Over seven thousand people responded recently to the NY Time’s question: How did you lose your religion? I didn’t try to respond as I read the summary article and the many comments, because these people had good reasons for abandoning the religion of their childhood.
I wondered how many would respond to the question: Why did you stay with your religion?
Religion is the search to make sense of our condition. Our condition is one of ignorance about the meaning of all this. Also, we have bodies to care for. Religion tries to provide answers. People choose the religion that makes the most sense based on their own condition. For many, that means no religion at all.
I like old places with lots of nooks and crannies, so Catholicism appeals to me. I grew up with it so there’s that too. My parents favored it and the Church educated me, all points in its favor. I took a year's sabbatical from the Church and had a dalliance with Buddhism which led me back to the Church. All true religion is the same in the end.
Being a human institution, the Church has done many evil things over the centuries. But the Church has carried forward the ancient wisdom and it also gives me the freedom to choose the parts that work for me. There are an infinite number of ways to process God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I pick out the things I like and show up on Sundays. Some of my co-religionists call me a cafeteria Catholic, and that's fine. Tomorrow I might swallow a whale, with the unhelpful parts eventually passing out the drain. That’s the plan.
I like crossing the threshold of the church into the sacred space. The words read there call me to be better. The line about God being love really gets me. The ritual of the mass memorializes the suffering that will likely come my way and shows the sacrifices needed to transform it. I tend to grow mystical in church, which I like. The church is a sanctuary, a place of security. This may be childish, but I am a child at heart.
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| An illumination from the 8th century Book of Kells. The book survived Viking raids and drowning at sea, and now sits in a place of honor at Trinity College, Dublin. |
Well done.
ReplyDeleteI see religion as a day-to-day anchorage, a discipline held a whole life through affecting all your waking hours, and perhaps your sleep as well and admittedly, aside from the act of writing, I've sorrily lacked in my life.
ReplyDeleteI dallied through other institutions after I moved north but their mind-numbing rituals of litany and liturgy, or oppositely, their spirit-rousing “read the words on the screen” song fests didn’t hold my attention for long, my cathedral becoming the trees and woodlands, the prairies, the skies, the stars.
I see the positivity religion brings to our community. It bonds all its attendees together and its non-attendees apart. They read the same Book, pray to the same god if but under different names, and recognize the sabbath on different days, seven days a week.
Sometimes I feel adrift until I remember my sail and drop down center board … on my prairie schooner.
Thanks for a superb post, CJ. On my way to the airport for vacation off the grid for a few weeks. Look forward to extending this conversation. Don't we all list off center at times and need to find ways back to center. And, I've been meaning to ask who posts the great quotes at the top of our pages? This current one speaks volumes towards Joe and Steve's discussion:
ReplyDeleteMan is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.. ― Blaise Pascal, endorsed by his wife
Very, truly yours, as I continue to slouch towards Bethlehem, Ginny
Surrendering to a spiritual path requires one to be as open and as innocent as a child, as the petals of a daisy opening, as inspirational as the "rosy-fingered dawn. . . illuminating "the wine-dark sea," and as delicate as a dragonfly's wings. I would place this unusual post (for you) as my favorite of all you have written. It fairly bellows into the emptiness and calls for exploration and community
ReplyDeletePersonally, my spiritual birthright was Roman Catholicism which I left simultaneously with leaving home at 17. Eight years later, living in the paradise of San Diego, I returned to Catholic exploration after a sting in atheism. The transit was a miracle for another story. In the following ten years, I tasted a long list of attempts to find "the truth," the one and only path, which of course is not to be found. Another15 years passed before I found my spiritual home: Buddhism and Soto Zen. These suit me because they answer my larger questions and because having some "answers" as how to live a worthy life, aligned with all the best we have. To write further risks skidding off the path toward hubris and ignorance, so I will say no more. The Masters have "outspoken" me.
I propose in agreement with Teapoetry that the WA writers (those who wish to) engage an ongoing dialogue using the springboard of CJ's magnificent post.
Oh, and a special thanks to Wannaska Writer for his profound comment.