I still remember my first Christian worship experience like it was yesterday. Convinced by a friend to attend a Christian rally, I was quickly consumed by a sea of people with heaven-bound hands, eyes full of adoration for a guitar-saddled man on stage who, from his gentle doe eyes to his scraggly brown beard and flowing hair, served as stock-image Jesus placeholder. As it was, I turned out to be a sucker for the rapture and thrill of spiritual symbiosis set to music and was sold at first hook. And yesterday, I experienced something of a faith flashback.

When I was a young Evangelical Christian, I delighted in the subscription to CCM Magazine that I had gotten as a giveaway at the aforementioned worship rally. CCM was the authoritative source on all things Christian music – it was how I discovered my favorite Christian bands, from Audio Adrenaline to “rapper” tobyMac. Where the Fugees and Garbage made my middle school self feel slightly ashamed for enjoying their “explicit” content, I could enjoy the lyrics of dcTalk guilt-free. Furthermore, like the worship rally, Christian music made me feel like I was a part of something larger. It was one of the ways I most readily accessed my faith life.

As I got older, my religious identity changed and I started to call myself a Secular Humanist. Likewise, my taste in music shifted more and more toward what is often referred to as indie. I continued to seek out musical rapture, but instead looked for it in Minneapolis dive bars, not renovated warehouses equipped with strobe lights and a projector casting Scripture on the wall. I began to wear my so-called obscure music taste like a badge of honor among my hip friends: “What, you haven’t heard of Danielson? Man, you really should check them out. I think you’d really like ‘em.”

Meanwhile, I continued to listen in secret to bands they hadn’t heard of but that I was sure they wouldn’t like – my favorite Christian bands from childhood.

Mom, I know you’re reading this.

Don’t worry everyone – you can keep reading. This isn’t some syrupy son-to-mother ode about how much I love my mother and how wonderful she has been over the years, from helping me come to terms with my queer identity when I was a self-loathing Evangelical Christian to working multiple jobs to support my siblings and I. I’ve done that many times over and I needn’t embarrass her with yet another public account of my cloyingly clichéd “my mother is my hero” bit.

Instead, I’d like to embarrass her by talking about my sex life.

After deciding I wasn’t a Christian less than one semester into my undergraduate degree in Religious Studies, I suddenly felt overwhelmed by choices.

There were so many religions, and each offered something equally exciting and different. I felt like the cocky star high school quarterback with his pick of the litter, unsure whether to ask the head of the cheerleading squad or the rumored “easy” girl to the prom. Sure, the cheerleading captain had prestige, but the known jezebel would probably put out. And like my imagined quarterback, I wasn’t exactly looking to get married anytime soon.

“Theologians / They don’t know nothing / About my soul,” sings Jeff Tweedy on Wilco’s “Theologians,” a track off their 2004 release “A Ghost is Born.”

Last year I started doing work for Chicago-based NGO the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC). IFYC is an advocacy organization that is working to make interfaith cooperation a social norm. It was started by Eboo Patel, a deeply religious Muslim who is now one of Obama’s advisors on religion and one of America’s Best Leaders according to U.S. News & World Report. He may be all of these things, but the first thing I noticed upon walking into his office for a meeting last June was the colossal Wilco poster on his wall.

There are no Wilco posters on my wall – personally, I prefer Okkervil River when it comes to literate middle-American folk rock. And I’m not a Muslim; I call myself a secular humanist. That means that I don’t believe in god, I don’t go to church, and I use my best sense of reason to decipher what’s “right” and what’s “wrong.”

A good number of my fellow secular friends don’t understand what draws me to religion, and I can’t say I blame them. I always get the same Jeff Tweedy-esque comment when my work comes up: “You know, I just don’t get religious people. And they, certainly, don’t get me.”

Maybe the reason we secular folks feel like religious people don’t get us is that we’ve never bothered to let them. And that, I think, is “wrong.”

My brother-in-law’s mother collects photography, and the walls of her Park Avenue apartment seemed to be decorated solely to underscore the event that is about take place. A dark-eyed six year old in a purple parka sits against a tree trunk, clutching her knees to her chest. A woman with David Bowie cheekbones (and a haircut to match) covers one eye in shock. A teenager with pale skin and freckles gapes on as if he has just witnessed the apocalypse.

My three year-old niece is the only one in the room with the metaphorical balls to give voice to the worry expressed in these snap shots, and I’m relieved that someone is pointing out just how bizarre the whole thing is.

The LA Episcopal Church has elected an out, partnered lesbian, Mary D. Glasspool, as bishop. Hissy fits and schisms may ensue.

People who speak of the secularization of Christmas perhaps have a near-sighted view of humanity. Yes, much of “the holiday season” lacks a clear relation to the religious ideals upon which it was founded, but the fact that it defines an entire season of American life, and the fact that it is the holiday season, and not just one among equals, give it a conspicuously prominent place in our culture.

It may not always be theological, but it nonetheless reeks of religion.

This weekend, I went to see the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production of A Christmas Carol in Boulder. The friend who accompanied me, a Jew, and myself, an Agnostic, were perhaps not the likeliest pair to go see this together. In fact, it being the evening of Black Friday, I was probably the only homosexual with a shopping addiction who wasn’t out hunting down discounted coats and designer jeans.

There has to come a point where you take your family dynamics, unspoken resentments and expectations, and reconcile them with your life. You either rise above them or give into them. I choose to rise above them.

I’m a girl-dating atheist. I’m not sure why I reject religion so adamantly. Is it because I believe in hard science and cannot reconcile the existence of God with science? Is it because, as a young child, I blamed God for taking my dad and for making my family struggle so hard? Or, is it the queer me who has heard enough about God hating fags and all gays going to hell that, as any normal person would, I began hating on those who hate on me?

Join with the AVODAH-AJWS Partnership and Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light for a Shabbat lunch and learn about the connections between hunger and climate change.