On Spirituality

I know in my last essay, On Sacrifice, I said this essay would be on Compassion. Well, sometimes I am a liar and there are topics that really push themselves to the forefront of my mind and stay there, lingering like a houseguest who has overstayed their welcome. This particular topic has lingered in my brain for....well, decades. And I realize it isn't for everyone. In writing, I am much bolder than I am in person. The pen allows me to measure my response, to tailor the message I wish to convey. As such, it is far easier to delve into topics that would, or carry the very real possibility of, raising some hackles. Issues such as Spirituality.

I have very difficult views on the role of religion and spirituality in my own life, let alone someone else's. While I was raised up in an evangelical household, I am not one to proselytize; I never have been. I spent years as a "leader" in my church's youth group; gave at least 1 sermon from the pulpit, spent hours prostrate in prayer, hours spent pouring over the Holy Bible. And yet, I have never felt the comfort in Christianity many believers speak of. I was moved occasionally, one cannot divorce the emotional aspect from the religious. Instead, time after time I felt more and more alienated; I asked too many questions for "faith." I was made to feel humiliated and hold contempt for parts of myself that were as natural to me as breathing. And if my own religion was doing that to me, why would I want to share that with others?

Around the age of 25, I began to reject the church. By 27, I copped the moniker "agnostic atheist" from a friend of mine. I felt this was at least a decent hedge so that I didn't outright deny the existence of a higher being, but I could still question the presence of one. Because also at that time I began to heavily scrutinize the role organized religion played in European colonization, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, Residential Schools, and the rise of the supposed morality of prosperity. How could I believe in such an institution that would perpetuate such evils on the world?

But yet, there was this lingering emptiness, that could be temporarily satiated when I read something particularly poignant or heard a moving piece of music. And that emptiness was soon filled, and fueled by, alcohol.

Since a young age -- perhaps 8 or 9 -- I had always had a fascination with the hippie culture of the 1960s. And around 11 or 12, I began to have a fascination with meditation and Eastern philosophies that were colonized by Westerners during that time period. I worked in a bookstore from my senior year of high school until I was about 20. There, I bought copies of The Dhammapada, The Upanishads, and The Bhagavad Gita. It was freeing to feel a connection to my spirit in ways my familial religion hadn't connected me before. I always knew my spirit existed: I could feel it in my connection to nature and the way I communed with art in all its forms, but specifically music. And I always found some value in the spirituality of my upbringing. Thus, I began to see through-lines in the teachings of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. I began to take value in the proverbs and cast aside the dogma.

I know there are many readers, acquaintances, and friends who are staunch atheists. That's wonderful, that is what works best for them. I know, too, there is a sub-section of those people who turn up their noses and, if not blatantly state it, present an air of dismissal to those who are spiritual as yokel sheep who don't think or reason. It may even surprise, or possibly appall, them to read so frank an assertion of spirituality from me. Since those early years, even in spite of my upbringing, I have always questioned and reasoned. I have zero problem calling the Westernized church to the mat for historic and current atrocities. There are some in my immediate family who feel I "attack" Christians too much or too often. I simply refused to be cowed into a box; my conception of god doesn't work that way. Then again, my conception of god puts off a lot of people.

I am a spiritual being. I believe in a higher power that, for lack of a better linguistic definition, I choose to call god. But that definition excludes quite a lot. I believe in science, as I believe the mysteries of the natural work and universe are meant to be discovered by vigorous scientific testing. Human beings have some of the most-advanced brains on the planet, to not use them for reason is a grave mistake. I do not subscribe to the theory of a young Earth; to me that is one of the silliest notions outside of conspiracy theories. The geologic record clearly disputes an Earth that is 12,000 years old or younger. Much with any text I read, I consider the context in which it was written, the years of fallible human editing, and the misinterpretations of any and all religious and spiritual texts, These texts have been used to control humans throughout the centuries, therefore each should be taken with extreme caution. I do not hold the tradition of literal translation. I do not believe life begins at conception. And I do not believe I should talk about the splinter in my neighbor's eye.

So where does that leave me? These are the tenets to which I adhere:

1. I believe in an eternal presence I choose to call god
2. I have a spirit that is more-than-likely eternal
3. I have a responsibility to feed my spirit and maintain it; how I choose to do that is between me and the higher power of my understanding.
4. I have a responsibility to care for my fellow humans, most specifically vulnerable, abused, underserved, and underrepresented populations of my fellow humans.
5. I believe to be a person or to be human, one must be outside the womb; life does not begin at conception.
6. I believe in the autonomy of each human.
7. I believe the world and universe as we perceive it is a product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
8. I believe we as humans hold a responsibility to be GOOD stewards of the world we inhabit. 
9. I believe it is the duty of each to feed and uplift the spirit of others, for it is not through the corporeal that we connect one to another, but through the metaphysical.

Spirituality is a funny, beautiful, slippery, dangerous concept. Each person has their own take, and each take is valid. I honor the spirit in each of you, as you would have me honor it.