Queen of Swords

Thanks to wlotus for this inspiring link.

I want, when I say “Christian,” for people to think of the teachings of Jesus… how he healed the sick and welcomed those who society spit at… how he forgave the unforgivable and ate with those that most people of his day would not even look at. I’m tired of “Christian,” meaning pamphlets with hellfire and gay-bashing. I’m tired of it meaning Bush-supporter and anti-evolutionist. I want it to mean “follower of Jesus” again.

Click the quote for the whole essay.

Obviously I no longer identify as a Christian, and I reject the belief that a person must adopt certain doctrines about Jesus and engage in particular practices related to him in order to be "saved" and have a blissful afterlife.

That said, the teachings and example of Christ, as described by this blogger, remain a powerful influence on me. They provide an example of spirituality, morality, and love that transcend any single human belief system.

One of my very spiritually-engaged friends posted last night about her strong feelings about two friends who had become atheists. Her story got me thinking about my own experience of suddenly finding myself an atheist after/during my existential crisis in college. What at that time I called a "loss of faith" I later came to consider an initiatory doorway into a much deeper spiritual life.

Another person's comment got me thinking about the question of what consistutes a "successful" belief and what prompts people to change their beliefs. Under what conditions do we decide -- consciously or unconsciously -- that our beliefs are not resulting in whatever we think they should be delivering as a result of our having them? And how hard is it to change, even when we start to feel some degree of discomfort from holding onto old beliefs? While I'm primarily focusing on spiritual beliefs, this could be a much wider question, taking into account beliefs about political systems, the economy, parenting, etc. . .

Anyone interested in sharing your conversion stories?

Anyone want to throw out some definitions of what makes a belief system successful or not? What makes it "work" for a person or not? Are there any universals that one could expect to see in the life of a person who holds beliefs that "work"? (This is a very subjective question. I'm not looking for a one-size-fits-all authoritative answer.)


I'll post some of my own reflections a bit later. . . Now that the snack mentioned in the previous entry has settled, I need to get to work on applied spirituality rather than theory.

I completed -- and then deleted -- a Q&A meme last night. One of the questions stays with me, however: Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?

No, I don't. Not on a grand, spiritual scale. I believe that some things are caused by a higher power, or a subtle purpose, but that most things are the result of mundane cause and effect. I don't believe that there are intentional "reasons" in the mind of a divine being behind disease, accidents, acts of nature, and/or most human accomplishments or follies.

I believe that, in general, humanity would rather believe in angry, vengeful deities who may or may not be propitiated, or who have a benevolent but obscure plan for everything and everyone, than facing the alternative: that the universe is a very big, very dangerous place, where anything can happen -- sometimes for the best, but often for the worst.

When faced with tragedy, it's easier to cope with the pain if you can believe it happened for a reason, possibly even a good one. "God called him/her home," is much more soothing than "This was a random, meaningless accident. There's no good reason why my loved one isn't here anymore." Or "God sent this sickness to help me grow and to learn to trust him more" rather than "We don't know what causes this painful, often fatal disease. You lost the lottery of chance."

I do believe that the Divine can help us transcend tragedy, can inspire growth, faith, courage, even heroism in the face of terrible things. But that doesn't mean that the tragedy was caused in order to have those effects. Likewise, I don't believe that the Divine is personally responsible for any and all good fortune or success.

The only reasons behind hurricanes, earthquakes, avalanches, and disease are the laws of nature -- including the natural consequences of human actions in a material world. The only reasons behind acts of terrorism and other violence are human fear, greed, and hatred. God does not set up these things like chess moves or patterns of dominoes to teach us lessons.

Are there exceptions? Almost certainly. (I try to avoid putting Deity into absolute boxes.) I've had experiences where I believe that there was divine influence. But I don't believe that it's everywhere or always.

A couple of weeks ago, amqu responded to my Old Time Religion post with several challenging questions. My spiritual path has a lot of ambiguity in it, and when faced with her very good but hard-to-answer questions, the Queen of Swords went into a panic. After all, if I couldn’t answer them all, immediately, in a compelling manner that would convince her that my faith and my reason were sound, there was something wrong with me and my path, right?!?!

When we rational types get irrational, we go all the way.

It took me several days to get up my courage to re-read her questions. And I still couldn’t answer them quickly. It took a conversation with both my spiritual director and my priestess teacher to talk myself around to the point of seeing her questions as a valuable opportunity to clarify certain topics in my own mind, and accept that fact that due to the differences in our beliefs, it’s entirely possible that the answers that work for me might not be valid for her. And that’s okay. Neither amqu nor I have ever asked or expected the other to change her beliefs because they are different from our own.

So, after a two week delay, here are my answers to her questions.

Quotes from my original entry are in italics. amqu’s questions are in bold. My answers are in plain type.

Feel free to jump in and join the discussion.

( Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves )

One of my friends recently posted an excerpt from Anne Lamott, in which Lamott tells the story of being powerfully touched and transformed by the story of Abraham and Isaac. In that story of Abraham's blind faith in and obediance to God, his willingness to kill his only son if that's what God wanted, and God's proving himself trustworthy by providing a lamb at the last minute, she experienced grace, and a conviction that God was real and could be trusted.

In composing my response to that post, I found myself writing with unexpected conviction and intensity, and wanted to share it here:

I have heard and read this story all my life, and my own spiritual director has a powerful connection to it, not quite the same as Lamott, but one which inspires and gives him hope.

When I was little, I accepted it the way I accepted all Bible stories: that it was about a good and loving God who sometimes had mysterious purposes. I no longer buy that. I don't like stories of a God who "tests faith" in this way. Abraham had already done so much to demonstrate his faith. Why could this possibly have been necessary?

If 'God' spoke to me one day and said that he wanted me to kill my daughter, I would stake my soul and my eternal future on my NO.

I contrast this story with my own experience of hearing the voice of God in an orphanage in Tijuana, where I had found myself in unlikely service, after accepting and following a compulsion I did not understand. The Voice told me that I was there because God had seen the need of these children for love, and brought me there to meet that need, and then given me the physical resources to go far beyond what I thought myself capable. In the years after my existential crisis, it was the memory of that Voice, and that attention to and care for "the least of these" that convinced me there was a God and that God was worthy of worship.

Please understand that I in no way criticize anyone who finds grace in this difficult story of Abraham. God speaks to all of us in different ways.

But for me, this story now speaks of how far I have come from my childhood faith, both in my understanding of God, and in my growth as a Mother, a role I struggled against for a very long time.

It's 9:18pm, and it's almost my bedtime, but I just came home from a great class session, and am too fired up to go to sleep just yet.

In stark contrast to my current experience with my Swedenborgian class, my "Christian Anthropology" class is three hours of lively lecture and discussion led by a Catholic priest/theologian who is both highly intelligent and possessed of a great sense of humor, even where his own faith is concerned. I'm not just intellectual stimulated by this class, I have FUN.

Tonight's discussion was about Karl Rahner's theology of grace, followed by a discussion of original sin (it's not what most people think -- not where Rahner is concerned, anyway). It would have been a highly enjoyable session anyway, but it turns out that Rahner is very Swedenborgian in his thought. Like Swedenborg, he believes that our day-to-day choices shape who we are. After death, God does not judge us. We choose heaven or hell based on who our choices have made us and where we are going to be most comfortable.

Also like Swedenborg, Rahner believes that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus introduce a special kind of salvic grace to the world and human existence -- but a person does not have to believe anything about Jesus, or even know about him, in order to participate in that salvation. An individual can be open to the work of the Divine Spirit, and choose to act in the world with compassion, justice, truth, etc., and form a self who naturally becomes closer and closer to God. "Correct doctrine" can help this process, but there will not be a doctrinal quiz given at the pearly gates.

Catholicism is the last place I expected to find this kind of liberal (to my way of thinking) theology -- but I've had to revise some of my biases about Catholicism since starting this class. Like any other religious community, it has a range of beliefs. I've been pleasantly surprised -- and a bit humbled by my own broad-brushed negative judgement of the denomination. There is still a *lot* that I disagree with, but there's more there I can relate to and learn from than I had expected.

What's funny is that my professor has never heard of Swedenborg, so I'm a bit of an enigma to him. I'm looking forward to presenting him with an introductory volume of Swedenborgian theology.