Skeptical and Soulful

*Originally published on my Wordpress blog 11.23.2020

I have been thinking a lot about how and why I got to be this skeptical yet soulful person. By that I mean, I see myself as a person deeply moved by life. I have soul. I cry when music stuns me. Tears well up when someone I love is tender with me, when they see me and love me just as I am. I can be mesmerized by the ocean, captured by the majesty of mountains, and aware of and awed by the fragility of life around me. Life touches me deeply all the time. 

Here’s the odd thing. I claim a soul but I am unwilling to claim some power behind the soul. I don’t say there is no power. I say I don’t know.  I say I am unwilling to put my faith in some beyond-human force that supports human existence.  The sad thing to me is that I am unwilling to do that, but I wish I could. I think life would be lighter, more joyful, if I could trust someone, something. I think it would give me hope and a willingness to accept all the mysteries that I currently find unacceptable. 

How did I get to be such a skeptic? It doesn’t fit for who I am. I’m someone who likes people, who is pretty open to experiences and ideas, who is curious, and always up for learning something new. Why is it that I so vigorously question something that could enable me to more often stay out of the dark places?  I can be pensive and contemplative, with an imagination that sometimes runs to the dismal, and a mind that loves the twisting and turning of ideas, words, and images. I am someone who NEEDS to believe in some beyond-human force. I have danced with suicide. I know the deepest of dark places so why can’t I embrace the notion that there is some essence that, despite suggestions to the contrary, assures us that all will be well in the end?

Maybe part of the reason is this. I was raised in a deeply Catholic home. Everything revolved around the Church and that childhood produced a disillusioned and angry adult. Although I was intrigued with the ritual and mystery that surrounded the Church, the harsh experiences I had at school and home left me bereft of any sense of a spiritual connection. I could not then, and still can’t today, make sense of the focus on power and control that seemed to drive the Church. The god that was presented to me was authoritarian and frightening. It felt like the love that existed was handed out frugally and was always conditional.  I learned that I was flawed from the beginning (Original Sin).  Clearly, I could never do or be enough to impress this god.

But, wait. I am not that child anymore. I am free to wrap the Catholic Church up in a box and stick it on the top shelf of the closet. I know I will never be entirely unchained from the Church because it was nailed into my psyche as a child and you can’t unnail something like that.  But I do have enough intelligence and experience to separate myself from that upbringing and to separate the Catholic Church of my childhood with the world of spirituality. 

I gave all of this a lot of thought when I became a parent. I wanted to raise responsible, thoughtful, kind children but I did not want to raise Catholic children. I wanted to imbue our children with a sense of mystery and appreciation for this life. Their father and I consciously did this. We took them regularly to places in nature.  Our dinner prayer consisted of each member at the table offering thanks for something that mattered to them that evening. We wrote words and sent cards to people who mattered. We talked with our children about the tragedies that they were witness to (if only on the periphery) and we talked about how we could make a difference in the lives of others.  We shared written and spoken words and they saw that mama could cry at beautiful (and sad) moments. So, in our way, I think we did present our children with a spiritual life. I can present that same spiritual life to myself, I suppose. 

So nowadays I find myself mulling over all these things. I wonder about that beyond-human force that I referenced above. I see more how I got to this skeptical yet soulful place. I suspect that I got somewhat jaded when I went to college. The world opened up for me. I boldly stepped out there, discarding anything that made me feel less than or that suggested that I was not strong enough to tackle the world  on my own. When I left home and the Catholic Church at 19, I never came back. I moved through the rest of my life, taking care of details and being the strongest example of a human being that I knew how to be. I did not discard my tenderness nor my passion for the mystery and magic in life.  Now I have the time to reflect on that. 

I find myself most recently enthralled by Buddhism, captured by the thought of “connecting to the deep ocean of being that we all are.” I am liking that idea that there is something larger than we are and that we are all interconnected and interrelated. I doubt that I will ever fully turn over my life to Buddhism but I might spend more time reading and absorbing the impact of Buddhist thought on my life.  I find myself more open to lightness and to the unknown.  I like that Buddhism focuses on compassion and not on the worship of a god. I like that it acknowledges that everything changes and that life includes suffering but there are ways to manage that suffering. I like that it emphasize the Middle Way, not too much nor too little of anything. There are guidelines for living a good life and Buddhist practitioners are encouraged to think about things for themselves and accept what feels right to them. It doesn’t feel like a philosophy designed for sheep. 

I don’t know where this whole train of thought is taking me but I will say I like the direction I’m going. I always want to be curious, changing, growing, and learning and these days do feel like they are filled with all of that.  Sometimes, particularly in pandemic days, it feels as if nothing is changing but I know enough to know that change is sometimes about old ideas slowly eroding and new ideas slowly filling in the terrain. I’m ready for some new terrain.