I still don't know if I want a God. That label still holds baggage for me. But if I did. I would like a God I could hug. (from Day 33)
I got a text today... "How was Atheism for Lent"?
I published a blog with 45 posts during my journey, all I could think of was... how do I sum up a response in a text?
I decided to go through all my posts... all 45 of them, and get something from my words that could help to answer that question. So if reading the whole blog is too much... this is the Reader's Digest Version.
These are my words (with the exception of three quotes that I put in italics) This is the closest I get to offering a collection of Ruby Neumann quotes.
(for access to the post for each day, click on the Day # and it will forward you to the whole post)
Day 1: When the darkness is there, when the blackness is visible from my earthly vantage point... No clouds, no smoke screen... just the vastness of space... I see light. I seen the stars or the moon. The darkness in its purest form invites me back to light, and yet still lets me rest in the shadows of the night. How beautiful is that.
Day 2: What happens when someone I love opens up their computer and reads the words I have penned in my space? Does the magic end? Will I be condemned instead of being loved? Is their love really that conditional and incapable of embracing me in my rawness?
Day 3: Today, I am grateful for fire. It keeps my house warm in the cold winters. Fire also gives me peaceful pleasure when I sit by the camp fire on the deck and watch the flames dance. I take for granted that this is a gift that might have cost somebody something. In the bible stories... fire just was. But in the story of Prometheus, I was given a character that sacrificed himself for my comfort and enjoyment. That is why I don't forget that story.
Day 4: I am not a stranger to the stories of WW2. I grew up around three German Canadians, my Opa, my Oma and my Dad, who had their own horror stories of the war. Those were a different kind of horror. But their stories didn't matter. They were seen as the enemy even through they were abhorrent to regime in power that caused so much destruction and tyranny to their neighbours and their home.
Day 5: In listening to Peter Rollins weekly talk for AFL2022 on Youtube, he encouraged us to read and listen without agreeing or disagreeing. I find it absolutely freeing to read a lot of literature that comes my way like that. Just to read it and take it in without having any conclusions about the material.
Day 6: One of the reasons I don't like the term God is that it is so vague. I also don't want to label the Creator of the Cosmos with a word that has been reduced to a common cuss world. (God, Jesus, Jesus Christ)... If we are going to discuss the possibility of something or someone that started this whole Universe... then it has to carry more weight than a swearword.
Day 7: "Very few people in the world would have a God if care had not been taken to give them one." I really need to digest this one.
Day 8: But when it comes to approaching the game with some wisdom... it's not about changing Lucy's way of playing the game... it's about not playing the game with Lucy anymore.
Day 9: Today, I heard the words of Charles Darwin. I saw some of him left behind in his words, and I could connect. His story is not unlike my own. But I wonder if most don't know his story, because, like me, they didn't take the time to see him through and around his words. This is what I am gaining in "Atheism for Lent". I am getting a chance to see the people behind the words.
Day 10: Today I am heavy with thought. Bart Campolo has introduced me to Robert Ingersoll over and over again on the "Humanize Me" podcast. Ingersoll is a big influence for Bart and I can understand why. There is so much depth in the dives of his thoughts.
Day 11: I have noticed that not too many people are asking me to reveal my inner soul with them. Most just enjoy my presence on a social level and express that. Much beyond that can get awkward. I have been feeling the lack of the deep places in my relationships, but I am seeing more clearly that its not always required to navigate life. Aaahhhh the journey...
Day 12: Today, I feel like I am flying in an airplane looking out the window, longing to be a bird... sad, but happy that at least I am up in the clouds. I wonder if I am free. Maybe being on the ground was free and being in this hollow metal tube pretending I'm a bird is not freedom, but captivity.
Day 13: Maybe the best we have in life is the great "I don't know" and that is the journey. What if... the "what if's" became more valuable as we lay aside certainty and absolute knowledge. Our imagination becomes the springboard of the conversation and we can discover an amazing world, not bound by the need to have the answers.
Day 14: The poet in me is excited at the idea that casting doubt on religion's factual foundations is indeed a beautiful thing. The agnostic in me is thinking it is necessary for my sanity. The lover in me wonders at the timing and where Love fits into the dance. But the child in me is frightened that doing so will be another invitation to abandonment.
Day 15: I write and publish, if only on this obscure blog, to remind "Shame" that I know those lies, and I don't want to believe them anymore. Love is real and Love wants to drive out Fear and Shame. I am whole. I am free. I am intertwined with Love.
Day 16: What kind of "God" inspired that risky graffiti venture? What kind of pain was so horrid and oozed through that person that made them risk their life to paint those words on the bridge? What kind of doctrine was painted in their mind that convinced them of that response?
That painter could have written "God hates me" as a response to internal pain or self absorbed pain, but that wasn't what was written. "God Hates us ALL" and ALL was in all caps and underlined.
Day 17: I am not feeling much of anything except peace. Maybe this story is allowing me to see that had I still embraced a controlling God narrative, then I couldn't embrace the beauty amid the chance of this story. There is no normal. There is only beauty.
Day 18: As I travel through this Lenten period, I have no goal but enlightenment. I long to shed light (awareness) into those areas of my world that have been dominated by the shadows. I don't want to be that person that is fearful of the unknown because of where it will take me. I want to be encouraged and challenged by that which I have avoided my whole life.
Day 19: I have been harvesting quotes from some of these great minds, because I don't think I will get to read their books. Authors like Feuerbach, Ingersoll, Kierkegaard all are inspiring me, but to invest more time and energy in reading them all... well, I don't know if I can... so I will collect the best thoughts and peruse them from time to time.
Day 20: I don't want to take away a person's faith and belief if that is their lens to see the world and be a better person... but to add to that... now that would be something worth wishing for. Then maybe I wouldn't be so scared of thinking anymore.
Day 21: I don't know when real flowers die. Do they die when they wither or do they die when they are cut? Good question.
Day 22: Today I will let Pete and Joe dominate this post. I am weak and sick and tired and have little energy to contribute to this forty day commitment to write something. All I can say.... beautiful song, Joe!
Day 23: I let another day go by with a body lacking energy to expound on this... so I will let Emma and Peter do the talking once again. I have included segments of Emma's essay... these snippets are what moved me the most in the reading.
Day 24: I got "How (Not) To Speak of God" today. I started reading it. It might be a lot of stuff I have already read in the other books, but it is Pete's first.
I actually got the book based on Brian McLaren's raving forward. With him speaking so highly of it, it was a no brainer for me. I didn't have it accessible on my Ibooks, so Manfred ordered from Amazon for me. It's my birthday present.
I found an interesting quote:
"Just because you're offended, doesn't make you right."
Day 25: Thank you Friedrich, for some amazing wisdom.
I downloaded a collection of quotes from the internet, and selected some that I either resonate with, or am challenged by, or need to seriously reflect further on. That doesn't mean that I agree or disagree with any or all of them. I like that I don't have to agree or disagree in order to gain from someone's wisdom.
Day 26: Only one thought today: "One man's meat is another man's poison."
Day 27: Had I known that I'd be in too much pain today to write, I just might have listened to that voice inside. "No one is going to read this. No one is going to care. No one will know what boils in the heart of you."
Day 28: This reminded me of the average church service. People gather around the celebration of someone who they don't see and can't hear. That person is in attendance... at least that is what they have been told. But there is no real evidence of that. There maybe moments when they think that someone is communicating to them, but then others are clueless.
Day 29: Well. this is called Authentic Lent. I am at day 29 and authentically have reached my maximum potential for intake on this course. I am tired, worn out, sick, and my brain isn't processing the great stuff like I had hoped. But I will keep going until the end and will find something of value.
Day 30: Ten days left and I don't know what to write about. These last two weeks have been draining on me physically. My brain started out okay with AFL material, but I am over whelmed and feeling like I did when I was taking Computer Programming at NAIT. I feel like I got in over my head.
Day 31: I think I live in a world that has a balance issue. When one side is over weighted, the response is to overweight the opposite side in order to create balance. Maybe that has to happen because we don't know how to ditch the baggage overweighting us in the first place. So then it becomes the other's responsibility to offset the balance by extra baggage on their end, tipping the scale in their favour. Then the original overweighted side adds more weight to offset their lack and it goes on and on. No one learns how to ditch the baggage and even out the scales.
Day 32: If I can aim to be like Mother Teresa... like what she did overrode her struggles with her belief and faith... I will be alright. She didn't let her doubts and disbeliefs slow her down. She did what she did for as long as she could do it. Her values gave her direction when her faith couldn't.
Day 33: For me, Aslan is not human and that is his redeeming feature. He is strength, wisdom, life and love. In Aslan, I see the Creator beyond that which I can limit in my imagination. That is the beauty. I can float with my wonder and not have to be concerned with proving texts. I can take the story and become wrapped in it. How precious is that.
I still don't know if I want a God. That label still holds baggage for me. But if I did. I would like a God I could hug.
Day 34: I find that the more I distance myself from the need to believe, I find that I can embrace the joy and spirit that still attracts me to the music. I understand that the musicians and vocalists still need to embrace the words, and that is okay. That is their journey. I'm just excited that I don't have to let go of the whole song, just because the words don't make sense to me anymore.
Day 35: Maybe some where along the journey, we have become frustrated with the elusive answers, and we have settled on explanations of the unknown instead. We only see the unknown or unknowable or the unknowing... and it isn't satisfying us, so we use mystery as an answer and a conclusion. But maybe there was never meant to be an answer or a conclusion.
Day 36: I tread lightly on the claim of truth now. I am not being a coward; I am just putting my relationships ahead of my own need to be right. I am letting Love override Truth. What is Truth without Love? And then when Love is there, is there a need for claiming what I have is Truth? What if Love is enough. Love and my opinion if I need to say anything. Everything else seems arrogant to me.
Day 37: If God is that which man has created to explain life, then maybe there is a hope that God can be seen, even as low as the bathroom floor. But if that which gave her breath, breathes in her and through her... then that very breath exhausts itself on the bathroom tiles and waits to be taken in again. In, Out... that is how breath works. Not something high above looking over her, but in and out as she labours to breathe. Not only that which gives her breath... but Breath itself.
Day 38: Is the Resurrection all that makes Jesus matter? Was his life worth nothing if the Resurrection can't be proved?
Day 39: I am still going to say that I am 2000 years past the story and that is a long time to hang on to something that is life changing for me now. I don't think I am able to envision a Creator that is going to be limited to a revelation from 30 CE and expect it to hold through millennia without getting twisted, marred and seriously out of date.
Day 40: I am officially christening the Sunday before Easter as Poplar Sunday. I know there aren't leaves on the trees yet, but in the spirit of recreating a story in this time and space, poplar is what I have to offer.
Day 41: This journey through Atheism for Lent has been enriching for me. I have been given a look inside the windows of many a soul and have found more beauty in the empty hearts. Empty hearts always have room for others.
Day 42: I think these six weeks have been about letting go of a lot of things. Maybe letting go of toxic relationships, maybe letting go of expectations, maybe letting go of the need to be right all the time, or even right most of the time.
Day 43: Leading up to Good Friday, I am asked to remember that someone died. Instead of pretending that this tragedy didn't happen or pretending that it happened but there would be a miraculous event to end my sadness... I am letting go. I am unplugging the machines, I am facing reality. I am going to find some flowers to lay at the grave of Jesus.
Day 44: If foot washing was an act of love back in 30 CE, is it still an act of love now and if not... why is it being done. Oh yeah... ritual?
Day 45: Atheism for Lent is over. We finished our time together with a funeral of a very different flavour. There were readings and music. There was a time for silence and a time for shared sorrow. There was beauty in all of it.
