Losing my religion... and finding my tribe
In 2006, my life changed drastically. My husband of 7 years
took my children without telling me and moved from North Carolina to Texas, and I followed at
break-neck speed. In the few months preceding his exit from our life in North
Carolina, we had determined that our lives were going separate ways. He did
not, however, warn me that the next 3 years were going to tear my life down to
its foundation, that or that the 3 years after that would rebuild it with tears
and struggles and small victories.
My name is Joni, and I am an ex-fundamentalist Christian.
Raised in a very conservative family in a very conservative town, it was easy
to just follow along. When I began to think for myself, eyebrows were raised,
whispered exchanged. When I asked the wrong questions, I was, gently at first,
then later more harshly, rebuked. When I questioned whether the orders passed
down to me by my spiritual authority were really God’s will, I was disciplined.
I wanted so much to please God, but I couldn’t understand how
he could make me one way and then require me to be a completely different
person. Wouldn’t it have been easier if he had just made me right the first
time, instead of making me something that he didn’t want me to end up being? I
tried very hard to change and when that proved impossible, I lied and pretended
I was this new creation. When lying became more than I could handle, I just let
it go and built a wall so caring didn’t hurt as much.
Looking at the wreckage that was my life, I began to pick
through what I would carry on from here. Sifting through debris, I found my
faith in marriage in shambles. I found my faith in relationships charred and
scattered bits on the edge of my life.
Even my foundation – religion and Christianity – was cracked
and beyond repair. If I was going to build again, nothing could come with me
save love and hope. Love I held close to me throughout the storm. I knew that
Love existed, I believed that Love was real. I loved my children without
reservation and I hoped that with Love and Hope I could rebuild a life –
perhaps a life that was authentic.
Before I lost my religion, I often wore a cross. It was about
an inch long and a half inch wide.
I didn’t wear a collar, or carry around a new testament. I
didn’t have a tattoo of bloody Jesus on my shoulder, or a bumper sticker that
says “My boss is a Jewish Carpenter.”
I didn’t even wear a WWJD bracelet.
Outside of my cross,
no one could really look at me and say: "Oh, there’s a Christian. She believes in God and
accepted Jesus as her Savior. "
Even with the cross, most people wouldn't jump to that
conclusion because this is America: land of the free, home of the brave, and welcoming to
everyone… EXCEPT if you believe differently. Or if you call God a different name, or if you choose to love
the wrong person…or if – God forbid – you refuse to eat pork.
Mostly, this is America, a majority “Christian” nation.
And that cross around my neck? It was an accessory.
Growing up with my parents in ministry, and being in church
leadership myself, I never HAD to wear my religion on the outside. I had never been criticized or persecuted for being
Christian. I had rarely been told – except by the occasional
enthusiastic Mormon – that the way I worship is wrong. And I’ve certainly never
felt like my freedom to be a Christian was in danger.
Even in a life sadly devoid of obstacles to belief system, my
spiritual experience has influenced me as a woman. I perceive the world differently because of my religious
upbringing, because of the spiritual beliefs I held for so many years. I was
brought up to believe that Christians hold the patent on "right", and
everyone else can literally "go to hell."
I mean, to dig down deeper, even other Christian subcultures
are condemned within the larger, mostly Protestant, Christian community I have
experienced. There definitely WAS a right and a wrong way to love God.
I read a book called The Fourty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
and that tore down the first brick in my perspective on loving God... it was the beginning of the end of my religion. The book was written about the Shams of Tabriz, Rumi’s (the mystic Sufi poet) teacher and mentor, who taught him about love.
The Shams taught Rumi of love, and unlocked a world of mystery and beauty
for one of the most influential Muslim teachers who ever lived. In the book, Shams told a parable about loving God "correctly" and it was part of the
beginning of my eyes being opened to the idea that perhaps there is more than
one correct way to love God. Since I grew up believing that there was only one way to love
God and that my perspective on God (the Christian perspective) was the ONLY
[right] perspective, I believed that other religions were worshipping someone
other than "my" God, the REAL God.
Shafak's book raised some questions that were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. And with so many of my core beliefs in question at this point, I decided to write down what I knew as my truth:
- Love must be personal to be real. My parents can’t convey their love for the Divine to me, I must love god in a way unique to me.
- Loving with abandon is ecstasy. And by abandon, I mean abandoning the “should’s” and the “supposed to’s”. I mean talking to God in your own language, and relating to God the way you were made you to.
- Loving with abandon means taking off your cape and being vulnerable, it means allowing your soul to pull your heart into freedom.
- It is our nature as humans to hope and to love.
- Seeking God, pursuing love, learning trust - these are natural yearnings of the human heart.
These musings brought to mind some questions for me, in the
arena of spirituality and being a woman:
How do our religious beliefs impact us as American women and
change our perceptions of the world around us?
Are those impacts the same across the board, regardless of
what religion you choose?
Are we all experiencing the same things in different
environments?
And, more importantly, are we all experiencing the same God
in a different context?
I was raised to judge the way that other people connected to
God and the path that they took to reach him... But I have another foundational belief, that being: God is
love.
In reality, what I was doing in my narrow minded belief
system was prescribing a path to God based entirely upon my cultural context of
God. If other's connection to God is real, and if their prayers are sincere,
regardless of my personal or cultural belief system, I believe that a God of
love cannot possibly ignore that. A God who is love cannot turn his back on
himself and reject the love given to him.
The project began with a 6 month timeline. I spoke to and wrote
about women from all walks of life, all ages and races, and all religions about
why they made the spiritual choice they made.
My HOPE was to find out specifically how religion impacts
women, and how American women relate to God.
As part of this
project, I lived the religions I was studying. Not to say I converted to
Judaism, or Islam, or Buddhism for 30 days a piece, but as I worshiped my God
and Creator, I hoped to experience the Divine in a different way by seeing it from
the perspective of others.
Talking to other women, experiencing their level of devotion
and discipline in their relationship with God, whether I pray to their God or
mine, would help me better understand my God, and give me a better picture of
what truly empowers women around this country about their spirituality.
The first 30 days of this experiment was Islam, and I lived
as a traditional Muslim woman - observing prayer times, wearing the hijab, and
abstaining from alcohol and pork products – for 30 days.
I had never worn my religion on the outside. I had never been
judged on site by the majority of the people I come in contact with. Heck, I
had never been a minority! Even though I didn’t convert to Islam, people
assumed I had. People looked at me differently, people judged me. Not because
of who I was – because who I was didn’t change. They judged me because of who
they thought I was, because of a preconception and a patent on RIGHT.
I was exploring all of the top 6 major religions in the US:
Christianity (including Catholicism and Mormonism), Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism,
Judaism, and Unitarianism. I wrote as I went. I met women and heard their
perspectives. I heard story after story after story. After that, I didn’t know
what would happen: I might have achieved enlightenment. I might have made
everyone around me believe I was completely nuts. I might have made a lot of
people hopping mad.
But, I welcomed input and opinions. I welcomed questions and
insights. I was most interested in hearing about their perspective on God...
because, after all, that is what this was all about.
The God who is love is the reason I began this project.
It was never supposed to get personal. You see, I started out
this project with a set of beliefs and values. I wasn’t willing to compromise
them or disbelieve them, and I wasn’t thinking that even the consideration of
those prospects would be a problem. I thought that I could happily maintain my
own belief system while objectively reporting on the beliefs of others.
I mean, granted, I was willing to see God in a new way. I was
willing to explore the spiritual practices of other groups, and incorporate
some of their views on God into my own theology, if the occasion arose where
those beliefs did not clash with the beliefs that I already had. I was even
willing to go so far as to say that what was right for me is not necessarily
right for everyone, and their beliefs could be right for them and wrong for me.
But I knew what I believed and my foundation wasn’t going to shift. I thought.
My first religion to study, Islam, came easily to me. They incorporated my own prophets from the Old and New Testament. They had some
funny rules, but their stories were vastly similar. They believed in Adam and
Eve (although they didn’t believe in original sin). They believed in mother
Mary (although they didn’t believe Jesus was/is God). They believed in my "Christian" Jesus, as a prophet, much like their own prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him).
Their teachings were of love and compassion and submission and I could identify
with the beauty in their holy text. They worshipped Allah, but he was the same
as my God, the God who created the world, who spent centuries seeking a
relationship with us (his people) and pursuing our love.
Of course, I didn’t agree with many of the cultural infusions
within Islam for myself, like the idea that women should be completely covered,
or the justification of the Prophet to have many wives, or to kill innocent
people in villages who didn’t agree with him.
I didn’t feel that the Arabic culture was a fit for myself,
but I could understand how many identified with the black and white structured
rules and contexts of Islam. There was direction within the Qura’n for every
aspect of life and living, and I could completely understand how that prospect
of understanding exactly how to please God would be attractive.
Catholicism was next, and as I read their text and teachings,
again, I saw the similarities between Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism.
I admired the tradition in the Catholic church. The intricate structure of
leadership. The teachings and saints.
I loved how their priests and nuns abandoned all in reckless
pursuit of Christ. I loved their prayers and was comforted by the Hail Mary and
the Apostles Creed. Praying to saints seemed to me to be an easy step, because,
they weren’t really worshipping their
saints, they were just praying – talking – to them.
Confession was a brilliant concept, and I believed from a
psychological point of view, that it would do the confessor good to get those
wrongdoings off his chest. I loved reading about St. Teresa of Avila who
described ecstatic encounters with her Lord: her descriptions of almost merging
with God in beautiful love were incredible and undeniably rapturous.
I was fascinated. I was struck by other saints, like St.
Francis who gave up wealth and fame when he heard a sermon that changed his
life and ambition. He walked barefoot through the villages proclaiming God’s
love and the need for repentance. He was full of compassion
and peace, and his prayer made my heart swell with intention to follow his
example:
Lord,
make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen
Evangelical Christianity was next, and it was my own religion,
so I was excited and fearful to study it from an objective viewpoint. I talked
to women and, for one of the first times in my life, I found transparency and
authenticity in the women I talked to who were Christian.
I happened to connect with a group of women who were so open
and honest that it shocked and pleased me. I heard them talk about Jesus’ love,
and God saving them from their lives. I listened and got tears in my eyes as
they talked about their pain and the way that a relationship with God had
changed them, had healed them, had given the hope, purpose, and a home. I heard
humans who were yearning for this divine connection and were seeking it in the
ways they could.
I started on Mormonism with a fascination for their beliefs
which were far off the beaten path for me thus far.
While Islam closely reflects Judaism and Christianity in
teaching, Mormonism was similar to a point until they took a sharp left and
added entire portions unreflected in traditional Christianity to their beliefs. I read the history of Mormonism with some disbelief that a
common criminal like Joseph Smith could somehow turn a money scheme into a
religion. I studied his ideas and I could not find any way to make them
believable for myself.
They were not just guidance and ideas, they were presented as “historical
fact” and he was creating entire stories about peoples who existed, and events
in history, and genetic composition of entire races that I found entirely
unbelievable, too wild, even as I tried to remain objective.
But then I started thinking about my own religious stories in comparison to some of the religions I studied...
Was the Muslim rule that boys should pee sitting down more
far-fetched than the Jewish law that men should not shave the corners of their
beard?
And were the stories of Joseph Smith’s miraculous vision of
angels and gift of golden tablets really that different from Jacob’s vision of
a staircase to heaven and wrestling with an angel who knocked out his hip?
My own stories, in my own Bible were just as imaginative, they were
just more familiar.
Did Noah really get
the prize as the only righteous man and spend 40 years building an ark and
collecting two of each of 10 million species of animal to go inside?
And then, was this righteous man so righteous that he spent
the entire time after the flood drunk and naked?
Was God really SO ANGRY at two cities that he burned them
down, men, women and children? And was it so terrible that Lot’s wife was
literally turned into a life-sized human salt lick?
Would God ask Abraham to kill his only son, after giving that
son to him in the first place?
Did he part the Red Sea and allow all the people of Israel to
walk across on dry land, then kill all the Egyptians with the water?
Was it possible to walk on water? Turn water into wine? Why
would someone drive evil spirits out of men and into pigs? Why was it ok for
Solomon to have thousands of wives and mistresses, but he was considered the
wisest of all men?
What in the world is going on in the book of Revelation?
So I had asked myself a question: “Do I believe the Book of
Mormon to be true, factual and historically accurate?” And my answer was a
resounding NO, based on logical examination of the interior of the BoM.
But, using the same logical examination, I had to ask myself
if I believed the Bible to be true, factual and historically accurate. This
question was a bad question to ask.
Because I could not look at the Bible and say that all of
these things REALLY HAPPENED.
A guy gets swallowed by a fish and spends three days in there
before being spit on shore? A man lays rods across a watering hole to make his
sheep and goats have stripes?
Another guy turns his walking stick into a snake, then back
into a stick?
Logically, I could see how these stories evolved – the Bible
was made up of centuries of oral tradition, stories told verbally and passed
down from generation to generation.
Changed up a little by each teller, added to in some places,
taken away from in others.
Sitting around the campfire, it sounds so much more
interesting to say that the people of Israel walked around Jericho once, then
twice, then three times they walked.
Four times, they walked around the walls of the enormous
fortified city. Five times, and the city’s residents were taunting them. Six
times they circled the city. Seven times, and then BAM! The city just collapses
into the ground.
That story is suspenseful and intriguing and shows the power
of God!
And what about all the books that were left OUT of the Bible
as we know it? The prophets who weren’t included? What about the books in the
New Testament, the Gnostic Gospels of Mary Magdalene, or of Thomas, that
weren’t included because perhaps they showed something that seemed a little out
of character of gave women too much of a voice?
Are you telling me that the bible that I have 4 copies of in
my home is the absolute perfect, infallible, inspired and COMPLETE word of God?
It was too much for me to believe. If I was examining
Christianity as an outsider, trying to figure out what they believed, and I
came across this creative and perfectly thrilling roll of stories with heroes
and villains and suns standing still, and wars in the heavenlies, and giants
and creatures of the deep and dragons with seven horns and virgins magically
conceiving – I could not look at it and rationally believe it all to be true
and factual.
Interesting, yes. Fascinating even. Entertaining and
instructional. But not fact. Not historically accurate. No way.
When I had this thought on May 16, 2011, I was horrified.
If I don’t believe the Bible to be true in every sense of the
word, this means that my foundation has been shaken. Everything that I accepted
as truth is not true at all.
The “history” has been colored so that it is nearly
unrecognizable. If I don’t believe in the infallible Bible, then I can’t be a
Christian.
The thought was horrifying. I didn’t want to lose my
Christian faith. But I could not sit there and say that I believed in 3 people
who were actually one person who was actually a deity who was God. I couldn’t
say that I believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt (and let’s face it, there was a
lot more than a SHADOW), that Jesus was half God half man and was born to a
VIRGIN after she and her fiancé were visited by angels.
I couldn’t say that I believed that Jonah got swallowed by a
whale or that God made Eve out of Adam’s rib, or that the tree of eternal life
ever existed – Homer was more convincing than the Bible, and I was horrified by
this discovery.
If I couldn’t say that any of that was for sure true, or even
relatively close to true, then what was I supposed to do? Did God even exist?
Did Jesus? Had I been wasting my days on this planet trying to understand a
non-existent being?
Were everyone’s beliefs so different because it didn’t really
matter – they were ALL MADE UP?
I was sitting in Starbucks a few days later with a lady to
interview about Jehovah’s Witness and I start telling her some of my problems.
She is listening in understanding and sympathy for my plight.
A young man sitting next to me taps me on the shoulder and tells me he has
overheard what I said about not knowing if any of it is real. He says that he
doesn’t know much about the Bible, or the other religions I’m talking about,
but that he knows from his own personal experience that the name of Jesus is
powerful.
He recounts a story. Three days ago, he was in jail, sitting
there, having lost his job and very depressed. He prayed to Jesus and since he
didn’t know what to pray, he just prayed that Jesus would make him happy.
Thirty minutes later, he gets released from jail (seven days
early). He has two job offers that very night to replace the job that he lost
in jail. He doesn’t know much, but he knows that the name of Jesus is
miraculous and healing and has changed his life.
But, I want to ask, are you REALLY changed?
Don’t you think it took more than 30 minutes to put through
the papers for your release, so don’t you think that before you even prayed
that prayer, it was in the works?
Don’t you think that the fact that you sent out resumes with
intention to get a job resulted in the two job offers? Maybe not the son of God intervening in your
life?
And are you really different than you were? Are you going to
go out and do the same stupid things and make the same stupid mistakes and land
yourself back in jail in 2 months, 6 months, a year?
And if you do, is that Jesus too? Or is it only Jesus when
it’s a good thing?
Faith smiles at me and at the boy and tells me that it takes
time and faith and study. Is it a coincidence that the person I am seeing
during my crisis of faith is named FAITH?
Can disbelief and faith co-exist?
Disbelief: the inability or refusal to believe
or to accept something as true.
Faith: confidence or
trust in a person or thing; belief that is not based on proof
Indeed, the first
described my crisis exactly: the inability to accept something as true.
And I could have faith in the sense that I trust in a
force greater than myself, in a reason for being here, in a purpose and a
destiny. But belief that is not based on proof?
Do I NEED proof to
have faith in the principles of the Bible?
In reality, I do
believe that the Bible teaches principles that are excellent and proven: love
your neighbor as yourself. This leads to a happy and fulfilled, peaceful
coexistence in the world.
I do believe that you
should not murder or steal.
I believe that Jesus
represented for us the relationship that God wants to have with us.
And I think I believe
in God, or at least in a divine being or presence – I believe in divinity.
But almost all of my
beliefs that are Biblical are because of proof: I can see how they work, how it
is a good way to live, how they make for a better world and a better life.
Is there anything I
really accept on faith alone? I guess I believe in an afterlife, and I have no
proof that it exists. I suppose I believe that children who pass before we know
them are waiting for us somewhere on the other side to reunite with us, they
were part of us, after all. I want to believe that there is a loving God up
there, watching me and filling me with joy and peace, and I want to say that I
have felt that joy and peace, for indeed,
I have felt his presence, or something I describe as “his presence.”
But non-religiously,
what do I accept on faith without proof of existence?
Love, certainly. I
feel love, I love my children, I love Mark, I believe they love me back. I can’t point at one thing other than the
words “I love you” that would be proof positive that Love exists, yet I
believe.
I believe in hope.
Hope itself is faith in the positive and better future for myself and my
children.
I believe in evil and
good, although neither are necessarily quantifiable and both are certainly
relative.
John 13:35 says “By
this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one
another." But does the fact that they love (or don’t love) one another
really prove that they are his disciples? Can you love and NOT be his disciple?
Maybe that is impossible and that is what Jesus was trying to say – you are his
disciple when you love.
I believe that there
is more to this world than my limited eyes can see. I believe there are
mysteries everywhere we turn, and I DO believe that things exist that I cannot
prove, but are still very real: fear, shame, love, trust, faith, courage,
amazement, joy.
I think I thought at first I could rebuild on my foundation
of Christianity. Some patches here and there were intact – maybe I could put some putty in those cracks
– surely I could go on with Christianity as part of my identity, right? But
nagging my heart was the question I had asked my mom when I was 8: “If God is
perfect and knows everything, why did he make me wrong? Why would he make me
someone he doesn’t want me to be?”
Stepping away from Christianity has been a long process.
Excruciatingly painful at times, difficult to explain to
others, especially my conservative family members.
My metamorphosis from Conservative Christian to Hippie
Panendeist is a sight to behold… if you want to meet the opposite of me, just
check out Joni circa 1999.
But, for the first time, I don’t feel like my beliefs have to
be defensible. Because they are mine.
I don’t feel like I have to sell my relationship with God.
Because it is mine.
And the fact that I don’t believe in legislated morality (aka
legal marriage) but I do believe in love and commitment jives with my wholehearted
hope in God and mankind.
I don’t have all the answers and in fact, I have fewer
“answers” than I did when I was a Christian. Today I simply seek love and
authenticity. The rest will fall into place on its own.
Maryanne Williamson’s words ring in my head. She writes:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest
fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness,
that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be [called to the
ministry]?’ Actually, who are you not to be?You are a child of God. Your
playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about
shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make
manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s
in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other
people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our
presence automatically liberates others.”
I visited a UU church last on my list.
They discussed spiritual practices there.
We sat in a circle and one woman said her meditation is
sometimes interrupted by rowdy birds.
Another said that reading some short prayers helped her get
to a place where her mind was still and quiet.
A third said she had studied under a guru and a young girl
eagerly (and wistfully) commented that she wanted one too. A guru, that is.
My turn came.
My spiritual practice… usually involves a lot of yelling, I
said. Mostly it’s me yelling at God. This week, it was me threatening God that
I am not going to believe in him anymore if he keeps this up.
But I can’t unbelieve it.
The words tumbled out of my mouth and a tear accompanied
them.
I can’t unbelieve in God. I can redefine God, I can reimagine
it, I can change my perspective and renegotiate the relationship I have with
this Divine being. But I can’t unbelieve it.
The more I think of it, the angrier I become. I find myself
dragging the bottom of my vocabulary pond to come up with the most distasteful
words I can to say to God. I find myself spewing loud, angry euphemisms. The
heavens do not break, the birds don’t stop flying, and I am still left here,
driving and wiping hot angry tears from my eyes, asking why.
Why.
The question that has no answer.
The question invented to mock humanity in our non-divine
nature.
This morning, there was a fly in my coffee. I smirked. Of
course there was. Why wouldn’t there be?
My conversion to UU has been gradual. It started with opening
my mind to worshipping god differently, through hearing other people’s stories.
Losing my religion has been a long process. But finding my tribe was easier. In
UU, I found myself surrounded by people with questions. In UU I found myself
hugged by Ruby, invited in by Beth, surrounded by acceptance and love in Glen
and in Daniel and in Uwe and Trish and Traci. None of them had an answer for my
questions, but all of you had grace to hear them and question with me.
My favorite of the 7 principals is the one that says “We
believe in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” For me, the
freedom to search, even more so – the responsibility to search for truth and
meaning was one of the things that knit Unitarian Universalism to my heart. It
is the first thing that spoke to me and it continues to speak to me. But it’s
hard work.
When I was a Christian, I didn’t spend a lot of time
searching. The boundaries were tight, the search for truth and meaning extended
only as far as the well-worn leather of my Bible, perhaps supplemented with
John Piper, or Max Lucado, or Beth Moore. The Bible held the answers and it was
my job to decipher them.
Our search, as Christians, was safe and surrounded by sign
posts and people showing the way.
When I became a Unitarian, I reveled at first in the absolute
freedom to believe anything or everything that I wanted to believe.
If I wanted to worship The Shiny Unicorn of Gratitude, there
was space for that. If I wanted to continue to incorporate Jesus into my
worship, that was ok too.
If I wanted to only “worship” my fellow humans and abandon
all notions of God, that was ok. The problem for me is that I’ve never been
very good at having a lot of options.
I don’t go to Baskin Robbins. The 39 flavors make me crazy. I
can’t figure it out and I end up getting vanilla every time. I prefer the
Chic-fil-a approach (before the boycott, that is). You get vanilla ice cream in
a cone or in a cup. If you’re really living on the wild side, you get a brownie
with it.
UU to me feels a little bit like Baskin Robbins sometimes.
There are so many choices. And they are depending upon me to be responsible.
Given the opportunity, I would probably choose a scoop of each flavor, tasting
them all, then feeling incredibly sick later. It was easier to be a Christian.
It was easier to have fewer choices and less autonomy. In my fundamentalist
background, I had even fewer choices than the average Christian – there was no
argument about what was acceptable or unacceptable, it was all pretty black and
white.
While my wandering mind refuses to accept that there is an
absolute right way to believe, I can accept that there is a best way for me.
It’s harder for me to settle on what exactly that best is, but I can keep
walking.
When I was a Christian, the only thing I wanted was to throw
off my restraints and walk my own path. Get tattoos. Accentuate my vocabulary
with curse words. Ask big questions. Find truth in other traditions. Find
meaning in other experiences. See the beauty that is humanity and believe that
humanity isn’t just failure apart from divinity.
The lost part of UU is the part that finds me despairingly
ordering vanilla because I can’t wrap my mind around the choices. The lost part
of UU is the hard part of UU for me: I can search, I can read, I can talk and I
can listen, but I will always be searching. The lost part of UU is the hard
part for me to reconcile – as I learn more and ask questions, I find myself on
a winding road with no GPS signal and I wonder whether freedom with inherent
responsibility is really all it’s cracked up to be.
So, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward
call of God.” God: not defined in the same way now. But I do press on for
higher ground. I press on for the mountain top where I can survey my
surroundings and make sense of the trees that begin to start looking the same.
I press on toward the voices I hear on the path in front of
me, toward the traces of humanity I hear calling, toward the smell of a
campfire and the promise of food for my soul. I press on past this place where
I’m not quite sure if I’m lost or found.
Because being lost isn’t always a bad thing, but it’s almost
always a challenge.
Losing my
religion wasn’t easy, but I would trade it for my tribe every day of the week.
