Carrie Link

YOU CAN BLAME IT ALL ON ANNE FRANK

My mom's a PK, Preacher's Kid, and I don't mean minister, I mean PREACHER. Baptist. Say no more. Although not raised Baptist, my brother and I were raised Protestant Christians, as opposed to Catholic Christians, which everyone knows aren't "real" Christians, because they worship false idols and are hung up on Mary.

My brother was the first to jump ship. He first went deep into Native American traditions. Eventually he found Buddhism and a community of Tibetan Buddhists in the unlikely town of Cottage Grove, Oregon (population 10 - or close enough). There he befriended a Buddhist monk that had immigrated from a refugee camp in India. This monk knew a girl that Michael, my brother, might like. 1 1/2 years of e-mails and phone calls later, my brother married this wonderful woman, Sonam.

Even my dyed-in-the-wool Christian mother couldn't help but be moved by the authenticity of this Tibetan Buddhist daughter-in-law. Such profound love, wisdom, compassion, peace and forgiveness we'd never seen before.

Meanwhile, I was involved in a women's book group. We read Anne Frank. While discussing it, one woman, perhaps my greatest teacher ever, said it was a shame Anne Frank and the other Jews that perished in the Holocaust are all now burning in hell. Had they only given their lives to Jesus, they could live in His perfect peace in heaven. That's it. I snapped. I had read Anne Frank at least twice prior. I'd dragged my husband to Amsterdam when visiting Europe, for the sole purpose of seeing her hiding place. I had read countless other books on the Holocaust. There was NO way anyone was going to get me to agree that these people were now burning in hell! Excuse me? Check, check! The Holocaust WAS burning in hell. Literally! WTF?

From that night forward I couldn't "be with" my life-long religion. It was great, but it was not enough. Too much of it never added up for me. I thought it was me, a rebel, until I realized eventually that there were many others with the same snags circling the globe, and had been, for thousands of years. What a relief.

I don't know what to call myself now, so I say I'm "everything" which is quite different from being "nothing." Someone else called this thinking Universalism. Another called it poly-religious. I don't really care to be labeled or put in a box. I'm fine with the fact that all good is good. There is one truth, but many paths. Different strokes for different folks, and all that stuff.

I do know that those with whom we most disagree, have the most to teach us.