Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes that reason is you’ve made bad decisions. I think that people search for meaning in the external a lot, because they do not put faith in their own actions. They believe they have absolutely no power in a situation, but they actually did without realizing it because they weren’t reading the room correctly. That is the function of spirituality to me. It is sitting still and externalizing your thoughts so that you understand what went wrong in the room where it happened.
Some call it prayer and some call it meditation. Aada called it “running.” I do not care about the semantics and do not think that prayer gets answered when you assume the position vs. when you don’t. Just talk. Everything you know about God is probably wrong because any time you try to give God human characteristics, they fail.
For me, God is not a grandfather in the sky, but substrate for creation. All of the sacred books that have been written across religions are expressions and reflections of divinity. They all matter, and one is not superior to the other. Instead of saying, “I am a Christian, therefore I must surround myself with Christians,” I am saying, “I love religion. Surround me with religious people of all types and let me learn about the diaspora.” That is because every single thing points to the same idea.
It all begins with you. Make yourself a better person, and the world will heal as well. When Christians left Judaism and started a new sect, the idea of tikkun olam was shelved or mangled in some way. In Christianity, we have lots of faith-based groups but there is no singular focus on accountability and responsibility- that repairing yourself is repairing the world.
I am just as sorry for all that I did to Aada as I am devastated by what she did to me. It is not my responsibility to work on the “what she did to me” part. That is forgiven and past. My work to do is to repair myself afterward. I cannot take responsibility for her mistakes, but I can take responsibility for my own. It’s a laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why, being sorted by my case manager at Cognitive Behavioral Health and my very capable therapist. I am not working blind anymore, because I have scaffolding under me.
Life feels different when you realize that you control the outcome of everything you do. There is no victim mentality, there is just trying to explain to get your needs met and when people don’t listen, you walk away. It is my opinion that Jesus would vomit very hard at modern day Evangelism. Like, buckets.
He would be none too impressed with White Nationalism, either…… since he was also brown in a white-occupied state.
But that’s not my point, really. My point is that people are using religion for something more than it was ever meant to be… it has become a competition to recruit new members while skipping the fundamentals on your own. If you are looking for what Jesus actually calls us to do, you are better off looking at the community in which he lived and the values he held. That is why I remain a Christian, but attend synagogue whenever I can with my chosen family. I feel at home in the synagogue because Jesus would have loved Beth Sholom Temple.
I can still see him laughing at 16yo dressed in his Pink Pony Club costume for the Purim spiel.
I also think that everything happens for a reason, but it isn’t preordained. You find the reason when you are lost in prayer/meditation. I am not the kind of Christian that leans into omnipotence, the idea that God has the power to put things in motion. Again, God is a substrate, and religion is the stage where we act out those creative impulses. There is very much divine energy on earth, and we all tap into it in different ways. I just do not think it is a top-down energy. I think it is bottom up.
It’s you. It’s all you.
Stories That Are All True 