Why I've given up an earlier God...
and my spiritual practice, too.
All 100+ posts of The Reluctant Tarot Reader are paywall free to read. To support my work, become a paid subscriber or give a one time donation.
If you asked about my spiritual practice today, I’d be honest and say that I don’t have one. Not really.
Do walks count? Good books? Great sleep? An overall appreciation of beauty?
If so, then yes.
Oh, but how I used to practice! Pair the past me with any devoted Christian and I could’ve gone toe-to-toe in prayer, verse memorization, multiple weekly services, retreats, modest clothing, Bible quizzes, an unquestioned virginity, gospel team, proselytizing, altar calls, every hit Christian song (love me some Amy Grant; Straight Ahead, bb), Greek/Latin courses and an overall longing for God.
That’s what you do in church. Long for an invisible God. Long for the day that Jesus returns. Join your people in the country of self-negation. Pray to God and hope He hears your request for redemption.
Wait, wait, wait. Still waiting. He, He, He. Was the God of fundamentalist faith laughing at me all along?
It’s hard to remember that self — but she’s roams around in me. That glorious Christian perfectionist. Sometimes she misses a rote discipline because if done enough, there will come a time where she actually feels God.
That’s the thing. I didn’t — beyond the angsty, emotional teenager, desperate to fit in, desperate to belong and desperate to leave my crazy house. Christianity was as much about pleasing my parents as it was about salvation. You didn’t live in that family without being a born-againer.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, a revival is a powerfully seductive way to fulfill that need for the Holy Spirit, at least until the feeling disappears. They call it coming off the mountaintop.
Those days are long gone, as I realized in Asbury last week. It’s just me — with me.
So if I have any spiritual discipline, it’s loving myself more each day. As we often say in yoga, one millimeter at a time.
Most former friends from Christian college have dropped their extreme faith, as I’ve heard through different channels. They’ve switched to mystic Catholicism, Buddhism, atheism or a flexible spirituality. This doesn’t surprise me. It takes a lot of energy to be so rigid. It’s an unsatisfying exhaustion for anyone who has the courage to take a deeper look at their interior world. If they choose to remain rigid, guaranteed they will have a gay/different child or family member who will challenge them.
That doesn’t mean fundamentalist Christians have to change. Far be it for me to insist. You do you. Perhaps that’s what they want to experience in this lifetime — as long as they stay in their lane. Been there, done that with the best of them.
I’m heartened by the fact that kids are too conscious these days to accept fundamentalist and mainline churches. They are too wise, too plugged in for a reductive God, especially young women. That why churches in America are fading — or will quickly change their tune because they know where their bread is buttered.
I left young and early without taking a church membership card, much to the distress of my father. In his belief system, you must be evangelical Presbyterian to make the cut. He’d write letters saying how he grieved in his soul that I turned away from the Lord and that before he died, he hoped I’d turn back. I finally had to tell him to back off and stop inquiring about my relationship with God, which was none of his business.
He finally did — but still waits at the edge of death. If I were him, I’d focus more on failures as a parent/husband and quickly correct them.
But I’m not him — and he’s not me.
The closest I come to a daily “practice” is reading The Course in Miracles and am almost done with the workbook — yet find myself impatiently correcting the text. He becomes She. Son becomes Daughter or Child. Mother is included with Father.
My sibling once asked, after they read my memoirs, why I kept writing She or Goddess for God.
Because I’m a woman and sick of reading He.
Needless to say, they didn’t get it — and would struggle if the Bible was edited to She. Imagine if Jesus was re-written as a woman.
That’s not God! they would say. God is a HE! That’s how they wrote it back in the day!
Yah, no. The 1/2 gendered God — minus a mother, minus a partner, minus women — days are over.
I still talk to something, all day long. Flowers, birds, trees. I say Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you for protecting me. I am enough. I am worthy. What a gorgeous day. So beautiful. Thank you for this life.
Is it God? Can’t say — but it makes me happy.
So it might seem strange that I advise clients — when appropriate — to connect to their version of the Divine. Perhaps I haven’t gotten far from a proselytizing self? :) One client said years ago, I wanted to thank you for our sessions. I didn’t consider myself a spiritual person at all but now I’m really into meditation and groups that discuss spirituality. It’s made such a difference in my life.
The spiritual wanderer in me bows to the same in them.
Another client paused when I advised them to command their world to what they desire.
Rather than say, I hope or wish that comes — say, my home will come by the fall. I will find my perfect house by fall or sooner.
I don’t want to be too demanding with God, they replied. Like I don’t appreciate it.
You’re not. Command your world, then say thank you.
I understood their hesitation. No one wants to disappointed by unanswered prayer.
So what about faith, Raven? Don’t you believe anything?
Much to my dismay after I was kicked out of the church, I couldn’t shake “God” but had to find a way to kill it, rather than myself. That Being was a construct of people who wanted to control me and it took years to be interested in “God” again. Even now, I’m still in the discovery of another Being behind the façade. My guess is that it doesn’t end until I understand the Oneness of things.
I consider myself a woman of deep, unending faith. Faith that there is more than just this life — and that I will travel on, conscious and curious. If not, then it’s been fun!
The power is you. Call it God, if you like. Now and at the end of your life, it’s you — with you. We can hope to meet our version of God, guides, angels and friends — but there will always be you, walking by your side.