As someone who grew up in a religion that I no longer ascribe to, I often find myself checking in regarding what I believe in now.
When I was in the grips of religion, belief felt weaponized. It was something to declare confidently in prayer around family and peers. It was something to bare boldly and assuredly in testimony meetings in front of a large congregation. Yet, for me, in my own private prayers, I begged for help and understanding as I wasn’t actually sure that I believed and I so desperately wanted to.
Even after I left the church, a part of me continued to flounder and search for something solid to believe in. While that journey has been long, and full of swings from one extreme to the other, I continue to feel myself land in a more stable, spacious and realistic place regarding what my existential beliefs are.
I sat with this contemplation a couple of days ago and put pen to paper to capture what began flowing through and out of me….
I believe in this moment
I believe that if I practice being fully present, humble, compassionate and open to what is unfolding right here and right now, that I have everything that I need to relate, to connect, to grow, to be nourished by wonder, love and awe, and to continually discover and uncover the depths and simplicity of presence.
I believe that we, as nature, are innately intelligent. And this intelligence prospers and appears as miraculous when there is a critical mass of safety signals in the external and/or internal environment.
I believe we are intricately connected, like mycelium, and are both individuals having a unique experience AND part of a greater whole that is inseparable.
I believe in the power and complexity of paradox, and that black and white thinking is misleading, dangerously close minded, and the source of the majority of existential suffering in the world.
That’s what I believe for now. And I believe that it will continue to change and evolve.
I leave you with the inspiring words of Ursula Goodenough from her book The Sacred Depths of Nature
“To assign attributes to mystery is to disenchant it, to take away its luminance…
Mystery, generates wonder, and wonder generates awe.
The gasp can terrify, or the gasp can emancipate.
As I allow myself to experience, cosmic and quantum mystery, I join the saints, and the visionaries in their experience of what they called the divine, and I pulse with the spirit…
Life can be explained by its underlying chemistry, just as chemistry can be explained by its underlying physics. But the life that emerges from the underlying chemistry of biomolecules is something more than the collection of molecules.Emergence. Something more from nothing but.
And so I once again revert to my covenant with Mystery, and respond to the emergence of Life not with a search for its Design or Purpose but instead with outrageous celebration that it occurred at all. I take the concept of miracle and use it not as a manifestation of divine intervention but as the astonishing property of emergence.”
xoxox