On Religion (revisited)

A revisitation of an essay I wrote in the days leading up to my father’s passing. 

"May you be grounded and rooted in love" Ephesians 3:17

Wheel (chakrasana) has always been one of my favorite poses. Pushing up into wheel is like pushing back into a happy childhood memory and feeling the warmth and peace of home wash over me. It is a powerful personal grounding pose and one I find myself returning to often as I am working through my father’s death in hospice care. 

In dealing with this loss, I find myself spending a lot of time on the root chakra, on grounding and stability, on examining my foundation. I am realizing more than ever the foundation of religion that has made me who I am and am feeling grateful for the place it held in my life.

Nowadays, the words I use to explain my spirituality are vast and varied. But, there was a point in my life that I was dogmatic in my beliefs as they pertained to organized religion. Until I was betrayed and hurt within that framework of religion. After renouncing the religion I was once a part of, a lot of times it felt really good (in a really bad way) to tell myself I was a victim of all of that. It felt like justice to be angry at the notion that others could feel peace inside of a religion that did not betray them in the same way it had betrayed me and those I love. However, this was never fair and never served me or my spiritual growth.

I've struggled for many years now, in matters of spirituality, to tell myself a different story and to try to learn from the religion of my past. I have been discovering that the teachings of the Jesus, whom I loved and fully devoted myself to in my teenage years, have not disappeared from my own heart. No, they have been "born again" into new incarnations of the love and understanding for which he advocated.

Teachers appear in all facets of life and so does the potential for growth. Jesus, in particular, was a wonderful, empathic, and kind teacher. He was a profit outside of any organized religion that followed his death. 

I feel, trust, and believe in love as the ultimate catalyst for healing. The universal connection of love can be explained using any of the major world religions or through the teachings of philosophers, prophets, and poets. It can also be experienced. I believe there are many paths back to the same place.   

Perhaps the ultimate lesson Jesus taught me was one of forgiveness. I can forgive life for not always being what I expected. I can forgive myself for my own resentments. And in forgiveness, I return to love. I know that I can never have peace when I hold resentment in my heart. 

There often comes a time when the need for serenity outweighs the desire for justice. A huge lesson I’ve been learning and re-learning in the past few months is that a just life was never promised to me. Letting go of the past and, along with it, expectations of a fair and just future will only empower me.

I am not entitled to anything to return to a place of peace and tranquility. That exists only and wholly in the present moment of this precious life I have been given.

The Lucky Ones

My mother always made a big deal of birthdays. A festive tablecloth came out on the birthdays of family members, vinyl white with rainbow streamers, balloons, and “Happy Birthdays” painted on. A glass cake tray sat on the table and presents overflowed even when we didn’t have a lot of money. Joy abounded on birthdays. I remember most my mother’s smile while she watched us open gifts. I now have minimalist leanings and often prefer not to receive gifts. But, my love of birthdays and the bliss that accompanies them still grows on that foundation of gifts and excitement originally given to me by my mother.

I find it a challenge to communicate the variety of gratitude my birthday brings without feeling like I’m sounding cliched. But, the thanksgiving is visceral. My body exudes recognition of ALIVENESS while also acknowledging each year, each moment is one closer to the end. It’s overwhelming and invigorating in a way that begs me savor every moment. A quote by the Biologist Richard Dawkins may help to explain:

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds…”

This year I took a day hike with my husband and sister to a section of the Appalachian Trail. We ate a picnic lunch at the summit, bouldered outside for the first time on some menacing rock stacks, and visited a nearby lake (you can see it in the above photo from the summit). They plucked four leaf clovers in the grass bordering the beach and we surveyed the new landscape the light created as the sun dipped behind the trees.

The entire day felt perfect. I felt overjoyed in a way I have not yet felt since moving back to my home state and experiencing the loss of my mother-in-law. The complex battles I have been fighting with anxiety, grief, and depression in the wake of the losses of her friendship/motherhood and the safe home my husband and I created in Oregon have been some of the most challenging of my life. But, as we drove back home with the western sky ablaze behind us, I listened to the words of Rebecca Solnit drift through the car as she spoke of hope in the dark. And, for a moment, I felt such a desire to hold on, to preserve the satisfaction and wildness I gathered from the hike.

Instead… and with great joy… I let it go.