While cleaning today, I had to move one of my book shelves. It’s the one that holds most of my reference material, and some of my fiction. I couldn’t help but think, as I counted the number of bibles on my shelf, “You know, for a self-proclaimed non-christian, I sure do have a lot of bibles.” Then I heard my grandmother’s voice in the back of my head. I started replaying the only real discussion we ever had about religion. It was when I told her that I was pretty sure my religious views followed something not christian, and were actually closer to this new thing I was learning about: Paganism. I explained that, from what I could tell, the Catholics had a rather screwed, and close minded view of things.
The Book, Youth Walk, The Rainbow Bible, New Oxford, The Parrallel bible, and The Answer
(From left to right, all links to new editions)
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (non bible)
The New Oxford Annotated Bible
At this point in my life, I no longer fight to prove my point, or to feel right. I have my views, and I can’t fault you for having a different opinion than mine. As long as you aren’t using your views to justify, or directly cause harm to other people, you aren’t likely to get me to say you’re wrong. It’s been a long time since I actually wrote out all of my ideas, especially in anything resembling a public place, but I’m feeling an urge.
When I wake up every morning, I want to be pleased with what I find. I am generally healthy, I am genuinely happy, I am financially stable. Those things alone don’t decide my happiness, however. Every day, or every week, or ever month, however often is needed, I run my recent deeds by my internal compass. Am I continuing to do as little harm as I can? Am I loving the people I love, with all my might, and do they know how much I love them? Have I hurt people unnecessarily recently? If so, how did I get there? What can I do to prevent it in the future? Am I okay with the person I am today? Will I be okay with who I am, tomorrow?
I think, really, most of the world does that. It’s how our internal compass is tuned that makes the difference.
We all start tuning as soon as we’re born. At a very young age, I was exposed to things that were horrible, and awful, and no good. When I found myself arrived out the other end of that awful, I was already 21, and fully formed. I hadn’t taken the time, though, in that 10 or 15 years, to look at what I was doing, or what I was becoming. I didn’t have a good comparison of where I should be, emotionally or spiritually, at that point. I found myself shocked that, unlike when I was 9, I was no longer the most emotionally mature in my group of friends, and set about figuring out what I thought about things.
It took nearly two years for me to form a solid opinion on anything (if pressed, I might argue that the very nature of the opinions prevent them from being solid, but, I digress), and those opinions have been challenged more than once since then. But, really, where I arrived in terms of faith and religion can be simply stated:
I believe in the power of belief.
If you believe that your good deeds and your bad deeds will be weighed in the end, and if the bad outweigh the good, you will go to someplace that smells like sulfur and is red and hot all the time… Then that’s what will happen, and you’d better live your life accordingly.
If you believe that this is one life, on a cycle of many, eventually (hopefully) leading to true peace, knowing, and nirvana? Then I hope, in your next life, you are born a Brahmin, and that you are able to reach that knowlege, and free youself of samsara.
I have seen and experienced the power of belief. In a Christian sense, I’ve seen belief in the love and strength of God pull people through some of the most heinous situations imaginable, and have them come out the other side normal and functional, instead of broken and neurotic. I’ve also seen a low self-esteem manifest lower test scores, and lower performance, not from lack of effort, but from belief in the lack of ability. The brain was told it couldn’t do x, y, and z, so it didn’t. Belief alone was enough in both situations.
“But what do you believe in? What do you worship?” My grandmother was insitent that there had to be something, or someone, to which I held myself accountable. “If we actually knew a name for the true divine, we wouldn’t be fighting all over the world, in that name. To presume, if there is a power great enough to create a universe, life, and all the laws that govern it, that you would know and be able to speak its name? To know its intentions? To understand and communicate to others what it expects you to do, all the way down to not cursing or masturbating or spitting? That’s a level of hubris I hope never to reach. You call the divine, God. I call it Eris. Draconis. Thor. Elli. Ra. Mother earth.”
Something close to the Mother Mary that my grandmother had on her nightstand.
“So you worship idols,” she said, content with her summation of my rant. “So do you,” I said, frustrated beyond all abilty to remain rational and calm. “If you’re praying to Mary, and anything not God or Jesus is an idol, then you, too, worship an idol.” I took a deep breath, immediately feeling bad for yelling at her. She was one of my favorite people, and was actually trying to understand what I believed, inside her framework. “I never once said you were wrong,” she said with a grin, sensing my frustrations. “Just. Make sure you consider all of the options before you decide on any one thing.”
I took that to heart, and have done so. There is no label that actually fits my belief anymore. Nearly every religion in the world has good intentions. People that live by those good intensions are my kind of people. People who are conviced that their way is the only way? The presumption isn’t something I can understand, I think.
Unlike many people who claim to not believe in a divine, I don’t fear death. If anything, I almost anticipate it. Today, in this life, I can only know a limited number of things, in a limited number of ways, for a limited amount of time. Who knows what the next part, if there is a next part, will bring. If the christians are right, and I’m doomed to eternal hell because I sin and don’t apologize for it? Well. I guess I’ll just have to express my frustrations to Elli when I get there.