I’m in this weird place where I had to come out as an atheist. The weirdest part was that I was semi-in closets about it in the first place. As part of building my practice, I would tell people that I am “faith neutral” at work, which is fairly accurate in that I do not judge anyone based on their religious practices. This had the effect of people assuming that I am whatever faith they are. I don’t pretend to be anything I am not, but I know that my ability to talk about religion respectfully and my understanding and knowledge of various religious practices result in me presenting as religious. I was basically accepting the fact that I was passing as a person of faith in small part because I do not like the fact that religion has hijacked and co-opted so much language. I also did it admittedly because I know how atheists are viewed. I know that for a large amount of folks, being an atheist is synonymous with having no ethics, morals, or values. Me being an atheist means they don’t know how to judge me, and that means they don’t know how to trust me. I know this is not true for the entire religious community, but it is true for many people I have met.

As my regular readers know, I have been contemplating my life here in Japan and whether or not to leave. I think a large part of that is because I am not being my authentic self in all aspects of my life. There is a very big downside to this. By “passing” as a person who believes in God, people assume other things about me that are intolerable. One of them being that I am heterosexual and that it is ok to say bigoted things about the LGBTQIA+ community to me. I am always clear when this happens that this is not ok. One of the ways I combat this is I have my pronouns listed in my bio on my website, which is a way to signal that I am LGBTQIA+ safe. I am contemplating listing that I am an atheist on my website, but it feels a bit heavy-handed to me. My “coming out” as atheist experience recently was due to Christmas. Whenever anyone whishes me a Merry Christmas I usually just say it back to them. When people ask if I celebrate or what I will be doing for Christmas, I say I don’t celebrate. This year that prompted a client to ask if I believed in Jesus, and I answered honestly. My current quandary is: how do I avoid people thinking I am religious while still supporting their belief system? I don’t wan to be misleading, but I also don’t want to be heavy-handed. This is part of what I’m currently struggling with. How I can be everything I am and have it recognized and respected and maintain my practice while living in Japan?