This is a very personal diary of a letter I wrote this morning to my son. I am posting it because I feel I have received so much help and insight from the DailyKos community in figuring out my own belief system.I wanted to share in hopes that maybe someone else can relate to my own struggles. I think I'm getting closer.
My son is in college in Colorado, 2000 miles away. I miss seeing him and talking to him...so please forgive the length of this if you choose to read it....I had a lot to say.
Dear Son,
I've been thinking a bit about Easter Sunday and your invitation to go to Mass and dinner with your girlfriend's family. Here is something I've written that maybe will help you...I don't know...but it helped me put some things in order in my own mind. Sorry it's long, but I just kept going .and figuring out what I was trying to say as I went along.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about religion, about Jesus. What do I mean when I say I'm spiritual, not religious? It has become such a cliche among the agnostic. I've always seen myself as progressive thinking, ahead of the pack, immune to blind faith, not understanding how smart, educated people could believe all that hooey and superstition that was drilled into me at Catholic Sunday School class in the sixties. How could any child relate to the scary nuns, the rote memorization of the Catechism and the tedious Mass celebrated in a language I didn't understand?
I found a short reprieve when my church had a couple of years of flirtation with a `Folk Mass"with guitar music and hippies during my early teenage years. I saw attending Folk Mass as a social outlet where I had crushes on several older boys in the group .I spent most of the time swaying to the beat of the music fantasizing about kissing Steven O'Brien more than thinking about finding Jesus. When my older sister got her license and my parents let her take us to the noon Mass in the car, we saw our opportunity for escape and took it. We would stop by the church, I would jump out of the car and pick up a paper bulletin and then we would drive across town to Carol's, the local fast food drive in. We would spend the hour eating fries and drinking milkshakes, secure that a quick glance at the church bulletin would cover us if we were asked any questions about that day's sermon. After I made my Confirmation at fourteen, and finally giving in to my constant protestations, my parents figured I was sufficiently saved to get into Heaven and they let me decide whether or not I wanted to attend Mass. In my later teen years, I never stepped foot inside a Catholic Church again unless attending a wedding or funeral.
In the ensuing years, I didn't abandon God totally. When I was going through trying times, I tried on Jesus again to try to find answers. I knew I couldn't embrace being a Catholic, but I think I was looking for some kind of spiritual comfort. I was longing for the feeling of holiness and peace I used to feel as a child in church when I accepted the blind faith that there was a God and he was watching over me.
I married your Dad, another lapsed Catholic, a former alter boy, no less.....and when we had children, we tried on the church again thinking we owed it to you to decide on your own. That lasted until your older brother's First Communion. After hearing the things they were teaching him in class to prepare for that event, I could not reconcile allowing our family to continue on this path when there were truly so many things I did not agree with. My loving child branded with Original Sin and headed to eternal Limbo if not for being baptized in the church? Homosexuality a sin? No birth control?? You never made it to First Communion, we were done with the Catholic Church. ( I apologize if you end up in Limbo)
We raised you and your brother as independent, free thinking, liberal children of whom I am extremely proud. You learned empathy and the concept of right and wrong without the threat of ending up in hell or the reward of heaven. But, what I didn't count on was that at this point in my life, I would be questioning whether I did the right thing.
You and your brother are very outspoken in your disdain for organized religion. You have been well educated and have come to the conclusion that religion is the cause of so much oppression and prejudice in the world. I can't argue with you on that, I felt as passionate as you do when I was your age.
As a progressive liberal and seeing the impact of Religion in our country moving from being a private belief system to being forced down our throats everywhere we turn, I have been thinking lately about what I mean when I say I am spiritual, not religious. I have been thinking about Jesus, about his teachings and how so many of those who wear `What would Jesus Do" bracelets really do not follow his teachings in their everyday lives. I see the Bible, the Koran, and every other religious tome as answers for the questions of their time, before science. I see them as stories written by people. I could just never grasp how some people firmly believed that their collection of stories were correct and everyone else was wrong....and how that is the cause of so much strife and conflict.
So what is it that causes otherwise educated people to follow a life of faith in God and religion? I believe what drives people to gather together is a need for connection. A "We're all in this together"mentality, a well of support in times of need. Some people need a structure of what that is, some don't.
In my belief system, which I have arrived at only recently after years of confusion, is that God is Love...simple as that. I don't believe that God is a being planning out everyone's life and keeping a scorecard on each of us for later reference when deciding our eternal salvation. I believe that when some people say they accept Jesus as their Savior, if they are truly doing so, then they are opening up their hearts to Love....that they are accepting the responsibility of their part in the scheme of life.....love, tolerance, empathy and acceptance of the Golden Rule; "Do unto others...." Being human, it is always a struggle to live up to those ideals and I believe that can explain why people look to religion to try to find a way to achieve those goals. It is a search for guidance in finding your place in the world and living an authentic life. So if some folks come to that through a certain religious practice, I don't think it matters how they get there. It is natural to find comfort in others who have a common goal and there is comfort in familiar rituals. I still feel a sense of peace when I walk into a church and I know that goes way back to my childhood when I believed that God lived there.
I see God in all the good things in my life....in the love I feel for you and your brother, in the smile of a tired waitress when I am able to give her an extra tip when she is having a hard day.....in the wave of a stranger when they stop the car to let me cross the street ......when I look up into the deep night sky when I am walking the dog, surrounded by silence, thinking of my place in this vast world, trying to get my brain around the whole `meaning of life' thing.
So, when you object to going to Easter Mass with your girlfriend's family because you don't believe in any of it and you feel you are compromising your beliefs by attending, try to look at it in a different way. Try to see it as just one way that one group of human beings are coming together to try to bring love into their lives. And, by inviting you to participate, they are asking you to share in that. Because they value their beliefs it is only natural that they may wish you shared them. But, you don't have to accept their beliefs in order to accept the spirit in which it is shared.
If you speak out against their beliefs, they will of course become defensive. It is a question of good manners to some extent. By taking part in their family tradition, you show that you respect their right to those traditions and those beliefs. Participating in the service as part of a family holiday doesn't mean that you accept those beliefs as your own. Instead of trying to figure out how these people can believe something you find unbelievable, such as Jesus rising from the dead to save our souls so we can have everlasting life , look at the celebration in your own way. I look at it as a rebirth, another chance to try to accept love in your heart, to try to reaffirm within yourself that you will try to be the best person you can be by following the real teachings of a man, a prophet, called Jesus. You don't have to worship a God in order to try to guide your life by "What would Jesus do?" If only more people did that. But, of course, humans being what they are, some using the teachings of Jesus to fit their own hateful ways based on fear is the constant problem we all face and makes us question the value of any belief system. We can only set an example and try to live our own lives in a good way and strive to do the right thing whenever possible. We can only hope to change the world in our own small way.
It has been a lifelong struggle and a mystery to me try to discover my concept of God. It's different things to different people. And I think that's okay. It is those who follow the path of love, care and respect for others less fortunate and standing up for what is right, that are truly living their best life and will make a difference in the lives of others and the world we live in. Like I said, whether you get there on your own or with the help of others through religion, I don't think the journey matters as much as arriving at that place.
The only thing I remember from my Sunday School class with the nuns is the first question in my first grade Catechism book that we had to memorize. It was "What is God?" and the answer that we learned to repeat like little parrots was "God is Love." There are a lot of questions in religion that I can never claim to know the answers to. But I firmly believe that the answer to that one in true. It just took me a long time to figure it out.
Love, Mom
P.S. ( I miss seeing your face)
Note: Being a part of this community means so much to me. I don't post often and this is my first diary, but I read DailyKos daily ( sometimes several times) and I value all that I have learned here.