growing pains
Some weird stuff is going on with me spiritually. Things are starting to make sense. As a child I was loosely raised Christian. Dad was Catholic, mom was Methodist. We went to church regularly, did vacation bible school, participated in pageants. But it wasn’t serious, we weren’t devout. By the time I was in middle school, we didn’t go anymore. I would often have “discussions” with my devout Catholic grandmother on how things just didn’t make sense to me. But one thing was always clear: DO NOT SIN. If you sin your bad. If you’re bad, you go to hell. Eternal damnation if you had sex with Joey frat boy after drinking and doing drugs all night-doomed. I’ve also heard you can go to purgatory if your not baptized. But, don’t worry, if you do 15 Hail Mary’s and give all your sins to Jesus, your absolved. Wait, what? I know that this is where my feelings of shame came in, I was obviously morally bankrupt if I sinned so much. And, lets not talk about all of the people who have been killed in the name of organized religion, how many people use it as an excuse to hate. These ideals just don’t suit my present way of thinking.
Now, I’m not anti-religion. I feel that whatever gives you comfort and understanding of your world and life, whatever brings you peace is what matters. And, if you feel supported and loved in your religion, then you are in the right place. I’m happy for people that find that peace. But, I can’t do it. My life has been a constant string of tragedies that have taken away any idea of an all-loving, all-forgiving, morally superior being. People who have lived a life like mine either rely heavily on their prescribed faith, or abandon it completely. Why would any creator create a life like mine? To be punished? That seems like the Catholic answer.
I do know one thing-there is something bigger than us, and I have truly no idea what that is. But, the galaxy is infinite, there’s no way we were the only living beings that exist. What else is out there is truly a mystery, but I’ve started to come to my own conclusions. See if you can follow with me here: I think that our time on earth is basically our starting out point in the infinite. Our soul is put here to learn pain, negativity, and empathy so that we are able to understand the wonderfulness that is after this. We can’t understand the sweet without the sour. And if we don’t learn our lesson, we get reincarnated. Maybe earth is “hell”, and if we don’t learn to be kind, loving people before we die, we just get sent back. I just can’t think of any other reason to explain a child suffering. What could my 5 year old son possibly have done to deserve a death sentence. Nothing. He suffered, he understood the sour, now he’s enjoying the sweet. And wherever he is, is real and connected to us. Sometimes, Ian is talking to me clear as day, or pressing on my chest like he’s laying there, it is absolutely not my imagination. What do they call it in “A Wrinkle in Time” when you can go between dimensions? A tesseract? Or when you can visit other dimensions-astral planing? These seem more plausible to me then earning your way to heaven. Maybe heaven is just what we created to make sense of these phenomenon, when we can’t make sense of the infinite universe,
Religion makes me feel lesser-than. Feeling like a sinner means feeling like a failure. And I don’t want to feel that way anymore. This is why I feel like I’m going through spiritual growing pains. I’ve been indoctrinated one way for so long, that it hurts to change beliefs. Everything I thought made one morally corrupt just isn’t the case. That heroin addict you judge might be on their last life, they might get to “heaven” faster then you. The prostitute working her way to make ends meet-she’s getting there next too. They are suffering, and through suffering comes true empathy. And isn’t that really the goal in life?