Whether by chance or by design, both Hazelden readings this morning focus on the difference between religion and spirituality, but with strong reminders that we still have to CHOOSE a Higher Power, and that we must develop the courage to discuss – even “profess faith in” — our God among skeptical crowds. I’m not always ready, and rarely feel comfortable, to make such public proclamations about how I define the God of my understanding, much less the precise and specific ways that I try to align behavior with faith.
Though I call my HP “God,” I am no longer someone who can define their God “in specific ways,” as today’s Touchstones reading describes it. The older I get, the more I read, and, definitely, the more I pray, the more I understand God in “very general and unspecific ways:” I no longer envision that I am speaking to a male or female figure, don’t imagine a voice or presence emanating from the environment, and have stopped trying to reconcile the images of God that I learned as a child with other representations in the Bible, the Koran, in Buddhist scriptures, or in other spiritual works that I explore. I don’t see any positive purpose for me in debating “is or isn’t” with non-believers or arguing about the “rightness” or “wrongness” of different Christian denominations, world religions, or the history of civilizations in conflict. I am praying to “the force that that through the green fuse drives the flower,” as Dylan Thomas wrote, and the hand that created and turns the stars, and that whatever animates the best in people or discourages the worst. But I’ve simply lost the ability, today, to describe my God in deeper detail than that.
I agree with Touchstones that “we often see that our Higher Power was with us as a helpful force before we knew it,” and I am very comfortable professing those direct, specific experiences. In my mind, there is no question that something other than coincidence hand-held me to where I am today – a recovering, married, father of three young men, able to earn material comfort, and to maintain service work that I find purposeful. I had to wander through the woods for a long time to get here, and have to live with many sad memories, regret some cruel and selfish actions, and have many living amends still owed, but I have always been graced with an escape hatch, a ladder up from despair, and been gifted with many deep, critical friendships along the way. In my life, the teacher always arrives when I’m open and ready, usually when I’m beaten, and desperate, and ready to give-up, and I just can’t credit those mentors and coaches to “luck,” or “happenstance.” I can easily look back on my life and acknowledge the active presence of a Power Greater Than Me, directing my thoughts and actions through a combination of genetics, learned knowledge, habitual behavior, and whimsy.
I am also reminded this morning, by Hazelden’s 24 Hours a Day, that sometimes we must “let the fashions and customs of the world go by if it means that God’s plans are thereby forwarded.” Nothing is more fashionable today than hot-take culture, whereby we ridicule those who think differently than us, who experience the world differently, and who need more or less of things – including religion, spirituality, data and science – than we do. Today, I am expressing curiosity for beliefs, and values, different than my own, and I am reconciled to an understanding that my own knowledge is shallow. I also accept that my beliefs, and expressed opinions, will sometimes be disapproved or derided, but that I must risk that rejection. I am at peace with conversation, respectful argument, and the radical honesty of expression that creates understanding, empathy and harmony. I am going to give my knowledge, so that I can receive your knowledge.
Today I Ask: What Do You Believe, and Why?
