WITOAG, or: What I Think of As God, and a few other thoughts

Another slightly edited old post, from my old blog, originally posted August 10, 2009, followed up with a bit of new stuff.  Since we haven't discussed religion/spirituality much recently, for those of you who are new, I should explain that I was raised Evangelical/Southern Baptist, and my dad was raised German Baptist, which may not mean anything to you but trust me, it explains a lot. I still attend church, but at a progressive denomination, and my theology is a bit-- well, sketchy compared to how I was raised.
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Before I go off on my next idea, here's a bit of housekeeping, a defining of terms. I want to be able to use the word "God," but of course, when I use that word it may mean something entirely different to me than it means to you. It certainly means something different to me now than it did when I blithely told a young Jewish man I met at an icebreaker in college how happy I was that God was my best friend. (Yes, I really did do that and it gives me shudders down to my toes to think about it now.)

In my twenties, after I left my conservative childhood faith behind, I didn’t use the word “God” at all for a long time—I avoided it even in my head when I was just thinking. What the heck does it mean? I’ve said this before, but is “God” some kind of sentient, all-knowing, all-seeing Being in the Sky? Is it a cluster of ideas shared by a community that takes on a life of its own in the collective mind of the group? Is it something individual to each one of us? Is God, as the new age folks used to tell me, within me? And what the heck would that mean? Is God a Higher Self, a Divine Source, a Deity Within?

I don’t know. I really, really don’t know. Further, I don't think it's possible to know. But I sort of tentatively decided about a year ago (edited Aug 2018: that would be about ten years ago now) that I had been thinking about this long enough that I could go back to using the word God to describe a certain force in my life for which I have no other name. I don’t really understand what that force is, (ouch, I just remembered Star Wars and The Force and that’s not what I mean, but how else am I going to say it?) but it is convenient to have a name for it whatever it is, and God works as well as anything else and also conveniently fits into a number of other ideas.

It also enables me to have conversations with other believers without endlessly saying “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Although in that instance, it may unfortunately give them the idea that I agree with them about the nature of God when in fact I probably don’t. How could I, since I don’t really know what God is?

The point that I’m so convolutedly trying to make here is that when I use the word “God,” what I really mean is “What-I-think-of-as-God.” It is a concept in my head that may not have any objective existence at all. But it would be entirely tiresome to type that out every time I want to refer to “What-I-think-of-as-God.” So, that’s all I'm saying. Just don’t take the word “God” too literally-- here, or anywhere else, come to think of it. And I'm still capitalizing it. I considered not doing that, but it just didn't seem right.

And furthermore..... I still pray. Even though I'm not sure that What-I-think-of-as-God hears me, or is able to intervene in my life in any concrete way. And the weird thing is, I usually get some kind of answer. Not a lightning bolt from the sky, or voice booming over my car stereo or even a message on a billboard like Steve Martin in L.A. Story. But if I'm asking a question, or seeking a solution to a problem, or honestly trying to figure something out, usually within a day or two, I have an answer. Or at least a next step. I read something, or hear a random remark, or there's a line in movie, and it occurs to me-- there it is.

There are (at least) two ways you could interpret this: you could say I'm taking something I would have figured out anyway and calling it an answer to prayer, and to that I can only say: you're right. That could be exactly what's happening. Or from the opposite perspective, you could say, well, doesn't that prove that God exists and you should believe in Him/Her/It, and once again, all I can say is, yes, I can see how you would think that, but so far for me, that's not what has happened.

So I still pray. And I still function as if God exists. And all of this blathering on and on was just so that I could tell you that I prayed this week for help with breaking through a particular self-defeating belief that feels set in stone in my head. And the answer I got back was: be willing to give it up.

And that's something to think about.

p.s. this endless cogitating on all side of an issue and being to see a bunch of different ways of looking at a problem while remaining uncommitted to any of them is, I've learned, a normal feature for an Enneagram Five. Just in case you were wondering.

TBT: Suffering and the daily grind

(This is an edited version of a post that first appeared in January, 2008 in my previous blog.)

I was talking to a similarly-aged friend yesterday about getting things done. There are things that we have to do to keep the wheels turning, so to speak-- pay the bills, buy the groceries, prepare the food, do the landry, clean the kitchen--the things that keep our lives going, the things we do over and over again just because they need to be done. And then there are things that we do that feel like real accomplishments, like helping someone in need, or finishing a creative endeavour, or launching a new project.

It reminded me of this old post about suffering, and the way buddhists understand it. Suffering is an important concept in Buddhism, but one that took me a long time to understand. Maybe I still don't understand it very well.

At first reading, it seems so entirely different than the Christian understanding of suffering. In my Evangelical childhood, I was taught to see suffering as a means to an end. The New Testament epistle of James says quite bluntly: "Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials (ie, when you suffer), knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and endurance produces perfect results, that you may be full and complete, lacking in nothing."

In Christianity, suffering is something that happens to you--an illness, unemployment, loss of a friend or loved one. You pass through problems and "tribulations" so that the trivial and unimportant is burned away, and you become a better Christian, a better person. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, more or less.

So when I first started studying Buddhism and ran across the idea that "All is suffering" (a summary of the First Noble Truth), and that the point of Buddhism is to escape suffering, it made no sense to me. Why would you want to escape suffering? Suffering is part of life. You can't run from your problems. Suffering is what helps you grow up. If you run from suffering, you miss out on life, you are a baby.
I struggled with this misunderstanding for a long time. I spent the whole time I was reading the Dalai Lama's book on happiness arguing with him.

Finally one day last spring I GOT it. I was drying my hair, and feeling irritated that it was already time to get a haircut again. You get a haircut; it's too short for a week; then it's just right for a couple of weeks; then it's getting too long; then it's already time for a hair cut again.
It was like the proverbial lightbulb went on. Oh! I get it! The Buddhist idea of suffering is more about the endless cycle, the daily grind, the unending work of getting through life. You get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, clean up, go to bed, then the next day you do it all over again. It's all about the cycle, the endless cycle.

It's a classic East/West difference. I was trained to think of suffering as a linear thing, something that happens along the way that is a means to an end, a process that gets you to a goal-- the goal of being a better Christian. Your life is going along just fine, then some big problem hits, and you have to get through it. Then (if you're lucky) things go back to normal. Getting through the time of suffering helps you grow.

The Buddhist idea is about endless reiterations of the same things, the kinds of things my WASP brain would have considered background, white noise. In Christianity, suffering is big stuff--persecution, illness, losing your job. In Buddhism, suffering is just the grind, the stuff you have to do over and over to get through the day.

Like laundry. Laundry never ends. There is always more laundry to do at our house. Or cooking. Someone is always hungry. Or batteries. You charge them up, and then before you know it they have to be charged again.

But once I got that figured out, it seems that the attitude that you have toward suffering in both traditions is pretty similar. You don't run from it, you don't avoid it, you dive in. The Buddhist idea of "escape" from suffering isn't about running from your problems, it's about reincarnating at a higher level of existence where there is no suffering. But where Christianity emphasizes endurance, getting through it, Buddhism emphasizes staying open, not shutting down, while you are in the midst of suffering.

Pema Chodron says you try to stay soft, instead of closing up like a clenched fist. You let yourself experience your suffering fully. You grow up. What I had interpreted in Buddhism as wanting to run away from suffering is actually not attaching importance to suffering, not letting yourself get caught up in the daily soap opera of our lives.

Disclaimer: As always, my understanding of Buddhism is anything but expert. More experienced insights welcome.
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So, getting back to my conversation with my friend, when we accomplish something that has a different feeling than getting through the daily grind, does that help? I think a part of me believes that my self-worth lies in those accomplishments, in doing something that "makes a difference." But the problem with that is when I'm in a period of time when I'm not accomplishing anything except getting through the daily grind, what am I worth? I need something stronger than that, I think. Or maybe I need to jettison the idea that my self-worth lies in earning a place for myself, getting to a point where I feel like I "deserve" to be here.

Hmmmm. This is going off in an entirely different direction. Too much time in my head this week.

TBT: The Feel Bad post

This is the post from my old blog that has almost twice as many pageviews as any other post I've written. I edited it quite a bit to shorten it. Originally published January 2012. It's a bit of a rant so avoid if you're not in the mood to be ranted at.

TBT why I still go to church

This is a slightly edited version of the second half of this post. The first half was about what I believed back in 2005, this part is about why I still go to church, a different question. I used to think that since I had my own special relationship with God, I didn't really need church. Now I feel almost the opposite--church serves its own purpose in my life, regardless of how I'm feeling about God on any given day.

TBT: What I believed, ten years later

I wrote this back in 2005, when my blog was specifically about my religious beliefs. In some ways, nothing has changed, although I think I used to be more sincere. I might not word things quite the same now. Also, I've become a bit more conventional over time, a bit less afraid of letting myself follow a particular tradition. (AuntBeaN was my blog name in my old blog.)
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In Which Aunt BeaN Attempts to Make Sense of Various Things Which Are Too Big for a BeaN of Little Brain.

So the purported subject of this particular post is supposed to be what I believe now. And why I still go to church, and believe me, I'm not sure I have the answer to that one sometimes myself. I've been putting this off for ages because it's hard to figure out how to say some things, and also because it sounds so pompous and self-important to announce What I Believe, as if you are sure everyone wants to know. So I just want to say in advance that if this sounds pretentious, at least I know I sound pretentious and I feel bad about it. OK?

TBT: I have con-fi-dence in con-fi-dence alooooone

(for throwback Thursday, here is a slightly edited post from October 2011, when I had been through a huge, paralyzing crisis of confidence after going back to grad school in my late forties)

TBT: Lake Swimming

from July 2008, slightly edited.

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.... During the last bit of our vacation, Dean and the kids took off on a church youth trip while I stayed home. I spent several days at our favorite lake, relaxing and reading and watching the breeze move the leaves on the trees. It was great.

In the afternoons, it would get quite warm in the un-air conditioned cabin where I was staying. So after dinner the dog and I would walk down to the lake for a swim.

The reason this is my favorite lake is because the water is so clear and cold and deeply blue-green that you can see straight down to the bottom even at fifteen feet. It's not the kind of lake where you swim all afternoon.  No one stays in for long, it's way too cold, even in July. In fact, I don't get in at all unless it's really hot. But it was quite warm last week, and I swam every day.

I think it says a lot about one's personality how you do this-- do you plunge in off the end of the dock? start at the shore and wade in? run in and dive? My own approach is the wimpiest of them all, which is to slowly descend the ladder at the end of the dock, letting each body part get used to it before the next one gets wet.

But there is still a moment when you have to push away from the dock and plunge all the way in, and every time I do it, I cringe. I hate that bit. But then you're in, and the water is so .... bracing, refreshing, invigorating-- pick your term. It's so shockingly cold that you feel yourself come alive in response.

All the heat and dust and sweat dissolve away, and you just chill, in every sense of the word. I paddle around and try to find something, some place within myself that matches that deep, clear, blue-green stillness. It's worth the hated cringe moment, well worth it.

And then a minute and a half later, I pull myself out, shivering.

TBW: the zen-ish moment

Throwback Wednesday. Here is another old one, this one from February 2014. I do have a few new things to say, we'll get to that eventually. There will be one more old one tomorrow, when it actually will be Throwback Thursday. :-)

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Many years ago, I discovered what I think of as the travel mindset. Getting packed and ready to go may be a frantic mess, but once you get to the airport and get in line to check in, you let all the travel anxiety go. You just insert yourself into the travel system and let the system take care of you.

Like everybody, I have some travel horror stories to tell, like the time I got stuck in Salt Lake City for three days while trying to get back home from a weekend trip to California. But horror stories aside, for the most part, you get where you need to go. You just have to have a good book (or three) and some food (granola bars, bag of nuts, etc), and you're set. Well, if you're me, you also have to have dramamine, but you get the idea.

We live far enough away from a major airport that pretty much any time we fly, it takes a full day to get to wherever we're going. I used to dread the travel days, because TRAVEL STRESS. But now I look at them as a completely acceptable, valid excuse to sit and read all day, and how often do I get to do that? Over the years, this has worked out so well that now the travel days are one of my favorite parts of vacation.

(Of course it helps that I'm not travelling with toddlers anymore. Thank the saints and all the stars.)

I've discovered that something similar works at the post office. Not always, because standing in line at the post office is right up there with filing financial documents and having dental work done in my list of things I hate with irrational hatred. But usually I can just relax and stand in line and not worry about how long it's taking. Sometimes I even chat with complete and utter strangers (like many introverts, I find it easier to make small talk with strangers than with people I know).

I'm finding as I play with this idea that those moments of calm can occur anywhere, anytime. I think of it as zen calm, but since I've never seriously undertaken zen discipline, it may not be very close. Zen-ish, then. In the midst of traffic, waiting to pick up the kid at school, any time I'm in a situation that is out of my control, if I just give in to it, let go of the need to be in control, I can reach a sort of calm stillness. (I typed clam stillness first, which is different, but I bet clams live a pretty zen life.)

I've never experienced true enlightenment. When I think of capital-E Enlightenment, Elizabeth Gilchrist's phrase from Eat Pray Love comes to mind: she says she was "catapulted into the lap of God." Although I didn't care for that book, that phrase stuck in my head. A moment of perfect bliss, feeling like you are connected to everything and everything is connected to you, suffused by light and love-- I've never been there.

But sometimes these little pockets of zen-ish calm at an airport or in the post office lead to a kind of enlargement of consciousness, a feeling of accessing something beyond myself. Especially when I'm reading. And those moments .... oh, let's just say they make up for a lot of other moments of confusion, fear, anguish, etc.

I typed that much on Friday. Then last night I had one of those other moments where I get tangled up in a load of crap. I sent an e-mail to a family group and got back a bunch of very sneering, negative vibes--which may have been real, or may have been my projection of things I've felt in the past. I started to panic about my new class, which starts tonight. I had a strange experience at the grocery store yesterday afternoon which didn't really register at the time but came back full force.

So there I was about 12:30 a.m. last night, letting myself get buried under a load of self-contempt and self-criticism. It's a hell of a lot harder to try to find zen-ish calm under those circumstances than it is while you're reading a book in the Denver airport. But I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, so I tried. And it helped. I don't think I got to zen calm, but I got back to the point where I could go to sleep.

Work in progress.

TBT: meditate me home

A couple of weeks ago I told you I did a month-long yoga and meditation challenge. Then I proceeded to talk about yoga and didn't say anything about meditation.

So this week's topic was going to be meditation, but my brain doesn't seem to be functioning well enough today to write out what I want to say. hmmm. Maybe I should go meditate.

Anyway. I'm shamelessly modifying "Throwback Thursday" to "Throwback Tuesday" and starting the discussion with a (slightly edited) post from my old blog. I was originally drawn into meditation by reading Pema Chodron, a Buddhist teacher. I'm not really interested in the Buddhist aspect anymore, but this might still be a good place to start. Originally posted February 1, 2008.

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When I first came in contact with Buddhism, it wasn't very appealing to me. The books I read and the Buddhists I knew back then made it sound like it was all about discipline-- having your thoughts under perfect control, being cool and emotionally detached. Then a few years ago I ran across the writings of Pema Chodron and met some different Buddhists, and my impression began to change.

The heart of Buddhist practice is meditation. But my early understanding of what that meant was wrong. I thought the idea was to completely shut down all thought in your brain and try to merge with the Great Nothing. I had no idea exactly what that meant, it was just my impression of Buddhist meditation.

When I sit down to meditate now, my goal isn't to stop thinking, or even to control my thoughts. What I want is to create a little space between me and my thoughts, to watch them, see them go by-- the classic example is like watching clouds float across the sky. (I especially like that example when it is the night sky, with clouds floating by in front of a vast starry expanse.)

The point isn't to be in control of your thoughts, but to let go of the idea that they have intrinsic importance. They're just thoughts, electrical impulses that have no meaning outside what I give them.

I confess that I am terrible at this. Like many (most?) people, I have Busy Brain Syndrome. In the space of a minute, I might think about what we're having for dinner, who's picking up my son from school, what responsibilities are "real" vs. ones that I've just picked up out of guilt, where my daughter is going to college next year, whether or not I'm over-involved in her decision, is that load of laundry done, and if evil starts small, how am I participating?

And honestly, I have rarely managed to stop this flow of constant mental chatter for more than a minute or two, although I've spent far longer than that sitting and working on it. What I'm slowly learning to do is to just observe all that constant stream of thought. Just sit and watch it.

I sometimes imagine that I have a helmet on that completely covers my head. The helmet is covered with lights and dials and wires that are constantly blinking and humming and clicking, representing all my mental activity. Then I slip out of the helmet and leave it sitting there, flashing and humming and clicking away, all by itself. It is such an enormous relief.

According to the Buddhist teachers I've read in the last few years, the mind is innately spacious. If we step away from the claustrophobic stream of thoughts that makes us feel stressed and anxious, we can experience that spacious, open feeling. I've only rarely experienced this; I'm not the most disciplined of practitioners. But I've experienced it enough to continue to work at it.