#im my mom's secret santa and i have her real gift but i havent been able to decide on a good joke gift

[floralbfs]

anyone else like sad but not sad but sad

[automatismoateo]

My mom has started saying "may the force be with you" instead of "god bless you." via /r/atheism

Submitted March 06, 2017 at 08:27AM by Sarsoar (Via reddit http://ift.tt/2mrOS1W) My mom has started saying "may the force be with you" instead of "god bless you."

I was boarding a plane and called her before leaving. She ended with that and I told her I loved her and that was it. This is the 3rd time she has done it and she started doing it after the star wars reddit gifts exchange. She may have said it after we watched rogue one together, but she definitely started actually doing it after that letter in the gifts exchange.

I was moving for a new job and so didnt have a stable address. I put my parents address for redditgifts and then when it arrived I asked her to open the package for me, because anticipation... You know. It was a rocking gift but the letter was a sweet little blurb that ended "may the force be with you." And little did I know that the letter would be the best gift of them all. And with little intention from my nerdy secret santa. I still really loved the socks though dude.

My mom knows Im a geek and knows how much I love all things star wars. Now, we have also always had disagreements with religion. She wanted me to believe in something. Even if its some cosmic uniting force that doesnt go by the name "god" or ascribe to some religion. My father and her aren't religious, well, he's catholic and shes, some other christian. But they havent gone to church in years, they gave up on religion a while ago. As in, they gave up on institutionalized religion with the hypocrisy and dressing up and all that.

They still have a personal god and still pray and meditate and still believe there is something greater than us pulling the strings or atleast watching over us.

I don't.

I haven't since at least middle school. And we have had arguments that lead nowhere dozens of times. But I think this letter sparked something in her. Among other things.

It also came with my sister's wedding a few days ago. Her priest cancelled on them a few weeks ago and I decided to jump in since they had no one to marry them. I was considering becoming a notary since I live in a state that allows them to marry people. But that seemed like it could take too long and I instead became an ordained clergy member of an online church.

Now, my grandma loved it because she thinks I have found the light, that I am now a man of god and I am now eligible into heaven. My soul is not eternally damned and all the other lovely stuff her and all the other radically, or at least mildly, crazy people have told me. And she needs that so I won't take it away from her.

My mom understands the farce, understands that my "church" is a humanist one and not what my grandma thinks. My mom realized its pretty secular as far as churches go.

So thats all side details. The point is, I have been preparing the ceremony for a while and there was this tug of war between me, the officiant that writes the script, and the family that was expected to be there. They were catholics and some other stuff too. There were some weird customs that I was intended to mantain.

But I made it my own, checking with my sister to make sure it still respected her beliefs. I let them hold bibles while saying their vows, but everything else was pretty secular. I did not mention god in my speech. I only mentioned religion once in the closing while mentioning that religion on that day did "not matter because the young couple was part of the religion of love and commitment today." I told them that no priest or rabbi or public official was the one that could marry them, their faith in each other and their commitment to their life together was what made that decision.

Also, if you know of the hispanic tradition of the arras you know that it is a backwards thing. Sometimes the rings themselves count as arras, sometimes there are coins that take the place. In old times these were gold or silver valuable coins that a rich "padrino de las arras" would gift to the male, and in the ceremony he would hand them to the bride as a symbol that he would provide the finances in the house. Implying she needed to cook, clean, tend to the young and the house. We arent in the 50s and we aren't back in south america anymore. And I was not going to start my sisters wedding like that, that symbolism is not what I ever wanted for her.

I instead made the padrino hand them each 6 arras, (12, one per month that money needs to be provided in the year) and they equally dropped them into the container while I explained that marriages are 50/50 even in finances. That they each take and give equally. And then I dropped in the 13th arra, which always signified charity and the gift to the needy. With the officiant providing it I said it was symbolic of the excess they may have to spare and how they needed to not only look inward into the house with it, but to look outward together at the community when the time called for it.

My grandma would have hated it if she understood english and saw how I butchered her holy traditions. But everyone that saw it happen loved what I did because they knew what I believed and kind of accepted at this point that its what I believe. And the white people at the wedding that never heard about it before also adored it once I explained the "traditional" ceremony.

My mom especially saw all these changes not just on the day, but drafts and ideas of the speech as the first little slivers of tradition were chopped to floor to form something I thought would respect my sister's beliefs, my own, and her husband's all at once.

There were other ceremonies performed while I married them that I made my own as well in the most respectful way I could.

And it happened over some time and my mom accepted it. I don't know, something just clicked a decade after she realized I didnt believe what she believed and it has to do with my ceremony and that star wars card.

This is a long rambling message but I wanted to tell someone that would understand. Afterwards one of my cousins told me that he loved how I made it my own. It was the most religious thing that I have ever done, and it was as secular as I would have liked and my sister still loved it. Their vows were not backed by god, but by a promise between two individuals that loved each other, their faith was not in something divine, but in each other and their trust to each other. That all made it more meaningful and more real. It always has.

The farce is not that an athiest became ordained to marry two people, the farce would have been if I kept lying as I did as a child and mentioned god and pretended that he would bless the marriage and whatever other thing I don't believe but that I knew would make my family happy.

With how she reacted to my speech and how she has been acting after the star wars card, I feel that she finally respects me. It took over a decade, and it took me moving out of the house. It took me surpassing half her age. But at least it happened.

The night before the marriage my mom gave me a quote from the bible and told me to say it the next day. I respectfully told her that I wasn't going to open a bible during that ceremony and that I wouldn't be quoting things I didnt believe.

Instead I quoted Sagan.

"Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars."

He meant other things that also applied when I used the same quote on my graduation card a few years back. But they have their own stars to explore in their next coming forever. And I told them they can set sail as high as they wish to take the marriage. With that I told them that "today two dreams become one" and told them to kiss.