The Praying Atheist

By Robert LoDolce

Robert LoDolce’s book provides readers with a thought-provoking perspective on life. He challenges the beliefs and norms that many of us often blindly accept. LoDolce examines conventional beliefs and values and delves into concepts like nonduality, free will, time, societal grouping, and morals. His obsessive passion to discover a state of enlightenment and some deeper truth about life, along with his battle with addiction and the mental turmoil that followed, makes this book an interesting, entertaining, and enlightening read for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662459849

Book preview

Chapter 1

Lost in Nature

As a child, nature played a big role in my life. I played in the woods, climbed in the trees, and swam in the ocean. It left an impression on me that I never forgot. Long Island was great back then. There were trees and fields everywhere. For me, it was an adventure wherever I went.

My friends and I would spend our days wandering through the woods. We’d tip over big rocks and old decaying tree stumps just to see what might crawl out from underneath. It seemed like some kind of magical forest with strange little creatures hiding and scampering all around us.

On the weekends, my parents would take us all to the beach. My sister and I would play on the beach for hours, inspecting some slimy jellyfish or a giant horseshoe crab. My mother always packed plenty of bologna sandwiches, sand being the key word. I can still remember the feeling of that sand crunching in my teeth, though it didn’t bother me much. I guess I was having too much fun to care.

Our house was right between my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ house. It was like having one giant backyard. As I grew up, I realized how small they really were, but at the time they seemed tremendous. We had maple, pine, apple, pear, and even peach trees, not to mention the strawberries, blackberries, and mulberries. We also had these colorful mimosa trees that would pop up like weeds. They’d be filled with these bright-red flowers that looked like little silky red dust mops that my grandmother was forever sweeping up.

In the middle of my Nana’s yard, there was the giant mulberry tree, and on those hot summer nights, the air would be ripe with its sweet smell of fermenting mulberries along with the pears and apples that were scattered about. There was half rotten fruit all over the place, and we’d crush them under our little feet as we ran around the yard. I can’t tell you how many times I went flying on my ass, when I’d accidentally slip on some slimy apple or pear.

At night, we would spend hours chasing lightning bugs and putting them in jars. Of course my mother would always make us release them before we went to bed. The field across the street would echo with the sound of crickets. They were so loud that it felt as though they were right in the room with me. I’d listen to them for about a half a second before I’d fall fast asleep, completely exhausted. Nothing could keep me awake on those nights. I never slept so good.

As I got a little older, my friends and I started to take the bus to the beach. We’d race for the water and ride the waves all day long. As soon as we rode one in, we’d run back out as fast as we could, not to miss the next one. Some of those waves would fly us halfway up onto the sand, leaving our bellies red and bruised from all the shells. On really rough days, those waves would tumble us around like we were inside a giant washing machine. They would spit us out like we were wet noodles, leaving our heads spinning.

We had a few sumps nearby too, which were more like man-made lakes, as they were always full of fish and frogs. We’d bend a straight pin in half, tie a piece of string on the end, and use a wad of wonder bread as bait. We’d always catch something. In the summer, the grass around the sump would be teeming with baby frogs. They were all over the place. There’d be garter snakes slithering around so fast, we’d rarely ever catch one. An occasional turtle would waddle by too. We’d race to snatch them up and take them home.

My friends and I would spend half the day searching for the biggest frog in the sump, as these giant colorful dragonflies would go whizzing over our heads, scaring the hell out of us. We’d search through the high grass for hours, listening to the different croaks, hoping to find the big one. The big ones usually got away. Guess that’s why they were so big.

The summers would go by too fast. Then, the fall weather would turn the green leaves into the most unbelievable colors. Sometimes the trees were so rich with color that it would overwhelm my senses. As I got older, I think I took up painting just to try and recapture the experience, but I never quite could. The colorful leaves didn’t last long though, as they fell pretty fast. My father would rake them into one giant pile in the front yard. As kids, we’d play in them all day long, kicking them around or just diving into them. We’d even leap off the roof into them until we’d get caught. It drove my father crazy, especially after all the hard work he put into raking them up. I can still remember him barking out the front door as he told us we’d better rake them all back up when we were done. At night, I’d carry the smell of those leaves right into the house. As I’d get ready for bed, there’d be leaves in my sneakers, my pockets, and just about everywhere you could imagine.

When the winter came, everything would freeze over, and the trees’ bare branches seemed to come alive. I can still remember looking out the window at night and seeing the trees standing like bony skeletons under the street lights, with their long shadows. Everything seemed to turn from green to gray, except the evergreens. All the bugs would disappear and most of the wildlife would as well. The sumps would freeze over too, and it made for a great ice skating rink. When it snowed, we would sleigh ride down the side of the sump and go flying halfway across the ice. What a pisser! I did fall through the ice one time, just up to my shoulders. Luckily, my brother was around to pull me out. I remember walking home freezing my ass off when I found a purse on the ground with eight dollars in it. That was a lot of money for me back then. Even more memorable was thawing out in a hot bath that my mother had drawn for me. Life was good. Very good.

The state park was nearby too, and the woods and all the little ponds would freeze solid. My friends and I would stomp through the woods for hours. The leaves would crunch under our feet, and the frozen puddles would crack like glass. We’d always find some dead frozen bird or some other small dead animal lying around. Of course, we’d have to poke it with a stick for a while and maybe do some minor surgery as well. Maybe pop out an eye or two, you know, boy stuff. Either way, everything was an adventure to us, even in the dead of the cold winter. The winter would slowly turn into spring, and everything would come alive again. That was how it went, year after year. It was great.

Chapter 2

The Praying Atheist

As a child, I loved to hear my father’s war stories. It was a delicate subject, but I’d press him whenever I saw the opportunity. If I caught him in the right mood, he’d usually entertain us with a few stories. There were three in particular. One of the funnier stories was when he was stationed in France. His entire platoon ran into a swamp full of snakes. They were stopped dead in their tracks when the snakes shot their heads up from the surface. He always told the story with a good, hardy laugh. Then he would confess that it scared the living shit out of him, as they all turned and ran. That story still makes me laugh.

One of the more serious stories was the time he ran right into an enemy soldier whose rifle was pointed straight at him. My father said he just froze in his tracks. However, when the guy went to fire his rifle, it jammed on him. Guess you can figure out the rest of the story. The one thing that always intrigued me about that story wasn’t the fact that my father nearly died or that he killed a man. It was the fact that some mechanical malfunction had changed the course of history that eventually led to me being born.

However, the story that had the biggest impact on me was the one about my father in the foxhole. Apparently the experience was so frightening to him that he resorted to praying to a God that he vehemently denied. The story always started the same way: he’d be huddled in his foxhole in the dead of night as the bombshells whistled overhead. He’d tell me about the unbearable anticipation he had as they approached. I remember asking him on one occasion, Didn’t it drive you crazy? He just laughed and replied, Yes. He