I recently told somebody that I had a traditional, progressive, church upbringing, and from there I went to believing in God but not religion, to believing in religion but not God, to coming full circle and believing in both again, in a different sort of way.
I don't want to freak anyone out here - don't worry, I'm not going to evangelize, or bare my soul, or get all New Age-y. I haven't had any kind of born-again experience. I've just been thinking about writing this down in an orderly fashion, and this morning I decided to give it a go. Lucky you!
The path to a belief in God but not religion was a straightforward and, I think, common one: I still had faith in something greater than myself, but the college and young adult years exposed me to so much of the damage that organized religion has done - to entire cultures, to gender equity, to the whole concept of sexuality and reproduction, to the wrecked and extinguished lives of persecuted individuals, to those who simply believe differently - that I could not find a religious service that didn't fill me with the heebyjeebies halfway through. Just hearing the Nicene Creed reminded me that a bunch of men got together 400 years after Jesus died and adopted a slew of rigid rules based on absolutely nothing that Jesus of Nazareth seems to have said or done (before or after death), and selectively chose which writings about him would be permissible. For centuries, those rules have been used to impose norms that were cultural rather than spiritual, and to terrorize people who had the temerity to think differently. Don't get me wrong, the church I grew up in was lovely and liberal, devoid of fire-and-brimstone. Nonetheless, I figured that the real value in my church upbringing was learning (as I particularly did from the excellent example of my mother) that you have obligations to your fellow human and your planet. Through all the centuries of Christian misdirection and obfuscation, that seems to be one thing that Jesus was quite clear on, thank you very much.
And then, I pretty much lost any sense of God, too. This evolution had both an optimistic bent (isn't human reason too evolved to believe in such myths any more?) and a pessimistic one (if there is a higher power, how on earth could it be overseeing this mess?). Both filled with a certain arrogance, I'll admit. But also clouded by my inability to lose that deeply socialized, ingrained view of god as a sentient, parental being, distinct from the creations of the earth, but somehow watching over what's going down here. True, you can get around the whole problem of "why would God allow [fill in terrible thing here]?" by arguing that God just got things started, and does not actively intervene - after all, isn't creating the Big Bang miraculous enough? You can get around the gender discrimination by pointing out that God need not be male or female. But still, like the moment in the church service where we got to the Nicene Creed, there was something in the whole God concept that created an absolute mental block. It just wasn't credible. I can't say I felt much loss, though.
The next step - back to god but not religion - is a complicated one. Suffice to say that, still not craving any organized religion, I nonetheless began to read a lot about religious history, spirituality, quantum physics, and neurology. A weird combination, I know, but if you put them together they can add up to some startling things. And my life took some turns, including the death of a loved one, friendship with a clergywoman, discovery of yoga, and a few strange serendipities, all of which got me thinking.
Long story short, I've come to believe not in a sentient, parental god, but in a sort of Creative Force of the Universe. I believe that all the movement and activity of the universe is driven by an underlying force pushing to create. It may or may not be concious, but it is powerful, and nothing short of miraculous (again - the Big Bang? wow). It relentlessly drives the cycle of creation, death, and recreation, and impels the very universe itself to expand - in the immortal words of Monty Python:
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
It's the spark that ignites all of life - as quantum physics and neurology increasingly tell us that there are, in fact, forces that literally connect all things. So I figure you can either try to flow in synch with the Creative Force, or buck it to your inevitable frustration. You can be an extension of the creative process, and life will flow with you - or you can pursue stagnation or destruction, which will bite you in the ass sooner or later.
I still can't bring myself to call this god, or even goddess - too much baggage there, even now - but I can acknowledge that this concept of the Creative Force of the Universe is in the same neighborhood as what other people and religions call god. Or don't call god - the Buddhists seem to have been onto this Creative Force thing for a long time, it turns out. Go figure.
Of course, I could have my relationship with the Creative Force of the Universe in the comfort of my own home - still no need for religion. But meanwhile, I was still reading. Society at large has seen a fair bit of religious re-examination in recent years - revisiting the history of the early Christian Church, for example, and a growing Western interest in Buddhism, and heck,
The Da Vinci Code for that matter. I'd never been able to get away from the fact that despite the ill done by organized religion, individual human beings had been inspired to amazing things by their faith and, yes, even by their church. Take Bishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador - or my mother, whose quiet but persistent pursuit of social justice activities in my hometown church is probably the reason I've spent my entire professional life in the nonprofit sector. Nope, couldn't quite ignore that.
And in reading, I finally realized that underneath the thick cultural layers heaped on all of the world's great religions, they all come down to the same basic tenets in response to the question: "what's the bigger meaning?" We're all fundamentally connected (and we ignore that at our peril), we all have the spark of the divine within us (with all its amazing potential), and, you know, love thy neighbor as thyself. That's about it. Everything else - all of the dogma, philosophical exploration, ritual, poetry, iconography that every religion has created - is just the human way of further exploring and touching that fundamental nut. Or perhaps, for many of us flawed humans, rules and rituals have been a way to avoid a conclusion that's either too simple or too profound - you are divine, you are connected to everything else, so live a life that integrates those realities completely and constantly.
It also occurred to me that, having gone through this whole process "on my own" (in the sense that I didn't belong to any religious congregation - I gratefully and humbly acknowledge the many, many relatives, friends, acquaintances, thinkers and writers, living and dead, who have been teaching me, whether they knew it or not) - perhaps it might be more effective to continue the journey with other people of like mind and diverse experience. In fact, I began to think that this kind of fellowship, a community in which to explore whatever your spiritual beliefs might be, could be valuable
regardless of whether or not you believe in a god concept. In other words - religion without god, in addition to god without religion.
Hence, I'm trying out being a Unitarian Universalist, or at least hanging with them for a while. We'll see how that goes. I'm also trying to reconnect with the Creative Force - it felt like I was really surfing the Force there for a while, but last year I let a demanding job get between us, and we seem to have fallen out of touch.
Yeah, turns out, I probably could've done all this in my church of origin. It's an intellectually curious and open-minded kind of place. When I mention my latest theological discovery to my clergywoman friend, or my dad, they kind of look at me like - well, duh. Dude, our church totally had an adult education group on that book two years ago. What can I say, apparently I have a thickheaded streak.
Meanwhile, I feel validated both in my experience, and in my choice to write about it, by other seemingly sane, modern, thoughtful, well-read women who have done the same, and who describe a path that is different, but similar at its core. I particularly recommend:
- Seeking Enlightenment...Hat by Hat: A Skeptic's Guide to Religion by murder mystery writer and former park ranger Nevada Barr
- Traveling Mercies - Some Thoughts on Faith by writer Anne Lamott
- The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness by historian Karen Armstrong
- Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by poet Kathleen Norris
- And, lastly, he's not a woman but you can't go wrong with a Nobel Peace Prize nominee: Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh
Peace, y'all.
