my “religious beliefs”
The James Webb Space Telescope peering into the early days of our Universe
One of the things I remember well from my Catholic days is this call for all to be saints. It looks like something from it stayed with me - I now think we are all called to be mystics.
But let’s start at the beginning.
I was born in an overwhelmingly Catholic country and raised on the milk of religious certainty and spiritual superiority.
I became a pious and orthodox devotee, ready to subordinate my life to the Catholic God and religious values. Think I might exaggerate? How about this: I spent a few years in a seminar, almost became a priest, and did my master’s degree in theology as a side effect of all that.
Fast forward a couple of decades, I see that religion has just been one of the many artefacts that I acquired and then cultivated.
I also learned that there is no escape from worshipping. In his immortal 2005 commencement speech, David Foster Wallace said: “in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship”.
One thing is certain – I no longer worship monotheistic “Gods”. I have gazillions of reasons for this but they can reduce themselves to one world really – science (ok, there is a moral aspect too). Our understanding of the world and of ourselves was a little different thousands of years ago when many religions had been forming. And so, religions like Christianity have been making the most amusing assumptions about things like the importance and role of humans. We were put at the centre of it all (a.k.a. the Creation) and were “told by God” to subdue the world and have dominion over it. It is an exceedingly narrow human perspective on reality while we are just a tiny and absolutely insignificant spec on a timeline of existence.
I’ll give a stage to Nietzsche here:
“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of ‘world history’―yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.”
And I’ll top it up with Arthur Balfour:
"The energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. 'Imperishable monuments' and 'immortal deeds,' death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as if they had not been. Nor will anything that is, be better or worse for all that the labor, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless ages to effect."
Feeling slightly overwhelmed with these quotes? I sure am every time I read them. And yet, they are among my favourite quotes ever. They recalibrate me and, well, they put religious claims about humans in a slightly different light.
And here’s one more reason why I diverge big time from the Christian outlook on life (this applies to a couple of other mainstream religions too). Christianity runs on the sad assumption that there is something wrong with what is, and it needs to be fixed. Remember the original sin and a need for us to be saved by God? (hence comes the Christ who brings salvation). There is an abundance of passages in the Bible where Jesus says things like: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (I didn’t expect I’ll be quoting the Bible again :). It is also an unfortunate example of the “us and them” mentality which is the source of all the conflicts we have been inflicting, big and small. And it’s very dis-empowering because we are not creators of our world but mere recipients/victims of circumstances.
It is damn regrettable that the foundations of many religions are built on divisions and resentment towards reality, a non-acceptance, and an urge to fix existence. They are not built on abundance, joy, gratitude, amazement, appreciation, interdependence, oneness, and wholeness.
Allow me to share my “religious beliefs”:
The Universe (the reality as we know it) is beautiful and sacred and needs no fixing.
Conflicts, dissonances, paradoxes, ambiguities, and contradictions only exist in our little funny minds.
I acknowledge all the suffering in my life and in the lives of others and yet, I want to embrace joy and playfulness, and cultivate them as my moral obligation.
The question “What is the meaning of life” is like asking: “Why I should drink when I’m thirsty”. The answer is hidden in the plain side - in the question. Life and being alive don’t need any additional meaning. It’s a cosmic, unfathomable gift to exist, to have life inside us and to be conscious of it. To receive a super sophisticated vehicle – our body – which is the most amazing R&D project ever– a result of millions of years of tweaking and improving. It’s extraordinary to have this body at our disposal and feel the life flowing through it. To walk. To yawn. It’s breathtaking to be experiencing all the beauty around me through all my senses. To dance with the being. How this cannot be enough and needs any additional meaning? Is there anything bigger, more important than the miracle of something existing/being alive?
This is why I don't need any special god-type sacredness - everything around me is a miracle already as it is. You will tell me that Jesus loves me? Well, everything loves me, and I’m learning to love it back. We are surrounded by an enchanting and unknowable display of love. And when I look beneath the surface, I see that it has no division or boundaries.
I don’t know how it is possible that anything exists at all. I don’t know what could lay beneath what we can comprehend with our little minds and whether there are realities that are more fundamental than time and space. If there is one Universe or an infinite number of them or whatever. And I accept that I don’t know, and I absolutely don’t want to substitute the Mystery with cheap, man-made stories.
This post flows with “Free Design - I Found Love”
