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Goodbye Jesus

"is God Just Not That Into Me?"


MerryG

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The title is flippant, but I found the article thought-provoking.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/fashion/Modern-love-Is-God-Just-Not-That-Into-Me.html

 

 

I didn’t believe in God, but, more to the point, I had trouble seeing how anyone believed in God. But here was my Midwestern monk, with his growing altar on my radiator cover, and here was this idea of “Buddha nature,” which apparently is in everything. Here were our shared days and nights. But here, too, was his deeply felt sense of a force in the universe that looked suspiciously like unconditional love. And here, I came to realize, was my jealousy.

 

 

How come he got access to all that divine unconditional love? What am I to the universe? What do I have to do to get the good stuff?

 

 

My monk read this far into my essay and looked at me levelly. “You already have it,” he said. “You are it.” He paused. “By the way, we need coffee.”

 

 

What he didn’t say, because he’s well mannered, was, “Why are you jealous of something you don’t even believe in?”

 

 

For me, that’s not the point. It’s the unconditional love thing, and the mystery of what it would be to walk around the world feeling that vibration, and some tangled response in me that falls somewhere between “That’s not fair” and “How do you do that?” I’m jealous that he gets to hang out with God. ...

It occurs to me that years of religious zealots telling me I’m going to hell has taken more of a toll than I knew. Why didn’t I get the map to this oasis where all these people have been sipping the nectar of divine benevolence without me?

 

 

I am thinking grumpy thoughts like this one night as I watch my monk tend his altar on the radiator cover, his last act every day. He straightens a photo, a shell, a stone, clears away the dead incense stubs, refills the burner, and arranges the candles.

 

 

By now, I know what’s on his altar and why. I also know that, Buddhist-wise, this home altar is not a poor copy of, say, Chartres, but a manifestation and embodiment of something real. He moves around it; he makes a new space on the second shelf. He will put something there, and his selection is his art. He hums and moves a rock.

 

 

When I realize that the oasis, the temple, the sanctuary, is on the radiator cover, I also realize that spirituality and making art are not such different practices. Both call upon the animating force of the unseen. As a writer, I can’t really explain it, either, what I do or how; when I work, I may look like someone staring uselessly into space.

Once upon a time, I thought of myself (as a lot of people do) as "spiritual but not religious." More often now, I feel deprived of spirituality by having spent my early life under the thumb of barbaric christianity -- specifically the threat of hell and even more specifically the oft-repeated threat that if you so much as question or explore other beliefs you'll head straight into the flames.

 

I've developed such a jaundiced view of all religion and all spirituality that I just stay away. But like that writer, I feel I'm missing something.

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I read part of the article. Let me just say that Buddhism takes some strange forms. It seems to be something that can be whatever you want it to be, like liberal Christianity.

 

Here's my take on God right now (subject to change). If they exist, God or Gods are mysterious. They are hidden.  Perhaps you can have an experience of God, but maybe not.

 

God is not subject to dissection and human theology and human reasoning.  God(s) is the intangible, the strange.  To explain God would be to pin a dead butterfly to a board.  God(s) may exist, but we cannot comprehend them except when and if they choose.

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The title is flippant, but I found the article thought-provoking.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/fashion/Modern-love-Is-God-Just-Not-That-Into-Me.html

 

 

I didn’t believe in God, but, more to the point, I had trouble seeing how anyone believed in God. But here was my Midwestern monk, with his growing altar on my radiator cover, and here was this idea of “Buddha nature,” which apparently is in everything. Here were our shared days and nights. But here, too, was his deeply felt sense of a force in the universe that looked suspiciously like unconditional love. And here, I came to realize, was my jealousy.

 

 

How come he got access to all that divine unconditional love? What am I to the universe? What do I have to do to get the good stuff?

 

 

My monk read this far into my essay and looked at me levelly. “You already have it,” he said. “You are it.” He paused. “By the way, we need coffee.”

 

 

What he didn’t say, because he’s well mannered, was, “Why are you jealous of something you don’t even believe in?”

 

 

For me, that’s not the point. It’s the unconditional love thing, and the mystery of what it would be to walk around the world feeling that vibration, and some tangled response in me that falls somewhere between “That’s not fair” and “How do you do that?” I’m jealous that he gets to hang out with God. ...

It occurs to me that years of religious zealots telling me I’m going to hell has taken more of a toll than I knew. Why didn’t I get the map to this oasis where all these people have been sipping the nectar of divine benevolence without me?

 

 

I am thinking grumpy thoughts like this one night as I watch my monk tend his altar on the radiator cover, his last act every day. He straightens a photo, a shell, a stone, clears away the dead incense stubs, refills the burner, and arranges the candles.

 

 

By now, I know what’s on his altar and why. I also know that, Buddhist-wise, this home altar is not a poor copy of, say, Chartres, but a manifestation and embodiment of something real. He moves around it; he makes a new space on the second shelf. He will put something there, and his selection is his art. He hums and moves a rock.

 

 

When I realize that the oasis, the temple, the sanctuary, is on the radiator cover, I also realize that spirituality and making art are not such different practices. Both call upon the animating force of the unseen. As a writer, I can’t really explain it, either, what I do or how; when I work, I may look like someone staring uselessly into space.

Once upon a time, I thought of myself (as a lot of people do) as "spiritual but not religious." More often now, I feel deprived of spirituality by having spent my early life under the thumb of barbaric christianity -- specifically the threat of hell and even more specifically the oft-repeated threat that if you so much as question or explore other beliefs you'll head straight into the flames.

 

I've developed such a jaundiced view of all religion and all spirituality that I just stay away. But like that writer, I feel I'm missing something.

 

I liked that writers descriptions.  Yes, spirituality and making art are not that different.  Spirituality is not the same thing as religion.  But it can be experienced through religion, just as it can be through art, or through gardening, or washing your car, or doing laundry.  It's experiencing the depth and beauty of life in all things.  Certain activities make it easier to experience that within ourselves, such as a nature walk, but tougher to make this a normal part of our lives, and know it in everything.  And religion is not necessarily the key to it.  It can be taken or left.  

 

How we learn to expose this in ourselves is not a matter of learning a skill or anything like that, which is a very common error.  The "skill" is simply learning to let go and allow.  It's like the musician.  You can't learn to be a musician.  You can learn notes and scales, but you cannot be told how to let music flow through you.  That's something you sense, you feel, and you allow.  That's something individual.  So there is nothing to be jaundiced about.  Breathe, relax, let go, and be at peace.  And what's within will simply be.  And then you are free.  It's that simple.  And that hard.  

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  • 3 weeks later...

I really related to your statement "I've developed such a jaundiced view of all religion and all spirituality that I just stay away. But like that writer, I feel I'm missing something".

 

I think that all religion aside, we still have a very human need for acceptance. It could be the reason that some form of spirituality, even if it's just animism, is present in all human societies--it fills a human need. When that need was supplied by a dysfunctional religion that we've shed, we still need to fill it. What to fill it *with* becomes the big question, one that I wrestle with. Every system of spirituality, and maybe anything supernatural, intellectually feels like a crutch to me. But I still need something. As Alan Watts said, "You're It"--but somehow that doesn't help.

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