For a very long time now I have had qualms with what I am if I must come to terms with religion… I generally cop-out and say that I’m Spiritual. That I have God, but no religion. If Christians probe further I admit that I believe Jesus existed. I believe humanity capable of his cruel, cruel, death, and, for as long as I can remember–the guilt for his death has weighed upon me.
As a child I was told that Jesus died for my sins, and that singular truth always made a deep and painful sense to me. I am aware that my skin and everything inside of me can go one of two ways. I know that the darkest place a person, and beyond the person: a culture, can go: was to torture, hang and display for a moment frozen forevermore in all of our minds. We have all seen the cross.
I have issues with The Bible, but value it equally among the books in my book wall… In fact, its parables are surpass to most.
I wasn’t raised in one church. I was Baptized Catholic, sent through various Christian rebirths… my exes grandfather is an Episcopal Minister. I have visited many places of worship. None felt like home, none felt genuine and in lack of pretension–two things I need to thrive.
Once, a dear friend roped me into a Harvest Crusade: the New Age Christ rock movement touring the nations ballparks annually. Jesus Christ Superstar on Redbull gives you wings. I swear. We’ll call her Andy. Andy and her family got me there, then tried to force me onto the Angels Stadium baseball field to be saved in the loud, tense arena. This was one of few times in my life that I physically broke down into tears and simultaneously ran away from something. I wont bore you to tears trying to figure out why, either.
I research things that I want to understand. Words like Christ, transubstantiation, transfiguration. I turn to poetry and have in the last few years been repulsed by a great deal of fiction. I research because I like to know what I’m served before I consume of it.
I am placing this here for safe-keeping. For some soul to stumble upon and eat of it and let it swim around inside of him, or her. I guess I’m tired of being smacked for thinking differently and the aggression results in a reaction of some creative sort. I leave this here for anybody with a magnet strong enough to find this to hear that faith isn’t wrapped up simply in tithing and pearls, judgement, and ritual.
Ritual is simply finding a way to nurture, feed and protect the source of imagination and constant act of creation and dissemination taking place in all our minds. Ritual can also be used as a system of control. We have to be the watchmen of our eternal soul.
I prove my faith time and again by that conflicting voice which challenges my inner-most self, in arguments and battles every minute of every day, arguments like: which color looks best… fruit loops or fruit bowl… lover or fling?
Faith for me is holding my dreams and the sheer miracle of vision close at night so I know that I am not a hollow shell filled with conflict and loud whispering wind. To know that I am not alone. Faith is the gift of color and light and the good things we have experienced like music and belly laughter all safe and sound in the piggybank of our mind.
God is a nice word for all of that, but nothing to browbeat anyone over if the word doesn’t fit like a glove, there are other words.
I have God because God is an ideal target to meditate my laser-beam hopes and dreams upon. You could take the title, I’d still have my source. The thing to think upon, might be better put into a question: what is yours?
I guess I just feel like saying that God isn’t simply a man in a suit, assigning gold tin-foil stars to his most favoritest pupils. God is creation, energy, animation, magic, the embodiment of everything. God is consumption. Yes, God is here, and boy is God huge.
Cheers.
