My 35 Year Trip to Non Believer

I call myself a non-believer, but I suppose technically I’m agnostic. I don’t deny the utter possibility of some universe creator, but have concluded that if one exists its beyond my capacity to understand or interact with it on any meaningful level. And its interest in me would likely amount to my interest in Amoeba. So for daily life, I don’t think there is any god.

I wasn’t always in this place. I was not taught about God by my parents. My grandma took me to church when I visited her and when she visited us, but beyond that my parents left me to explore the question on my own.

When I was 16 I became a born again Christian. I accepted Christ because it was such a beautiful idea. A God who loves me just as I am, who doesn’t care about the fact that I’m messed up. I read the bible through and through. I went to bible study and bible camps and joined Campus Crusade when I went to college.

In college my path was a bit erratic. I was easily enticed to the sinful life of drinking and wild parties and sex. But ultimately I settled back into a spiritual life, kept the belief and in my senior year I wanted to be a missionary to Russia. (back then Russia was considered Godless because of communism.) I was turned down for a mission trip to Russia with Campus Crusade because I was fat. Its a silly story, but suffice to say it was a blow that caused me to reconsider.

At that point I looked more closely at organized churches and was sickened by the hypocrisy. There is an undercurrent of competition to be “holier than thou” in spirit filled churches. How many people did you bring to Christ? How many bible studies do you participate in? How many do you lead? What sorts of mission work have you done? The prayers in church are not for the benefit of god, they are for the benefit of the congregation or the gathered group – to show everyone how pious the person praying out loud is. I could go on, but it was nauseating for me.

I still believed in God. I just did not think the church was the best way to have a relationship with him. I continued to read the bible and pray. But once away from the church, my mind was free to look more closely at the bible and at what I thought of God. And I found that I really didn’t think the bible was literal. It really wasn’t possible. It must be more metaphorical.

Then I met a man who practiced Hinduism. He explained karma and dharma. And while reincarnation seemed somewhat odd to me, I couldn’t help but see that at least the concepts of karma were reflective of real world physical laws. Cause and Effect. As opposed the eternal life insurance policy sold by Christian churches. I started reading about Buddhism and Taoism. I was quite enchanted with Taoism, but I never embraced any of them as a practical philosophy or religion.

As time went on, I left behind the bible. It wasn’t a sudden epiphany. It was a slow wandering of ideas and thoughts about what we know about God. It seemed wholly unlikely that God was described by any book created by man.

It seemed more likely that God was reflected in his creation. And if that was so, it was pretty clear that God was very fond of action leads to consequence. After all, it was already built into the world we lived in. So – it was very unlikely that the Christ Insurance Policy was God.

Nor did I think Hell existed. To what purpose? I couldn’t find one in anything I saw, so no Hell. Heaven? Unlikely for the same reasons. If anything, reincarnation might be possible, but there certainly wasn’t much reason for that either.

After more thought wandering it became clear that what I believed was of no relevance at all. Any being who created the universe was a much more complex being than I could possibly fathom on any level. Such a being would have no interest in whether or not I knew of its existence, much less whether I worshiped it. No, my belief would be irrelevant.

Since, my belief would be irrelevant, I was able to let go of all the fragile threads that held me to the idea of God. He either exists or he doesn’t. There is no evidence that he does. Since I have already established that its irrelevant whether I believe, I live my life as though God doesn’t exist.

So, now I don’t believe. In fact I try not to believe anything, which is why I usually identify as a non-believer. Belief is a thing we have to defend. Ideas are things we develop and change when new more compelling information is brought forward. I try to keep myself to ideas.

What of my purpose? What of my morality? I think who I am is defined by me. I think living a life based on critical thinking and on creativity is my path. Knowledge is one of the most worthwhile goals of my life. Its my thing. Its not yours. What you think is how you define you.

My morality is based on my own internal compass. Its not nearly as strict as religion or government.

I don’t think any sexual action that is consensual and non-detrimental to either party is bad.
I think hurting anyone, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or financially is bad.
I think all people have the right to freedom, happiness and the best health that science can offer.
I think people have a right to choose their own death.
I think all of the above is oversimplified and should be weighed in the complexity of the individual situation.

Well, I guess I won’t go on, but you will note that while I am sinful as defined by most religions, I am not amoral. I don’t consider anarchy and murder and hate to be acceptable. I think compassion and kindness are the most noble things a human can be.

I am not evangelical in my thoughts. I share them if someone wants to have an open learning discussion, but not if someone wants to try and convert my viewpoint to theirs. I really don’t care what anyone else thinks or believes.

If you are a religious person, that is fine with me. I used to be and I remember how much it helped me at that point in my life, how much solace I got from it.

I do, however, have a problem when anyone tries to make their religion into laws, or tries to make it part of public school curriculum, or tries to limit the rights and freedoms of any person. That I will fight.

Grandma’s Quilts – Weekly Smile

My grandmother made each of her 11 grandchildren a quilt. They were quilts with blocks made from discarded cloth, often old clothing – no matching color coordinated calicos in these quilts.

My quilt and 2 of my cousins quilts were made with squares cut out by my great grandmother who was pushing 100 at the time.

There was a time when my grandmother would never be sitting without a quilting frame near her so she could put in a couple of stitches. Its part of my memory of her.

When she died there were 2 quilts sitting her a chest. They were given to me. So now I have 3 quilts from grandma.

When I became homeless, I took all three quilts into the car with me. They kept me from freezing at night.

When I got a room at a rooming house, I put the quilts on the cot and suddenly it felt like I was home.

This is the rooming house room made homey by grandma’s quilt

When I moved into this apartment – I put the quilts on the bed and it was OK. Because my grandma came too.

These quilts make me smile. They make me feel warm and safe. They are not coordinated designer fabrics. But they are very beautiful. Because they make me feel good.

Presents under the tree…

I was just thinking back to my childhood Christmases. In my family we did not wrap presents from Santa. So when I came out on Christmas Morning, the Santa presents were set up in front of the tree, and my exhausted parents could sleep through my sneaking out to the tree at 4am.

One Christmas, the VERY BEST Christmas, I got a siamese kitten. But I already knew I was getting it.

Because the kitten was locked in my parents room on Christmas Eve. But being a kitten it did not particularly like that, so it kept putting its little paws under the door. And being Siamese, it was not particularly quiet. In middle of the night, they finally put the kitten on my bed and I woke up to my feet being attacked by a small white fuzz of fur.

My mother did NOT put labels on presents. All presents were anonymous. And she just remembered and handed them out on Christmas Day. Well, mostly she remembered. The memory failures were hysterical though.

She was a genius at adding an extra bit of excitement to an event. She hid our birthday presents and made us find them when we woke up in the morning.

We did not open all the presents at once together. We opened them one at a time, watching each person and enjoying each gift. This makes gift opening last at least an hour. Sometimes longer. But it also makes it so much more fun. Because for me giving the gift is most enjoyable, and watching someone open a gift I was excited to give them made the day feel like it was about giving and not about getting. Actually, maybe that is how she taught us that. hmmm.

But we couldn’t open the gifts (except the Santa ones) until after breakfast. And breakfast on Christmas isn’t cereal and milk. Nope. Its a big wonderful sit down with egg casseroles and bacon and biscuits and gravy and fresh orange juice.

And torture for children. Deep dark torture for children. My parents would deliberately take their time and bring up how we could just put off opening the presents until after dinner, that way we could make a wonderful day stretch… and then just watch the children’s reactions with glee. Oh they were mean sometimes. 😉

We were lucky. gifts_xmas

Baking at Christmas

After I became an adult, my mother instituted the Christmas Cookie Baking Weekend. My sisters and I showed up and her house and we baked. Dozens and Dozens and Dozens of cookies. christmas-cookies-553457_960_720

They are very pleasant memories for me. It is a particularly traditional thing for women to do something of this nature. Cooking. And despite being all in favor of women breaking out of traditional expectations, I found this particular tradition to very supportive of my feeling of family.

As my mother became ill, we stopped doing it. I regret that now, but I don’t remember that I regretted it at the time. I remember being stressed and busy with my job and decorating the house and shopping for presents from both me and my mother. I think not baking was just one less thing I had to contend with.

Now I regret it because I realize that the moments that I cherish most are the shared experiences. And baking was a shared experience that seemed to exemplify what family is.

Buying presents and giving presents and getting becomes a burden for me. Its an expectation that cannot live up to its fanfare. But the act of being together and making something, that is something that always has more value. Even something as unnecessary as Christmas cookies.