[I've been thinking about doing this diary for a couple of weeks. The effort preceded, and has nothing much to do with, the John Paul tempest in a teapot which seems to be raging today. It is also my first serious diary, so please be kind. All thoughts and comments appreciated....]
The use of religious imagery in commenting on the Schiavo travesty has been irresistible and useful ... so much so that I've been trying to reconcile my use of such a vocabulary with my own non-religious spiritual views. This has forced me into an attempt to define for myself what I mean in using these terms, in order to absolve myself of the charge of insincerity or dishonesty.
My purpose in this diary is to explore my spiritual and moral beliefs, and to attempt to explain them by offering alternative understandings of well-understood religious concepts. Herein I offer these thoughts to the community. I hope you find some value in them.
The meat of this diary after the flip....
First, a little personal background: I was begat of Southerners, part of the postwar California diaspora which uprooted my parents from their natural cultural environment. My mother, child of dirt-poor itinerant agricultural workers right out of
Carnivale, was raised a Southern Baptist. My father, youngest scion of up-holler cracker aristocracy in the Ozarks, came from a family which subscribed to a small semi-fundamentalist sect which modestly called itself The Christian Church. Both my parents had lapsed from church-going before they married or had children, so I was raised without benefit of religious indoctrination. My mother, I remember, would occasionally get a wistful look in her eye and muse, "You know, we ought to start going to church...." At which my father would instantly snap, "Fine. You can go to church, but I'm not going and you're not dragging these kids along." I silently cheered him on, even at six, but never found out the source of his antipathy.
I. Spirituality
My spiritual life, such as it is, has thus been learned in the streets. The lessons I've adopted have been two:
- There are spirits in the world. I've felt them, and in my experience they dwell in concentration in specific places. I've felt their presence strongly in places as diverse as the Golden Gate Headlands outside San Francisco; Taos Pueblo, New Mexico; windswept beaches on outer Cape Cod; and Gettysburg Battlefield, Pennsylvania. They make their presence known when they wish, sometimes with a slight warning, and at other times with the most imperceptible support and condolence. It is likely, to my mind, that they influence human events to some degree and for their own purposes, but not determinatively. I have encountered nothing to indicate that spirits demand, or even indeed care, to be worshipped. And I have never felt an overarching plan or imperative from my spiritual encounters. I don't believe any such exists.
- My single article of faith: that whatever is inside me that looks out through my eyes, the consciousness I contain, seems far too precious a thing to exist merely for a quick blink in the vast ocean of time, then to become extinguished forever. It is not me, but it seems too rare and shining a resource to waste. I do, therefore, believe in some undefined form of reincarnation of the consciousness I currently contain. I could be wrong about this, of course, but it simply feels right.
The spiritual context in which this consciousness exists is unknown to me. The spirits I've encountered may well be another manifestation of this consciousness: call them ghosts, demons or angels, though I think that reflects our own judgments rather than their natures. I deeply believe that that context is unknowable, and that any attempt to explain or understand the spiritual universe is a human cultural metaphor, best understood as such. Thus to me, all religions are equally valid, and equally beside the point in explaining the spiritual world.
The belief in an enduring core of consciousness, then, is my secular version of the Soul. My soul is not me; its qualities may or may not be reflected in me--I cannot know. But this belief gives me the right to use the word in conversation, even if my understanding is not necessarily others'. For those who insist on labeling people as to category of religious belief, I've come up with what I think is the most accurate designation for me: I am a non-practicing animist.
II. Morality
Morality, unlike religion, has been a vital, continuing part of my life. It is why I come to DailyKos, for politics is a primary arena of moral life. The tendency of religion to arrogate morality to itself, and consequently for most people to confuse the two, is one of the cruelest misappropriations in Western culture, to my mind.
Morality, for me, exists prior to religion: religions don't invent moral precepts. At best, they encourage (or coerce) moral living. All cultures, no matter what their religious proclivities, have a moral sense. While the details of morality for different cultures vary somewhat, according to the contexts in which they develop, there are certain core features common to all. Where these come from is open to debate. Many of a religious bent say God put those moral features into us. I simply see them as an inevitable consequence of the evolution of a social species. Irrespective of their source, the moral realm is the one in which I feel the urgency to live.
Just as there is a spiritual analog to the Soul in my secular morality, so there is an equivalent of Fundamentalism. In former centuries, this moral concept was widely known as Honor. Stretching back into the dim pagan past, honor has consistently had the meaning of living by a clear moral code, comporting one's life according to its precepts, and not varying from it. The term has fallen from general use, in part for a very good reason: it is value-neutral and inflexible. Honor is upheld in even the most immoral of "moral" systems, and it actively discourages the questioning and testing of moral beliefs which are essential to living a truly moral life.
A more advanced form of moral living offers the possibility of Redemption. This begins with a clear, basic set of moral principles. Those living such a life will inevitably suffer; they will be tested, challenged, strained, and contradicted by events. The truly moral person will have to reconsider, adapt, change or reinforce their moral beliefs in light of their life experience. As a result of the exercise of their principles, they grow stronger as moral beings, their principles wiser and more robust. Socrates advocated this type of life ("The unexamined life is not worth living.") See a magnificent example of such a moral creature in Pericles' personal story.
The highest level of moral accomplishment corresponds to religious concepts like Holiness. This is a person whose moral beliefs combine humility, compassion, and dedication to others; who lives his or her life according to these precepts; who asks no reward other than the alleviation of the suffering of others and the satisfaction of living a moral life. They have been termed Saints, Angels, Bodhisattvas, and a hundred other names in various religions. Yet their grace is truly moral. Moiv, in her work providing abortion services to unfortunate women in the deeply unfriendly ground of Texas, is a good example of such a person. Mother Teresa (Catholic dogmatism notwithstanding) was another.
III. My Philosophy of Life
As a partly humorous, but deeply sincere parable to help people in my business, I've developed a little story I call my philosophy of life. It explains around 90% of the mysteries of life--those things that cannot otherwise be understood--in three simple words:
People are stupid.
There are a couple of things to remember in order to convert this from a misanthropic little rant into a philosophy of life.
1. All of us are stupid. Some of us may have more of a talent for it than others, but sadly being smart and being stupid are far from mutually exclusive.
2. If you remember people are stupid, you're not apt to expect more from them than they're likely to deliver.
Remembering these two things transforms those three words into a philosophy of humility and forgiveness. If you can learn those two lessons, and explain most of the unexplainables in life besides, that's about all you can expect from a philosophy of life, if you ask me.
Telling people this story helps to allow folks to forgive themselves or others, and reminds them not to think too much of themselves. I tell it to myself daily, like a Catechism. And that's the last religious parallel I'll leave you with this Sunday.