Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

[ailbhe]

I don't think I ever really believed in God in the usual way. I have, at various times in my life, tried very hard to, including putting a lot of effort into prayer and ritual at different times and in different ways.

I used to kneel up on my bed at night praying that bad things wouldn't happen to me. It didn't work. Sometimes I would wake on my knees on my upper bunk, stiff and cold.

I made my first communion but didn't believe that transubstantiation stuff. I made my confirmation but couldn't follow the ceremony and was worried afterwards that I'd not done it properly because I had no idea what was going on (my mother assured me that intent was what mattered, in this case).

I read The Colour Purple in my teens and was greatly affected by it; like Celie I feel sure that there is some joy in purple, in clouds and songs and awesome pants. That makes gut-level sense to me.

I read Richard Bach's Illusions and tied it to S'il n'existait pas le Dieu il faut necessaire de l'inventer (forgive spelling, I didn't look it up) and something fervent and enthralling a Hare Krishna man said to me once on O'Connell Street - we were talking about the free book, inner peace, and the nature of God, and he grabbed my arm and his face lit with joy and he explained to me about God being all and everything, everything being God, all matter and all that is not matter; that all lights are the sun and all streams are the ocean, and all thoughts one great Consciousness leading to wholly human and entirely divine Love. I wish I could remember his exact words, but he and I got very excited there on the grey footpath outside the GPO in dreary weather one wintry Dublin evening.

puritybrown introduced me to the word panentheism, which is a word I like.

And all this stewed around for years, curled up with my love of the sung mass in Irish, Fauré's Requiem, and Christmas carols in half a dozen languages (Christmas carols in one language seems very odd to me, as though it's a more insular festival than I feel it needs to be).

And I spent a while taking my baseline from the witches in Pratchett - I didn't see the need to go around believing in Gods; they could exist perfectly well without me and what I did with my life was far more important.

And now?

Now I think that I can answer "do you believe in god?" only if "yes" doesn't mean someone thinks I believe in a personality or an external force. I use it as shorthand for all that is good and wonderful in the world, all the impulses to kindness and examples of wonder or beauty. I make my own God, every day, from what I have to hand; days when I make a lot of God are better than days when I don't. I believe in the intrinsic value of practically everything, especially people, and in the awe-inspiring mystery of the universe, which just gets more awe-inspiring the more we demystify it.

And it might be the fever talking, but I just got a vision of Marie Curie and Brian Cox in angel robes with big beards, so I think I need to stop now.

Comments

[sfred]

Now I think that I can answer "do you believe in
god ?" only if "yes " doesn 't mean someone thinks
I believe in a personality or an external force . I
use it as shorthand for all that is good and
wonderful in the world , all the impulses to
kindness and examples of wonder or beauty . I
make my own God , every day , from what I have
to hand; days when I make a lot of God are
better than days when I don 't . I believe in the
intrinsic value of practically everything ,
especially people , and in the awe - inspiring
mystery of the universe, which just gets more
awe - inspiring the more we demystify it .

Yes, this this this.

Thank you for writing this.

[ailbhe]

Coo, and you're a Real Quaker and all!

[sfred]

Luckily for me, you don't have to know anything or be wise or anything like that to be a Quaker.

[serene]

Yes on the awe-inspiring. No supernatural needed in order for the world to feel astoundingly amazingly beautiful.

I like "panentheism", too. I wouldn't say it accurately describes my beliefs, but panentheists are likely to understand my sense of the numinous, so it is good.

I felt... not happier, but spiritually "safer" when I knew there was a god and he was looking after me. It took some time for me to be okay with the loss of that safety. I do know that wanting something to be true doesn't make it true, and that knowing the truth is more important to me in the long run than feeling safe, but it was a hard shift to make for me, emotionally.

[ailbhe]

I tried really hard to believe in that kind of God, mainly by begging him to rescue me.

[gool_duck]

I read this, and I liked this, and I like you.

[aquaeri]

Your position makes a lot of sense to me and is quite beautiful; I don't think you have anything you need to be quiet about here.

[rosefox]

What you believe is very, very similar to what I believe.

You're very brave to put this out there.

[ailbhe]

It took a while to decide, but I've been wanting to do it for a while. Had to jump in.

[songster.livejournal.com]

This sounds pretty similar to something I put up on my LJ way back a while. Essentially I would say that while I don't believe in God, I do believe in a secular version of what could loosely be termed "holiness". And, just as Death (the anthropomorphic personification) can be a useful tool to help us contextualise and understand death, so God can be a useful tool to help us attain holiness - so long as we always remember that God is a personification, not a person.

I'm told by some that this is quite close to Quaker beliefs. Is it possible to be an atheist Quaker?

[ailbhe]

I think I am one, except I don't think of myself as atheist. We certainly attend Meeting and the people there think of me as a Quaker (Attender, not Member). And I have a book all about atheist Quakerism right here.

[ailbhe]

http://songster.livejournal.com/80022.html This, in fact.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

"I make my own God, everyday, from what I have to hand" is so beautifully put it makes my eyes tingle.

[cherade9.livejournal.com]

I agree. Beautifully put.

[ailbhe]

I'm glad you like it.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Wow. Your Hare Krishna experience makes me sit up and take notice.

Otherwise -- Like Browngirl, I love the "I make my own God, every day, from what I have to hand" phrase. And it encapsulates a lot of how I think of things/feel them.

Also, yes to many-languaged Christmas Carols, says the Unitarian Universalist.

[ailbhe]

Well, he started out with "Would you like a free book?" which is always a good hook...

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I admit the truth of this.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Normally, when someone asks me, "do you believe in God?" I answer with something like, "not the way you mean it." But I think I would have to answer you with, "yes, I think so, the way you mean it."

It sounds like what I was raised with, in Japanese.

In English, I gloss it as "the Ineffable" or "the Divine", and I mean something which is the spark that makes things live, the thing which makes stuff materially present, the thing which makes thought, and beauty, and joy. (And all the emptinesses and opposites without which those things would not have positive form.)

"I make my own God, everyday, from what I have to hand"

*happysigh* You do so often have a beautiful way with words.

[ailbhe]

Effable!

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Hmm..."they're not incoherent handflail, it's meaningful content-rich hand gestures!"

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

I've thought this before, though not sure I've expressed it directly to you; I think that you are amazing and that your children are very lucky.

Not sure I like the idea of lovely lovely Brian with a beard :P

[ailbhe]

I think it was the fever talking. It was pretty alarming. This kind of beard, btw: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxv6l552uM1qz8tj3.jpg

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

I don't think the beard is really going to work for me. But I'm entirely in agreement with the rest!

[ailbhe]

"work"?

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

In terms of appreciating the more physical aspects of lovely lovely Brian's many talents :D

[ailbhe]

Oh, right. I don't think the beard works for those of us for whom he doesn't do much anyway, either.

[cabbagemedley.livejournal.com]

Mm. I think I'm with you on at least the broader aspects of this. Having been brought up to be thoroughly irreligious, I've struggled to articulate my thoughts to myself - I don't believe in gods as entities existing outside our heads, I don't do worship, but I do feel reverence and I know the sacred when I see it (and I see it all the time).

God/gods as shorthand is pretty much what I do.

[ailbhe]

I think I am rethinking worship. I want to find out more of what it means in a Quaker context.

[rachel cotton (from livejournal.com)]

Well you know I'm a Buddhist so not much more to say really. Except what you might not have known is that just after I'd met my Lama, I went away and had a dream based on crossing the bridge to the gnarly ground. For me it was a huge deal, I wore my rucksack and the weight of it pulled me back, but I was determined to follow the Lama. I looked back and realised the stream was tiny, the Lama had trodden over it effortlessly, I can still remember the weight and pulling sensation of that rucksack! I followed him for ages, only to end up in a university (roughly based on Manchester), we went to a library at the very centre of it and he just completely disappeared. From a Buddhist perspective, the following and the disappearing are very good things.

Spiritually inspired by reading Pratchett - hooray :)

Oh - and I know very senior in Ian's tradition Buddhist monks who burst into tears on hearing vespers being sung. If you ask Ian does he believe in god, he will simply ask you what you think god is which I like. I always say "No I am an aetheist" (Buddhists technically are) but actually Ian's answer is more meaningful.

[ailbhe]

I know people who believe what I do who call themselves atheists.

[merryhouse.livejournal.com]

I kind of agree with you on the Christmas carols, except that if I didn't know what they meant I'd find it very difficult.

Do In dulci jubilo and Il est ne count? They're the ones I can think of off the top of my head...