When I think of how I was raised to think that God had a plan for my life and my purpose was to align myself to it, surrender to God and find my joy as His plan unfolded in this brief life before I joined Him in eternal bliss, I recognize now how disconnected from this actual human experience I was. I awoke from an idealized dream of a magical existence to a starker life where daylight brought more details into focus, some harsher, yes, but many sharper, clearer and more real. Some more peaceful and joyful, too. Uncertainty has replaced the certainty of faith; tangible love among all my brothers and sisters has replaced the conditional love offered by an unseen deity; I am nature and suffering and death are natural and unrelated to any contemporary belief about morality; no unseen hand is intervening in my life and I am able to respond, moment to moment, to the experience of my life here and now. I am responsible; there is so much I will never know but I can be at peace with the mysteries.
Thank you for your poetic words. As I read them, I take a longer breath and sense peace in my heart.
Thank you for this, Jay. We are so vulnerable as children and take the words of those around us as the truth, witnessing them trying to live them out in their lives or completely messing with our brains when they don’t seem to care about them except on Sundays. Religion held us together, taught us we were all the same and then created the distinctions that protected us from our “enemies” and told us we were special. And we are. But not because of an otherworldly imprimatur placed upon us by accident of birth. We are special because we are each exquisitely and radically different even as we stand, side by side, in our similarities and make the singular choices we each can make. Thanks for commenting.
When I think of how I was raised to think that God had a plan for my life and my purpose was to align myself to it, surrender to God and find my joy as His plan unfolded in this brief life before I joined Him in eternal bliss, I recognize now how disconnected from this actual human experience I was. I awoke from an idealized dream of a magical existence to a starker life where daylight brought more details into focus, some harsher, yes, but many sharper, clearer and more real. Some more peaceful and joyful, too. Uncertainty has replaced the certainty of faith; tangible love among all my brothers and sisters has replaced the conditional love offered by an unseen deity; I am nature and suffering and death are natural and unrelated to any contemporary belief about morality; no unseen hand is intervening in my life and I am able to respond, moment to moment, to the experience of my life here and now. I am responsible; there is so much I will never know but I can be at peace with the mysteries.
Thank you for your poetic words. As I read them, I take a longer breath and sense peace in my heart.
Thank you for this, Jay. We are so vulnerable as children and take the words of those around us as the truth, witnessing them trying to live them out in their lives or completely messing with our brains when they don’t seem to care about them except on Sundays. Religion held us together, taught us we were all the same and then created the distinctions that protected us from our “enemies” and told us we were special. And we are. But not because of an otherworldly imprimatur placed upon us by accident of birth. We are special because we are each exquisitely and radically different even as we stand, side by side, in our similarities and make the singular choices we each can make. Thanks for commenting.