“Jesus rose on Easter. Why can’t you?” It was guilt-inducing comments like this that, for the most part, led me to make church circuits with my friends. My father was Irish Catholic; my mother was Buddhist. There is no middle ground between the two, no compromise, and thus I was given free reign over my own religious beliefs and spirituality.

This, as with many things I am now discovering, were unique to my childhood, I did not sense was at all out of the ordinary at the time. It is only now that I realize the impact the absence of religion in our household is having on me. Instead, I was able to traipse about the neighborhood visiting random church services in order to get some sense of where I fit into the spectrum.

Some of these escapades were more successful than others. Always I expected traditional church services. Traditional is not the correct word at all, though, for the rendition of “McJesus: Finding the Right Jesus For You,” a confusing-as-all-hell skit I bore witness to on Easter Sunday.

Of all days, I thought Easter would be the one that would offer some shining light of an answer.

Instead of ever becoming part of a particular belief, however, I’ve constructed some sort of patchwork sense of spirituality, consisting mainly of habits I’ve picked up over the years.

I’d been praying just before going to sleep for years, though not since childhood. It was not a practice ingrained in me as a child. I had the unique opportunity of growing up in a household without a sense of religion.

But recently I’ve come to accept a realization I’d felt coming on for weeks. Praying, initially, was a way for me to get to know God, to understand who I am in the grand scheme. And the problem isn’t that my belief in higher powers has faltered, but that I admitted to myself how habitual and mechanical my praying had become.

I’d plop down next to my bed and blurt out the same two lines to God before I ever actually thought about what I may have to say. The things I said were personal – too personal to want to print here – and yet they’d lost their meaning over the several years I’d been saying them.

Rather than nighttime fears of monsters under the bed, I feared somebody may walk in on my secret praying.

I didn’t equate praying with other dirty bedroom activities, yet felt guilt all the same. I did not fear my parents may reprimand me for praying, but, perhaps, would question why I was trying to take part in something I knew nothing about.

This is the state I find myself in still today. Despite meager attempts to place myself into one of many sets of beliefs, I still feel I know little to nothing about religion. Holding spirituality as that personal of an experience, though, has certainly stuck.

The “McJesus” skit depicted persons of various beliefs ordering different versions of Jesus at a fast-food drive through. And although the skit admitted that everyone was permitted to have a unique version of their own Jesus, it still assumed everybody was struggling to find Jesus. This cuts out all who are not part of that particular belief system, which is where I believe I am falling.

As if the search were not arduous on its own, this new dimension of finding a McReligion helped not at all. It did, however, leave the resounding echo in my head that this was not a search I’d want to rush.

Not rushed, or mechanical, or habitual, as it seemed my rusty sense of spirituality had become.

Perhaps the search isn’t one I’ll be able to end, especially as I’m not certain I am actually in need of whatever I may find. My sense of spirituality holds even while as I drift away from a search for a particular religion.

I’ve been drifting in deep waters for a long time now, thinking the goal would present itself eventually. I’ll plunge now, though, and look. And hope.

And some night, then – near the end of the search – I’ll pray.

Cavan Reagan is a senior in journalism and mass communication and English from Bellevue, Neb. He is the student life editor of the Daily.