I understand the importance of having a strong awareness, connection or relationship with the force that we label “God.”
My own awareness of this Jesus fellow, the “Son of God,” though, is different, one of profound respect rather than the relationship of gratitude and humility I have towards this “Power of creation” … this “God.”
I didn’t create myself so if I’m not just a random assemblage of atoms then I’m grateful to who or whatever did.
Maybe we’re all just a part of some supergalactic high school kids science project; a human ant farm so to speak.
But I digress. As I come ever closer to the termination of my time on earth, waiting for my name and maybe my picture to show up in the “Irish Sports Pages” of the Boston Globe, I wonder in retrospect just what my role in creation has been beyond passing my genetic material down through a couple of generations. I’ve tried to live my life in accord with what this Jesus fellow has laid out.
I do tend to have some issues with the minutiae of our institutional religion… all religions for that matter. We have over the millennia, I submit, created many false gods and superstitions as part of our belief systems and rituals that have become (and some of which still remain) mainstays in the profession of the different faiths.
Some clerics assume a superior, self anointed role in the institution of worship, positioned between their flock and the divine… divine facilitators perhaps… lobbyists to a higher power??
But all of these institutional trappings don’t really bother me. I don’t particularly do combat with them in my own mind; many of them I think are just silly and I ignore them.
But… Jesus in relation to this force of creation… the son of God… similar perhaps to the way that we’re each sons and daughters of this power of creation??
We all have to sort this out in our own minds because spirituality is a very interior process for each of us in spite of or in conjunction with the teachings of our particular religion.
Before he was posthumously excommunicated Meister Eckhart said that if the only prayer you say is “Thank You!” that’s enough.
I express my gratitude frequently during the day and beyond that it really doesn’t concern me whether the mother of Jesus was a virgin or if she was assumed body and soul into heaven.
Many of the beliefs and rubrics of organized religions strike me as being superstitious, trying to set out a mechanical roadmap for “salvation,” whatever that is.
I think that faith is more how you live your life than how many bible stories you firmly believe in.
I sometimes wonder how we as a species have progressed so far in so many areas yet in terms of our religious concepts and practices we remain mired in the customs, beliefs and practices of a primitive society. As we have evolved, why is it that the spiritual aspects of our lives remain enmeshed in the primitive tribalism of these ancient cultures?
I don’t know if it is the emotional side of religion and religious beliefs that I have issues with; I really struggle very little with matters of doubt. Nor, am I inclined to implore the divinity for help nor to blame it when things don’t go my way. I do pray but more in the way of opening myself rather than through the recitation of formulaic prayers.
I accept a lot of what life throws at me: the good, the bad; the joy and the pain that we each experience on our journeys; I’m grateful for the good and accepting of the bad with less exuberance for the former and less despair over the latter.
As Father Adrian Van Kaam, a Catholic priest, has said: “Life is a mystery to be lived rather than a riddle to be solved.”
This is one of the touchstones of my religious faith and spiritual awareness as I wander through my life and await that day for my name to appear in the Boston Globe obits.