I Bcame An Atheist Poem by Louie Levy

Fortunate to have had parents 'there' for me. Feeling complacently loved and taken granted. Brooklyn, New York streets and school yard playgrounds. Fatherly love, a secure reflection of substance. Recalling my mother with unconditional loving devotion. An undeserving fate of her young body riddled with pained cancer disease. Silent prayers for me, became the order of most evening bedtimes.

Daily denial, an un-accepting fact of her dwindling mortality. The inevitable becoming my reality. She was taken by whom? To where? Why? A bewildering confrontation, I then, a mere 13 year boy-man. She reposed in her death bedded room, still warm, unmoving while we mourned and. I confusedly, staring coldly at the floor...

Sensing a gentle comforting hand on my shoulder, belonging to a beard badge, black suited Rabbi, appeared properly credentialed. And it was then, my saddened spirit, burdened with anguish, heard words that were intended to relieve and console...

'Sorry, Son, his unkempt beard appeared within my sightly askance. It was God's will that she left us'...

At thirteen, at that very same day at the Jewish synagogue, I was religiously confirmed to manhood. Studied the reading of Hebrew scriptures. Nonetheless, unprepared to accept the heartless reality of death. We live I thought, age, get sick and we must die.. But! God, didn't care, let my Mom suffer, then took her. Mercilessly contaminated our family by perpetuating her pain to the memory of our loving hearts. I suppose it was then that I hated God and God's religious false prophets. Messengers of faith filled alibis. Oh, but was I then to be an Atheist? To be singled out by a society of hypocrites and gullible puppets looking to be controlled by the strings of faith?

Two years passed, and at fifteen the answers became clear. I discovered proverbial 'Spring', in mid-cold winter. Her name was likened 'Love', and she was hardly then thirteen. My pain filled heart was anesthetized. My lost spirit discovered an 'Earth Angel' of pure innocence. Her presence, 'A Healing' that became the addiction of our inseparable souls. Still in her youth, she's also gone, taken? , or fallen prey to life's metamorphosis...

And, ... still another, came 'Love' and her spirit were felt one and the same. Another and another, for another. Love seemed to be namely rhymed causing pain and sorrow yet heal that which it was created to inadvertently also compose joy and ecstasy. Alerting to all that think Atheist, looking for Life's 'Rhyme or Reason', I relate. My having yearly expired 3 score and fourteen and aging to a remaining unpredictable finale, at the time of this writing.

Whenever the intimidating question is asked, 'Do you believe in God? Ask yourself of a feeling, 'Have I felt Love? ' Whatever your answer, believe it, search and preserve it, discover and explore for it, never define or abuse it. It is that feeling and no other that makes life worthwhile living. a material-less possession. To be born, is to have life, and to live it. is to possess love. Nothing exists without it. The universe seeds its power and we are the precious creatures that must weather and nurture life's survival.

'God', by term, is the abortion of man's confused appellation and; in search for understanding, resolve their differences by exterminating themselves of the very Omnipotence they all possess. Love being Omnipotent and revealing, within or without, the answers are within us, without confusion...

12.09.2000