Tuesday, November 4, 2014

If I Believed in God... The Preface

For the first time in years, my brother and I live in the same house.  I’m kind of giddy about it.  We’ve spent countless nights over the course of the past few weeks sitting on our parents’ patio late into the night. Illuminated by candles and the moon, we’ve drank one too many glasses of wine, sang songs way too loudly, and reacquainted ourselves with each other as adults. This moment in time feels like a very intentional blessing as I sense his life is about to transition into something big and magical, making these evenings together so sacred. 
Where I’m chatty, Cooper selects his words carefully. While all of my thoughts tend to grow into passionate lengthy run on sentences of which I can’t quite control the speed, Cooper speaks softly and more selectively.  He’s the kind of guy that when he decides to enter into a conversation, people really focus. So when Cooper told me at our most recent patio party that I should reconsider how I approach my spirituality… I cried because I’m sappy and I agreed because I respect him. 
I resigned myself from Christianity a few years ago. I haven’t been to church since, I haven’t read the Bible, and I haven’t prayed in the way I tried pretty desperately to for the first eighteen years of my life.  However, I still sense within myself a love for an admittedly nameless God, mostly manifested in an overwhelming sense of love and responsibility for the universe and for humanity.  My resignation from the Christian faith had less to do with God though, and more to do with people.  
I hate offending people.  I have an intense respect for religion and appreciate how sacred and intense those beliefs are to people to whom I owe everything.  Hence, when I realized my beliefs about God and scripture had potential to seem combative or contrary… I decided to separate myself altogether. I wanted to give people permission to dismiss me.  If I wasn’t a part of their group, people I had potential to offend could stop listening to me. I desperately wanted that freedom because I needed reprieve.  The life of a rumored atheist seemed like a warm and relaxing cave in which to dwell for a while. 
However, my brother has summoned me from my years-long vacation.  There is a chance, I suppose, that the thoughts about God that plagued me as a child were planted in me for a purpose: to spark up a freewheelin’ conversation about the divine with the people I love, to encourage vulnerable discourse around patio tables about faith and fear. Our lives are pretty short so we might as well take that risk… I’ll go first. 

To force myself to stick with it I’ve thought in advance of a few perhaps not politically correct beliefs I hold about God.  I plan on latching onto one per week… a little blog series if you will. I’m pretty apprehensive but… here goes nothin’. Each week I’ll introduce the God I could commit myself to, the potential aspects of a possible Creator that seem the most beautiful to me.  Forgive any guaranteed accidental blasphemy… we’re all just little specks searching for truth to love and I for one can use all the help I can get. 

2 comments:

  1. oh oh oh oh beautiful girl this could be the best most honest thing I've ever read. I'm teary eyed & choked up and my heart and soul and mind are all whispering yes yes yes. I want every single human I know to read this. you are a ray of light & loveliness & hope. ❤️

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  2. Beautifully written Crosby! I love these kinds of discussions. Invite me in anytime. Thanks for posting love.

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