The spirituality of insecurity

"When I sing the hymns of faith in Jesus' love, I am drawn by their intimacy, their allure, their poetry. But in the end, such faith is simply not available to me. I can't do it.  I lack the resources to render my capacity for love and my need to be loved to supernatural Beings. And so I have no choice but to pour these capacities and needs into earthly relationships, fragile and mortal and difficult as they often are."  (Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature)

I recognize this quandary.  There is that in us which reaches back through time to our mother's breast, even the womb, to a security and succor we have been hard-pressed to find and maintain in our adulthood.  The scriptures, saviors, and guardian angels of our traditions are no longer within reach of our needs for assurance.

I do envy those who say they've never turned to God for that assurance, or they've never needed heaven at all in any form.  If they're being honest they have a rugged sense of individuality I'm not likely to achieve.  But I wonder if they're also not missing out on something.  The constant tug between the draw of religion and the quest for the ever-elusive horizon of knowledge is itself character-forming.  Maybe the stalwart prefer to be rock-solid in their world view.  I prefer the soft crumbling loam of insecurity and growth.

Unfolding my return

I used to think I was the only one whose spiritual journey was helicoid in trajectory -- that is, circular and progressive at the same time, like a helix.  As it was, this corkscrewy tendency was just one item in the cornucopia of queerness that has accompanied me from early on.  Coming out as gay was the first, but least disorienting fruit to roll from the basket.  Going from meetinghouse to church, synagogue, temple, mosque, and gurdwara (a Sikh house of worship) came next, and proved to be as enervating as illuminating.  For nearly 45 years I've been promiscuously praying around, hoping that a clue would drop from heaven as to my true path.  Well, the clues have abounded, but they lacked sufficient special effect for me to notice.

I'm at a telling juncture in my life.  I'm approaching 60 and I've developed Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS).  My future is uncertain but certainly foreshortened.  When on a Facebook group I mentioned I had an incurable, progressive, terminal disease, one individual cavalierly replied: "We all have an incurable, progressive, terminal disease.  It's called life."  "So," I wrote back, "you would have no problem trading places?" As those of us know who are staring into the black hole of our mortality, you never really prepare for death, you play chicken with it until you run out of road.

The disease didn't create the aforementioned juncture, it just arrived at the same time.  What characterizes this time for me is my lack of caring whether my beliefs are internally consistent, pleasing to others, rational, or worthy of publishing.  So with this kaleidoscopic picture of life before me, I opt for a second coming-out -- this time as the pagan pantheist I've apparently always been.

Not for me the casting of spells, great rites of sex (the public, ritual kind that is), naive self-herbalizing (there is a place for herbs, but for Goddess' sake read up on the contraindications), astrology and divination (except for fun), and so on.  Not for me prayers to Gaia.  Not for me any hope of a conscious existence free from the round of birth and death.  What, you may ask, then?

Simply put I hope to leave the earth in somewhat better shape then it was left me: cleaner, more just and equitable; inclined to sustain rather than obsolesce its myriad lifeforms; less inclined towards religious and political fundamentalisms; compassionate and joyful, embracing life-affirming expressions of diversity.  This is no Sweet Jesus, you say, and you are right.  The truly tough thing is going to sleep knowing that there is no guardian angel circling your bed, and that if you wake in the morning it is just as much by chance as anything else.

But life is divine.  Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. (Abraham Joshua Heschel)  The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.  (Albert Schweitzer)  This juncture, this holy moment, is how my return is unfolding.