december 17

thoughts on religion

You know, I had a perfectly good weekend. Got just enough sleep, watched a few movies, lounged around with my hubby, Xmas shopped, made a few good meals. Even balanced my checkbook (or at least entered all the receipts into Quicken so I have a clue how much money we have) and paid all the bills EARLY.

But now, even after all that productive mellowness I'M EXAUSTED. And I don't have a disease, it's just that we had this massive windstorm last night and even though I was completely unaware of it, consciously at least, I slept for shit. Even when I don't hear them, windstorms always keep me from getting a good night's sleep. I have no idea why. But it sucks.

I don't remember how it got started, but A* and I had a conversation about God Saturday night. Right after I wrote that last entry. We talked about the concept of man's free will versus the idea of everything happening as part of God's Great Plan. I'm not sure I wrote about this hear, I did somewhere, but the night of the 11th I went to bed truly hating God. There was no way He could explain to me that this had to happen. That there was some higher reason for it. But then, over the next few days, I thought that there might be some plan that I would never be able to comprehend and that perhaps somewhere, somehow some good could come out of this.

But as I've been reading, and talking to people, I've found no one seems to think this is the case. Even the most religious people I know believe this horrendous act is the result of man's absolute free will and that God had no hand in this. That it is the responsibility of the men who did this and theirs alone. That's not to say that this doesn't mean that there are things we can learn from this, that we can go forward wiser, more compassionate, more aware of our actions and beliefs.

I feel more than a little foolish; I realize that I fall back on this "everything happens for a reason" theory more often than I should. It's an easy way to shirk responsibility. When A* and I talked, we both agreed that everyone one of us is given a set of talents and experiences that we are to use for the betterment of the Universe. The difference is, I found after we discussed it, I'm more fatalistic than A* is. I know that our lives are not predetermined down to the second, but I sometimes have this sense that there's just only so much you can do on your own because there is a bigger plan and you're just a part of it.

I wonder if this is because more and more lately, when I look to the future, I don't see much. It seems to end, or perhaps it's so indefinable I just can't get any sense of it. It's not that I don't want there to be more, I absolutely do, I just have no idea what the future holds and I don't have any notion that it will be as I imagine it.

This isn't stopping me from making plans. In fact, my conversation with A* has made me realize that I have to do more, plan more, be more. On Sunday, as I reflected on this conversation, I realized that what I really want to do for the world is help refugees. From the time I was a first grader and went to school with refugee children from Vietnam and Laos, I've always wanted to help them make the transition to a happier life. I can remember trying to explain to the other kids why Vu, the kid who sat next to me in class, did talk much. Telling them about the violence, and the killings, and the running away, and the sailing in boats. My parents let me stay up and watch the news and I knew what these kids had gone through. I didn't really understand it, but I knew it was bad and that I should try to make school easier for them.

But can you see? I'm stunted. My spiritual growth is absolutely stunted, stuck back in a pre-adolescent form, right where I left it when I walked away from the Foursquare Church after my grandmother died (and that, my friends, is a whooooole other story). And my political attitudes toward refugees are barely political because the last time I really put any energy into this issue I was about eight, when all SE Asian kids either moved to California or became assimilated. My language is stunted, too. When I talk about these issues I think of those tapes of 11- and 12-year-old girls from sociology class in college. The ones where we analyzed the moral and social development of adolescent females and talked about how much better they were at relating to people than the boys (which was bullshit, but that's, again, another story). I sound that young, to myself at least.

That's not to say I haven't thought about God and my own spirituality since I was a kid. I have, in fact, I went through a pretty intense New Age trip from the age of about 16 through 20. Ironically, it all ended when I moved to the Bay Area and realized that most people used these teachings as cop outs and that they really had no idea what it meant to go without and to "Let go and let Goddess" or whatever the fuck it was that they were saying then. After that, I put all commitments to religion on hold until I found something that didn't smack of bullshit.

I've thought about picking up my Shakti Gawain books again and seeing what I could find there. I remember a simple system for living that gave me a lot of security and a sense of power. But I just have this feeling that it will seem trite and ridiculous now, that those little sayings and the visualizations and all that will just seem laughable now.

The only forms of religion that attract me right now are the ancient ones, the major ones. I know enough about Islam to know that is just as much about peace and love as Christianity, which is to say it is if your culture supports that interpretation of it. I love the rituals and the constant acknowledgement of love and peace every time you meet a friend and say "Shalom." I love the intellectualism of Judaism, the mysticism of the Kabbalah (although I know very little about it, really). Christianity is just comfortable enough to irritate me, although I know it's still a religion of love and peace, if, like I said about Islam, you allow it to be.

Obviously, I'm thinking out loud. Writing stream of consciousness. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm not looking to be saved. I'm not afraid of death. Not at all. What I'm more afraid of is that I will not have done everything I'm supposed to do, or as much as I am capable of, for the people around me, for my community, for the world, before my time comes. I know what people mean now when they say, "You'll never regret the hours you *didn't* spend at the office." I just wish I had a brilliant plan for how I could get to the place where I have more balance and can do more. For people. And not for money.

- december 17