Thinking about God (part one)
Lately, I've been thinking about God/god/deities/divinity/spiritualism.
Now I (think I) know what you're thinking: either
1) she's going back to religion
2) she's so depressed she's getting crazy (and going back to religion), or
3) she's got too much time on her hands
Well, number three may be true, but this really isn't about religion, and (at least at this point) it isn't much about my personal spirituality either.
It is about thinking.
See, (hang in there with me for a little while), I took a Salsa dance lesson a few weeks back. Here's what I noticed: while my feet seem more than willing to step forward, backward, and to each side on measured beats, my brain likes to tell me that I look ridiculous, that I have no rhythm, and that I am useless as a dancer. In voicing my frustration at not being able to get out of my head to my yoga teacher, she informed me that I have the same problem in yoga classes. So, I've been watching myself in yoga classes, and she is right. Those voices in my head don't let up: I am in constant critique of myself. Ironically, what I love about yoga is the few seconds that I can escape those thoughts (albeit only a few seconds). Then I shared both of these insights with my therapist. (Can you see what is coming here?) That's right, I can't "go with the flow" or be "zen" in my life either because I am trapped in my head: overworking every problem and every detail and every angle in my head. I'm trapped, yet again in the thinking and I can't get to the doing.
Now, you ask. Where does God come in?
I have two stories from childhood that I have always used to explain my relationship to religion. One: In second grade, I went to vacation bible school with a friend who convinced me to stay after the opening service to talk with the preacher and get saved. The preacher asked those who felt the calling of God in their lives to stay. I didn't feel anything, but my friend said that she did it every year, so I did it too. That was when I was "saved."
Two: As an early teenager (maybe thirteen), my mother's charismatic church expected those that where saved to get "baptised with the holy ghost" where the gift of speaking in tongues was given. After another long invocation from the minister, my mother finally convinced me to go before the church to receive this gift. I stood as they prayed over me, hands on my back and shoulders, the preacher praying in "unknown tongues" for me to receive the holy ghost. This lasted too many minutes for me. Others had gotten their gift immediately, and I waited and waited, but nothing came. The preacher kept praying more and more forcefully, and I realized that until I played along with this, until I pretended to speak these tongues, the whole church would stand staring at me wondering what I had done wrong. I began to speak gibberish and the crowd roared. I was free to go back to my seat. But there was no holy ghost that I could find in me.
Two frauds: That has been my experience of religious conversions. It is all make believe. And that many people believe these hoaxes has always bothered me.
Now, to my point.
Faith is something I don't have: easiness, serenity, or zen. Those all seem to be similar somehow. Is it possible that it is precisely because God (or whatever this is) is not to be thought about? Is god/God in the doing? Is this somehow connected to my previous post on creativity?
part two tomorrow
Now I (think I) know what you're thinking: either
1) she's going back to religion
2) she's so depressed she's getting crazy (and going back to religion), or
3) she's got too much time on her hands
Well, number three may be true, but this really isn't about religion, and (at least at this point) it isn't much about my personal spirituality either.
It is about thinking.
See, (hang in there with me for a little while), I took a Salsa dance lesson a few weeks back. Here's what I noticed: while my feet seem more than willing to step forward, backward, and to each side on measured beats, my brain likes to tell me that I look ridiculous, that I have no rhythm, and that I am useless as a dancer. In voicing my frustration at not being able to get out of my head to my yoga teacher, she informed me that I have the same problem in yoga classes. So, I've been watching myself in yoga classes, and she is right. Those voices in my head don't let up: I am in constant critique of myself. Ironically, what I love about yoga is the few seconds that I can escape those thoughts (albeit only a few seconds). Then I shared both of these insights with my therapist. (Can you see what is coming here?) That's right, I can't "go with the flow" or be "zen" in my life either because I am trapped in my head: overworking every problem and every detail and every angle in my head. I'm trapped, yet again in the thinking and I can't get to the doing.
Now, you ask. Where does God come in?
I have two stories from childhood that I have always used to explain my relationship to religion. One: In second grade, I went to vacation bible school with a friend who convinced me to stay after the opening service to talk with the preacher and get saved. The preacher asked those who felt the calling of God in their lives to stay. I didn't feel anything, but my friend said that she did it every year, so I did it too. That was when I was "saved."
Two: As an early teenager (maybe thirteen), my mother's charismatic church expected those that where saved to get "baptised with the holy ghost" where the gift of speaking in tongues was given. After another long invocation from the minister, my mother finally convinced me to go before the church to receive this gift. I stood as they prayed over me, hands on my back and shoulders, the preacher praying in "unknown tongues" for me to receive the holy ghost. This lasted too many minutes for me. Others had gotten their gift immediately, and I waited and waited, but nothing came. The preacher kept praying more and more forcefully, and I realized that until I played along with this, until I pretended to speak these tongues, the whole church would stand staring at me wondering what I had done wrong. I began to speak gibberish and the crowd roared. I was free to go back to my seat. But there was no holy ghost that I could find in me.
Two frauds: That has been my experience of religious conversions. It is all make believe. And that many people believe these hoaxes has always bothered me.
Now, to my point.
Faith is something I don't have: easiness, serenity, or zen. Those all seem to be similar somehow. Is it possible that it is precisely because God (or whatever this is) is not to be thought about? Is god/God in the doing? Is this somehow connected to my previous post on creativity?
part two tomorrow
posted by perrykat at
3:47 PM
3 Comments:
Much thinking to come on this. Love to talk about it over a red.
More later.
Too much, too late. Let me give it my best try.
Spent the evening at the local wine bar talking philosophy etc with the staff. Sharpening the point.
Here's the rub, in roughly the right order.
Am thinking: "doesn't everyone think about this stuff? No? Really?"
Then thinking, "quick say 'cannot say my line of thinking does not just lead to other more deeply problematic issue'. 'cannot say they are true.'" That's for the lawyers.
Interested in 2 books on religion, one skeptical "God is not great" and "The Faith Club" by a Muslim+a Jewish+ a Christian woman. Would be interesting dialectic to synthesize but not in a place to do it.
Now your stuff about dancing and yoga. You look ridiculous, you say. You treasure the escape. Your reference for the escape is an external personality of agency, God. You do not have personal experiences of that agency.
Neither do I. I share the primary struggle with how not to be self-obsessed.
My primary story of religious experience is being on the outside. Sort of being introduced to Santa Claus as a fiction, appreciating the sweetness of Yes Virginia believing, but then realizing that you cannot join the club unless you *really* believe in Santa. Seeing Santa as a metaphor for what is good in the world, and believing in that, having occasional strange experiences of that goodness.
What interests me in your exposition is the implied (?) juxtaposition of the self and the personal(ity) God. Your experience of the personal God is inauthentic, your experience of the self is insufficient.
My experience of the external doesn't take the form of the personal God. It is instead of the world, its patterns, its chaos, etc etc. I could embellish but the point is that the alternative to self for me is the play, the book, the bird, the traffic. If it is me vs society's construction of the Church's mascot, I will side with me. But me is too lonely. It is without inherent meaning. I have to get outside me for meaning.
Now to your last paragraph.
You don't have Faith. I wonder if I do. I wonder what faith means to you. You juxtapose Faith and serenity etc. If Faith presupposes an external personality with supernatural agency, it sounds like your peace is premised on accepting something you have only delegitimizing (?) experience of. I mean, so long as God is a thing to be found like an easter egg, and yet is missing, how can you have peace? That seems the problem.
Your question "is god/God in the doing?" is most interesting. It implies to me that, even if the secret to peace and serenity were action, there would still be some mapping of action onto a God concept.
You mention the creativity post. Looking again at it, I think, (while yearning for sleep) "action is needed to create, and you lose yourself in the action, though not permanently. Instead, you create a context for yourself in others. The self, without others, has no context and no meaning. Action establishes the context and meaning. Intense focus on self excludes others, excludes meaning, prevents actions. Focus on others drives action, meaning, connection. If God means something, it is the meaning of connection. Setting up an opposition of God as personality Him vs Me drive me into Me, blocks connections, misses the point."
Maybe that makes some sense after sunrise. We'll see.
You say, "If God means something, it is the meaning of connection. Setting up an opposition of God as personality Him vs Me drive me into Me, blocks connections, misses the point."
Yes. I agree. It does miss the point, and I think it is this disconnection that I have been running from most of my life. What I want is something to find ease in, and all the concepts of God that I know are quite far from that.
God is probably not the right concept to build on. Maybe serenity is a better one.
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