Are you really as small as the world's greatest religions, God?

I was just thinking the other day, "Man its been awhile since I blogged, maybe I should just stop if I'm not going to be more regular with it." Although this is based in nothing rational, it seemed completely reasonable to me at the time, but dinner with old friends sometimes helps bring an element of rationality to otherwise silly thoughts I have. Case in point, even though we only manage to have dinner with these people twice a year at best (isn't that crazy), its such high quality that it sustains us through needing to have much more. Of course, we would love more, but better to have good quality less often than a bunch of shit all the time, right? I'm applying this to my blog as well. Good reasoning; thanks, I thought of it myself.

Let's have a chat about the Universe. It is Sunday, after all, and I wasn't at church this morning much like I haven't been at church for the last five years or so. My husband tried to buy an entertainingly titled book at Sam's Club last week but I managed to misplace it not in our cart and we didn't end up buying it by accident. But I know the fact that we were both interested in the title meant that we both had an interest in thinking and talking about it later on at some point. I know both of us have a hole in our lives that religion filled at one time, but we aren't convinced religion is what needs to fill it going forward. This we knew we were on the same page about from day one, which was nice. And that's the great thing about marriage; you know you'll always have time to talk about it, and it will come up again hopefully many times through the course of your lives. This date is not ending anytime soon. Luckily it came up at dinner tonight and was an engaging, wonderful conversation.

Back to the book that we didn't buy or read entitled "Jesus, Save Me From Your Followers." I thought, at a glance it had way too many illustrations in it for my taste, which is maybe why I subconsciously put it down instead of in the cart, but I what a great "now talk amongst yourselves" title! Maybe I don't even need to read it, its alot to think about just in the title!

I was raised Catholic and thoroughly embraced it most of my life, even being a Peer Minister of Liturgy in college. I joined the choir at 12 and sang through high school graduation, and then led the college group for a couple years. I was baptised, had First Eucharist, First Reconciliation, Confirmation, dated two men who ended up being Priests (I'm still debating if I was THAT bad of a girlfriend), etc. Anyway, the problem was that what I miss most about it is the music, the incense, and the doughnuts afterwards. And of course, most especially, the community. Essentially, what I miss are the very physical, worldly and human elements of it. Maybe, I thought tonight, that's because whatever else I had, I still have, and really didn't need the Catholic Church to have it. And without the Catholic Church, like when I was in China, I realized that once you take away those worldly things about it, it really didn't fit my spirituality much, it was too small. Yes, as big as the church is, it was too small. I think that's a compliment to a Divine Being really.

Like a wiser, much more red haired person than I once said, "It's like, if you believe that God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, etc, don't you think IT is a little bigger than religion?" Bigger than being defined as HE, SHE, OR EVEN IT? I mean really, if you want to believe, as many do, that God can move mountains quite literally, do you think they are able to be defined in anything otherwise known here as Christianity, or any other world religion? Religion is for people, people need it. And yet they act as if they are doing the world a favor because God won't let them have salvation and live without it? Don't you wonder if God is like "um, I invented art and you are trying to tell people that watercolor is the only medium that is legitimate?" Come on people, let's try to think like a Divine Being would. Oh, wait, we can't. We're human. Because of that fact, I have no issue whatsoever with religion in and of itself. Obviously it was a good and large part of my life for a long time. I'm really not your typical Catholic that leaves because out of anger, etc. But a good point was brought up tonight. If people are so confident in their religious beliefs, why do they defend it tooth and nail and often times to the death? To the rest of us who aren't comfortable at this point in life defining small, uniportant issues such as, The Universe, God, Creation, Death, etc through the lense of a man-made institution, it seems like religious followers are being defensive.

But I don't want to focus on that. I want to just throw one more thing out there. The Mystery. As in, the mystery of why we are here, who is God, all those mysteries. Why does religion try to explain them? Why try to put these huge things into something our pea brains can come up with, full of linguistic, historical, and cultural bias? The Mystery was also brought up tonight that I completely agree should be a major focal point of any religious sect and yet is always deemphasized. I guess the only thing I can come up with is that its too big, people need The Mystery explained to feel more secure and to put themselves into a greater context. Paco brought up the fact that, well, when he travels, esp. to developing countries, etc that is when he feels he is put into context, a reality check. I agreed. Why do we need religion to do this? It just creates confusion and hurt. People crave absolutes. Look at science. We feel so much better when we "know" something because its scientifically proven. But the problem is, still no matter what, life throws curve balls at us. People are born with horrible disfiguring diseases, children die, floods happen. at this point what can we say if we've tried to explain away the mystery? Well, they deserved it. Or, God wanted it that way. Or more optimistic, something good will come out of it. How about, "we dont know, that is part of this incredible baffling thing called exsistence."

I can make the analogy to something I like to read about, Traditional Chinese Medicine vs. Western Medicine. Like in accupuncture, energy is redirected and unblocked in an individual in order to reestablish balance in their being. Now in western medicine, there would be symptoms that would point to possible causes and those symptoms and hopefully causes would be treated. Its based in enlightenment, science, evidence, logic. We have x-rays that show broken bones. We have blood tests that can show elevated levels of this and that so we can have a precise diagnosis. However with all this knowlege we have there is still many things we can't explain and have an even harder time explaining how we can transplant organs sucessfully but sometimes people just die and we don't know why. We have to grapple with this fact and its difficult. Now, what if you had a system of managing health that was "invented" pre- Enlightenment, before science? Is it less legitimate? Traditional Chinese Medicine is like 5,000 years old. The Meridians used to locate accupuncture points are not based in anything we can physically find in the body. But somehow, it has amazing success rates in some areas of healing. How can this be? And don't say chance, its above the statistical significance of chance. And don't say magic, that gets us nowhere. Perhaps the most interesting, is that Chinese practicioners are not concerned with the fact that many of the things accupunture claims are not really even provable. They aren't concerned with that, nor are they obsessed with explaining everything. They are at peace with the fact that there is an immense mystery going on here with the human body. Sure, the many things science and medicine have brought us is absolutely incredible. But its not everything and that's ok. That's how I feel about church. And for the time being, that's ok.


Live Well,

Birdie

PS I do miss the community though. Someone suggested we should do things on Sunday morning as groups still, like volunteer, get together for brunch, etc. I think its genius, and it just may become part of a tradition.