You can't draw conclusions without providing a perspective, and nothing can be determined conclusively with only opinion. If all you want is the facts, you may have forgotten why you started asking questions in the first place.

Recently, in the words of Dr. Arroway, or perhaps Carl Sagan, “I had an experience.” I can’t explain it, and I can’t prove it was anything more than a feeling or moment of understanding. But to me, it felt like I made a connection to something bigger than myself.

I’ve wanted to write about how travel and nature provide us with perspective for a long time. It's simple to say getting out of our regular space helps us organize our thoughts, but I mean something bigger than that. My dad and I go camping every year, and we have for a while now. We call it the L.U.C. — the Look Up Club. To my dad, the idea that the phrase “look up” has become synonymous with entering a question in a search engine is wildly ironic. 

When understood outside the context of your smartphone, “look up” is a recommendation to broaden your horizon, whether you're religious or not. “Look up” might mean “look up at the stars.” Stargazing is a common activity for us on L.U.C. camping trips, and while yes, it is a fun and entertaining activity that can’t often be done without the seclusion of nature, there’s more to stargazing than meets the eye. The sheer size and scale of the universe is enough to make any camper speechless. We forget in our day to day lives just how small we are in comparison to the cosmos. Just a short time spent looking up at the sky reminds us of the magnitude of stars and the multitude of planets that surround us. And in between them, so much empty space. Earth seems simultaneously like the most abundant place in the universe and the site of the most trivial disputes. Looking up encourages this reevaluation, which astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson calls “a cosmic perspective.” Looking up, even for a moment, can remind us what we truly hold dear in a universe where so much is happening. 

“Look up” can also remind us not to look to the cosmos, but to the heavens. The idea that God is above us, watching us from Heaven, is far older than our modern understanding of astronomy. “Look up” could be a way of reminding someone to consider God, to consider whether their actions on Earth are honoring a generous creator. I’ve often looked up at the night sky and wondered if it was possible for ancient civilizations not to worship the sky. I mean, with no understanding of modern science, of course the stars, the sun and the moon would appear as gods to be revered. They are so massive and intangible, and we are so small and delicate. To be told to look up is to be reminded of how God will view your actions. To look up is to ask oneself whether they have been faithful to their beliefs or values.

To change “look up” from a powerful tool to inform perspective into one of the most mundane parts of a regular internet user's day is, arguably, blasphemy. Today, when you say “look up,” you often no longer mean to study the stars or worship the divine creator — you look down at your phone, a man-made creation said to be able to answer any question. Seriously? The hubris of the smart phone and internet is too enormous for us to yet conceive. I can’t say I know what the consequences of redefining “look up” will be, but I can certainly say that we will never find the answers we want searching on a smartphone. If we are ever able to come to a conclusion about God and the universe, it will be above us.

The most recent outing of the Look Up Club took place this summer. My Dad took me and my friends on a senior trip to Ruidoso, New Mexico, to celebrate our high school graduation. I was ecstatic for the trip, as were the young men joining us.

Unfortunately, when we arrived in Ruidoso, we were met with a massive wildfire and an evacuation notice. Alright, we can pivot, it’s fine. We had driven for 12 hours, but we still had some juice. We set up camp in another AirBnB, not inside the evacuation zone. After we unloaded our cars though, we found we had no running water. Okay, fine, we’ll repack the cars and try again. We were given directions to a third house, this one on top of a hill. Dual balconies on the third house provided us with the clearest picture of the fire yet. We watched it creep up and over a neighboring hill until we could see trees falling and flames consuming them. The longer we watched, the closer the fire got. Okay, uh, time to pivot again. We left a lasagna in the oven and packed the cars once more. By then, the whole town of Ruidoso was being evacuated. It took us two hours to get out of a town I had once remembered as small, quaint and mostly uninhabited. I drove; my dad juggled work calls and hotel rooms in the passenger seat. The lines outside gas stations would’ve made you think the apocalypse had begun. As I walked out of a convenience store bathroom, an elderly woman asked me if we would make it through the night. I didn’t know her, but I told her she would. 

Four hours later, after a dark and quiet drive, we were in Albuquerque. The hotels in Roswell were all booked and ABQ was on the way to our next destination. I ate lukewarm ramen noodles for dinner. My dad had a hot pocket, barbecue chips and a Snickers. Everything that could have gone wrong so far had gone wrong, and I wasn’t sure how the trip could be recovered. 

The next day, I was treated to complimentary breakfast and pleasant sunshine. As we drove out of Albuquerque, we stopped at some of the locations where Breaking Bad was filmed. The last few hours of the car ride went by fast, and soon I was in Carson National Forest, a name I recognized and cherished. We drove up a mountain toward Angel Fire, where my dad had expertly found a 4th rental, which would turn out to be the best one yet. We put the windows down for the first time on the trip; there was no smoke or car exhaust, only mountain air and the gravel we kicked up behind us. The sky which was once obscured, dark and red was now a clear blue with faint clouds. 

As Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” played on the car stereo, I found myself reaching up. I slid my hand through the window and pointed it toward the sky. Surrounded by family, I echoed the tall firs and pines as they stretched up, meeting the cool breeze that swung through and above the forest. It was as if something had come over me that I could not explain. In an instant, I understood that girl at youth night, reaching out to connect with a force I could not see. 

Before that moment, I had already felt the clarity that travel and nature provide. Trips to Colorado and New Mexico had encouraged me to write, draw, make music and feel love many times before. At Lake Irwin, I felt, for the first time, that I never wanted to be without a girl I loved. When I returned from that trip, I brought her a rock from the peak of the hardest hike I’d ever done. In Arroyo Seco, I felt shame and regret for how I had lost those feelings. I was inspired to read and write and explore new avenues for purpose. I would later publish a work about how that trip changed me. In Summit County, it all felt so far away. The love and pain felt closer to each other than I was to either of them. I forgave myself for being so distracted by guilt that I could no longer be happy. 

With my arm outstretched into the familiar and welcoming winds of change, I wondered if all those lessons were not random, but put in place by something greater than myself. I knew I was reaching out to something; in an instant, I wanted to know it and for it to know me.

Is a wildfire not the greatest symbol of change? Is it not poetic that on my final L.U.C. trip of high school, one meant to celebrate what came before and prepare me to start anew after vacation, a forest fire changed the course of the journey? A fire destroys, yes, but it is also essential for rebirth in a forest. Dead brush and debris are replaced with sprouts and wide open space. To me, it was too poetic for the meaning to be assigned by a kid like me.

Later on the senior trip, I had a conversation with some Christian friends about each of our religious beliefs. When I asked them what life experiences had led them to believe in God, I felt as though I had asked a hard-hitting question. In all honesty, their answers did not make things much clearer for me. If anything, I had only raised more questions, for me and I believe for them. What happened afterward was far more elucidating. They asked me what had led me to my beliefs, and my answer was far less sound or sensible than either of theirs. I couldn’t even tell them exactly what it is I believe, much less why I believe it. Right now, I exist confused and surrounded by conflicting elements of similar and contradictory stories. Yes, there are values I hold dear. I believe in some kind of divinity beyond our understanding, though I wouldn’t say for certain that it’s the Christian God or any known deity at all, and not necessarily one to be worshiped. I ended up telling my friends that what I believe sometimes changes from day to day, even hour to hour. Most of the time, I just believe whatever makes life feel meaningful. I believe what makes me feel like there is good and purpose in the world and that I can contribute to it. I believe, in a sense, just what I want. And it was after that answer that I realized, “oh, shit, yeah, that's what we all do.” Now, it seems silly for me to question someone else’s beliefs — they don’t involve me. Others are just doing what makes them happy, and I’m a firm believer in their freedom to do so. 

I don’t know what's behind the messages and mysteries of life. I'm not saying I think it's aliens, or beings beyond our understanding, or anything we can grasp at all. I've found that trying to define these things from the outside just limits how I understand them. A better way is to go to new places, like Seth’s youth group that night, to study the work of revolutionaries like Sagan, and to persevere like we did in Angel Fire. There are a lot of unknowns out there, which is scary, but the beautiful thing about religion, travel and perspective is that they are self-determined. I once judged others for dancing in silence, when truly I just couldn’t hear the music. Now, there's music playing whenever I decide to listen in.

The featured photo depicts my friends on our senior trip to New Mexico in 2024. They are, from left to right, Leo, Jack, Maanas, Avery, Seth, Will and Jake. featured photo and all other photos by me, from my collection Moon Crickets — On Film.