Tag Archives: Higher Power

A Godless Future: What does the next generation believe in?

DSC_1156“Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.” –Emmett F. Fields

Hello friend,

Last Sunday, I sat in the audience at a small church with a mix of pride, joy, and utter fascination. It was “Religious Education Sunday,” the day when all of the kids from all the different age groups in the congregation get to “perform” for the adult members, a way to highlight something they had learned in their classes during the year. I beamed and giggled as my son and the other kindergarteners sang “This Little Light of Mine.” I had taught the second and third grade unit, so I watched, with equal measures of anxiety and pride, their re-enactment of a story from Buddha’s life. Next came the third and fourth graders, then the middle schoolers, and on up, each group taking their turn at the front of the chapel, with all eyes on them.

Finally, it was the seniors’ turn. They were to go up, one at a time—there were only three of them—and read their personal “Faith Statement,” or credo, which they had clearly spent much of the year working on (and obviously their whole lives developing). Of course, I love to get inside someone’s head and heart and see what they are all about, so I was truly eager to hear what each had come to believe about this supremely important topic.

After all, I was raised Catholic. The essence of my religious education was being told, “THIS IS WHAT YOU BELIEVE! DON’T QUESTION IT. EVER!!!” I never fathomed the possibility of delivering my own, personally crafted statement of my spiritual beliefs to my entire church as I finished high school.

Thus, I was absolutely riveted when the first young man–quite an impressive 18-year-old, the kind you would like to hire for that Summer job and trust that he would be on-time and not playing on his phone all day–got up, thanked the congregation for their years of support, and began, “I believe in Science.” He proceeded to give a thoughtfully composed, confidently delivered speech that detailed his beliefs and the reasons behind them. And the crux of his belief system: There is no God. I was totally fascinated. Not just at his belief (or disbelief, rather), but also at the setting he was proclaiming it confidently in.

{A quick aside here for some context. After staying away from any sort of official house of worship for about 18 years, I somewhat begrudgingly allowed my wife to talk me into trying out a Unitarian Universalist (UU)fellowship several months ago. If I had to sum up my take on the UU principles, it would go something like this: As long as you are welcoming and respectful to everyone, open to all perspectives and backgrounds, and want to work for social justice and peace in our world, you are welcome here. I think of it more as a moral group rather than an actual religion. My sense is that, at least in my particular fellowship, there are probably a lot of people who left more the larger, organized religions earlier in life, turned off by their rigidity, dogma, or narrow scope. I would guess that the vast majority of members believe in a Higher Power of some sort, but certainly not all of them. But all are welcome to share their authentic selves. I have stuck it out this far for two main reasons: 1) I wanted my kids to hear another voice besides mine and my wife’s regarding moral and spiritual issues; and 2) I wanted us to do more of the service work that we often say we would like to do but rarely find the time for, figuring that connecting to a group that can facilitate opportunities to help would make it more likely (a.k.a. laziness on my part). Okay, back to the story….}

As I joined the applause for the charming young man’s speech, I thought to myself, “Wow! An atheist! And confident enough at 18 to proclaim his well-considered beliefs to a group of adults (mostly the gray-haired variety). What a rarity!” Then the second young man climbed to the podium and proceeded to inform us that he is also an atheist. His statement was different and equally well measured, but the conclusion was the same: “I believe that God does not exist.” My head started spinning. “WHAT ARE THE ODDS?!?” I was shocked! When the final young lady stepped up, full of personality and charisma—she later closed the service with a fantastically soulful version of Sam Cooke’s classic “A Change Is Gonna Come” with her acoustic guitar—I was sure she would tell us that her spiritual journey had led her to believe in a God like the one I grew up with. Wrong! She, too, had decided that she was an atheist. I was floored! Again, I just kept thinking, “What are the odds?” Three intelligent, friendly, socially-competent 18-year-olds who had put serious time and effort into this process had all decided that God did not exist.

As I applauded all three of them for their graduation and the self-awareness gained during this process of creating a personal Faith Statement—indeed, I think it is a good exercise for all of us–my mind kept returning to the same questions. It had been snagged and couldn’t free itself. Over and over: “Is atheism the new thing? Just how high is the percentage of true atheists—or even agnostics—among young adults today? How did I miss this?” I was flabbergasted. Not by the atheism itself—while I believe in a Higher Power, I can see the difficulty in proving it—but by the thought that this would be an enormously important shift, if indeed it was a shift, in our culture. But is it? How could I know?

I remembered that a few weeks ago, one of my co-workers, who raises her kids in the Catholic Church, had mentioned to me that her oldest son, a college freshman, is an atheist. So, after stewing on this puzzle for a couple of days, I asked her about it. She told me that her son’s roommate at school—randomly assigned—also turned out to be an atheist. She said he has friends with all sorts of different spiritual beliefs, but she was clear that he was definitely not the only atheist among them. It began to sink in that the three kids at my fellowship might be more than a statistical aberration. Atheism could be on its way to becoming the norm for the younger generations. How did this happen?

When I was a kid growing up in North Dakota, I didn’t know of any atheists. In fact, so entrenched was I in doing what I was told that even the thought of an atheist scared me. It was a taboo. You might read of an atheist in a book in the same hushed tone that you would a Satanist, as though there were a shroud of Evil around it. It was dangerous. I laugh now when I think of the reactions I have received when telling people that I am not a Christian. The first thing that usually gets verbalized is, “So, you don’t believe in God??” That is quite a leap, of course, and not necessarily a logical one. But I have certainly had the sense that, at least in some company, I have been the one viewed as “dangerous.” However, I am not an atheist.

I’ve met some confirmed atheists in the long years since then and didn’t think much about it. The few times I had, I wondered why I thought it so spooky when I was a kid. Philosophically, I have come to understand that one does not need a God in order to live a happy and morally-upstanding existence. Basically, the stigma in my mind has faded and morphed into more of a fascination (I want to know everything about everyone with different beliefs than me). But still, I didn’t know I was missing the beginnings of a potential religious revolution. My mind is blown!

How about you? What thoughts and feelings come up in you when you consider the possibility of an increasingly atheistic population? Open up your journal and try to make sense of your reactions to this possible trend. I say “possible,” because although the prospects for almost every fringe belief system, hobby, and interest seem to have increased in our Information Age, I had rarely considered that atheism might be on a real surge before this week. Also, with religion not being one of those topics to safely bring up in social situations, this rise might not be recent (or even real). Do you think it is? Have you had experiences of meeting or learning about young atheists in recent years? Let’s assume, at least for the moment, that this increase is really occurring. Do you see it as a passing fad or something with staying power? If it is for real, how does that sit with you? Are you alarmed? Unfazed? Pleased? My co-worker whose son is an atheist thinks the cause of the rise is these kids seeing all of the problems that the major religions have either directly caused or made worse, leaving the kids thinking, “This is not the way to go.” Is there some merit to that argument? The kids I listened to last Sunday talked a lot about Science and preferring things that could be tested and proven. Is that a good argument? With “1” being Totally Uncertain and “100” being Totally Certain, what is your degree of certainty regarding the existence of a Higher Power? If your number is pretty high, how tolerant and accepting are you of people who still believe but are much more uncertain about it? What is your reaction in learning that people you know are atheists? How would you like your children (real or imaginary) to come to their beliefs? Do you see the parents’ role more in terms of instilling their own beliefs in their children, or more as exposing their children to the range of beliefs and allowing the children to gravitate toward their own beliefs? Is it enough to try to teach children good morals and behavior, or should a religion be attached, too? How do you think you would feel if your child gave you his Faith Statement, and it concluded that he was an atheist? Would you try to change his mind? At what point do we just let them decide these things on their own? If atheism became the norm for the upcoming generations, how do you think that would change our everyday world? Would it be, on the whole, a benefit or a detriment? I think that, whether or not this surge in atheism is real or not, these are important questions for us to consider. In either case, leave me a reply and let me know: What does the younger generation believe in? 

Believe in YOU,

William

P.S. If this letter made you look into yourself a little deeper or from a different angle, I hope you will share it with your circle. We should be mirrors for each other. Bless you.

This Life & The Afterlife: Torn Between The Two

“IMG_2404To die, to sleep – To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub, For in this sleep of death what dreams may come….” –William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Hello friend,

Here’s the deal: I am so desperately eager to get to the next life, but I also simply cannot let go of this one any time soon. Huh? How can I reconcile that? Allow me to explain.

I believe that the state of being that comes after this life is going to be absolutely amazing. Not just amazing, though; because we throw around the term “amazing” all the time about pretty much anything we like: a gym class, our new yogurt, shoes, etc. What comes after our physical death, I believe, will be beyond amazing. Indescribably peaceful, blissful, and aware of our complete oneness with the Divine Source.

Now, let me be clear: I don’t claim to know what exactly comes next (and I am suspicious of anyone who does). I believe that we are all completely divine, that we existed prior to our appearance in this human form, and that we will continue to exist in another form(s?) when we are done with these bodies. I am attracted to many of the ideas of Buddhism, and reincarnation is one that I have played with. I am open to that possibility but not necessarily sold on it. I also don’t really buy the traditional vision of a Heaven with pearly gates and all of our friends and relatives who look exactly like they do now, a view that I think is common. I definitely don’t believe in any sort of Hell in the afterlife. But I definitely do believe in continuous existence, that we are not just going to cease entirely when our hearts stop beating.

I guess if you pinned me down and made me pick a description using our limited human ideas, I would say that I believe that when we die, we become fully aware of our pure divinity again. We lift the veil that we wear throughout our human journey, the one that allows us to believe that we are somehow separate from God and separate from each other. Unbound by our physical form, we join the stream of pure consciousness of All That Is. We are pure Love, and, more importantly, we know it. To me, that is who we are now, but we simply don’t recognize it, aren’t aware of it, and so we continue to act out of ignorance throughout our time on Earth.

You could probably say that is the foundation of my spiritual beliefs: that we are all One—all God, if you like—and thus, the end is not in doubt.

So, needless to say, I am pretty darn excited to get to the end of this ignorance and onto that plane of Bliss and Conscious Union with The All. {I don’t mind if you translate that to “Heaven” and “God” as long as you feel what I mean.} Indeed, I would love to be there now. I can’t wait!!!

BUT…..

You cannot take me now! No way, I need to be here forever! Well, not exactly forever. Just until I reach a wise, old age when my kids have successfully navigated their way into middle adulthood (and hey, grandkids would be cool, too!). I need to be here for them. I guess it is two reasons, really. First, I want them to have their Dad to help shepherd and support them through the trials of this world. I wish that for any kid, and certainly for my own. And secondly/selfishly, I simply don’t want to miss a thing! Seriously. These kids have completely rocked my world, and I am addicted to my life with them. I sometimes have daydreams about being diagnosed with a terminal illness with only a short time to go, and I get to the point of actually sobbing when I think about saying goodbye to them and how many things I would miss out on. It crushes me. I have gotten to the point where I am absolutely clinging to this earthly existence.

I was never this way before I started this family way of life. In fact, before my wife and kids came along, when I lived a solitary (by choice) life, focused intensely on my spirituality and connectedness to the Divine, I felt both blissful and completely ready for death. Eager, even. Often, in my happiest, most fulfilled moments—on the top of a mountain or in the middle of a clear stream—I would hear myself saying aloud, “You can have me any time, God!” I absolutely meant it.

But a funny thing happens when you get invested in particular Earthlings. Suddenly, you don’t want to leave this place anymore. Like the Hollywood stories of people who had given up on life until they meet someone to love, my wife and kids somehow made me want to stay here (a lot!). They didn’t’ make me happier or more at peace. No, they just made me feel responsible and desirous (desperate?) of squeezing out every possible moment with them. They took me out of the next world that I was reaching for and grounded me fully in this one. They made me think Heaven can wait.

So, what gives? Was I crazy then to want so much to move on to the afterlife, or is my mind warped now in thinking that something from this life—even my darling little angels—could be worthy of making me prefer this life to the next one? I don’t know if there is a right answer to this.

I guess the way I am approaching it, I see myself as an infinite being, so the next life is always out there and won’t be any shorter for my stay on this floating rock called Earth. So, despite its uncertainties and cruelties, I am going to take this portion of the ride for as long as it will have me. I know I am wearing the veil of ignorance and disconnect while here, and while that is frustrating at times, I just need to return to my foundational belief occasionally to remind myself: We are all One, and thus, the end is not in doubt. So, I will make the best of this veiled part of the journey, soaking up the magical moments with my family on this beautiful planet. And then, when my day comes—though they may have to drag me kicking and screaming—I will remove the veil and float blissfully away, fully aware of my divine and infinite nature. One moment at a time….

How about you? Are you more clinging to this life or longing for the next one, or, like me, a little bit of both? Open up your journal and take a deep dive into your beliefs about God and the nature of reality. I must admit, I found it quite challenging but wonderfully invigorating to try to put into words how I envision the afterlife. So please, make the effort on this one. I suppose the underlying question with this topic is: do you believe in a Higher Power? What do you call it? Is that Higher Power judging how you are doing in this lifetime in order to give you a sentence for the afterlife? Do you believe there is some sort of afterlife? How would you describe what you think happens to us after we die? Is it different for everyone? What do you think of concepts like Hell or Purgatory or Limbo? How about reincarnation? Pearly gates? Choirs of angels? Do you think you get to “meet” a personal God? A life review? Judgment? Is what comes next dependent upon what happens here in this existence? Do you think that what you get then depends upon what you believe now (i.e. different results for Atheists, Hindus, Christians, etc.)? How much of your view of the afterlife is dictated by a religion? Were you born into that religion, or did you adopt it when you were old enough to decide for yourself, or somewhere in between? How sure are you that your belief in the afterlife is correct? Does your belief make you want to get to the next world as soon as possible, or would you prefer to stick around here for as long as you are able? What are the things in this world that make you want to stay? Do we owe it to ourselves/our loved ones/our Higher Power to stay here as long as we can? Is that just part of the deal of being born? To what degree are you clinging to this world? Is that more due to what you have here—loved ones, etc.—or more due to your uncertainty about what awaits you when you die? Is it normal to not want to die but also to very much want what comes after death? Leave me a reply and let me know: Which life do you want more: this one or the next one?

Embrace it All,

William

P.S. If this one made you dig into your core beliefs and your psyche the way it did for me—I found this topic highly engaging—pass it on. Self-awareness is a gift!

Taking a Moment to Say “Thanks!” Instead of “Please???”

IMG_2404“We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.” –Neal A. Maxwell

Hello friend,

“DEAR GOD, I WANNA TAKE A MINUTE, NOT TO ASK FOR ANYTHING FROM YOU, BUT SIMPLY TO SAY THANK YOU FOR ALL I HAVE. –SHARE IF YOU ARE THANKFUL”

This was the first meme that popped up on my Facebook Home page this morning when I was laying in bed. For whatever reason, I instantly felt guilty. I suppose I am no different than most folks who have grown up with the concept—whether through our parents and grandparents, or, more likely, just too much television and movies—of God as wish-granter. We pray for our team to win, for our friends to travel safely, for our child to make the team, and for ourselves to get that new job. We ask our Higher Power for that stuff. We usually ask nicely, too, starting most requests with “Please God….” Even if we didn’t grow up in a very religious family, the God-as-wish-granter theme permeates our culture. If we really, really want something, we ask God. We call it prayer. 

I don’t pray a lot. Well, not in the traditional, down-on-my-knees-at-bedtime kind of praying. It is probably because my concept of God is a little different than the usual one (see my post “Who Is God?” from December 2015). I believe deeply in God as All There Is, including you and me. I believe that all of the Universe is Divine. This doesn’t mean that I am not allowed to pray; it just changes the context of the conversation a bit. You might even say it makes a prayer out of everything I think, say, or do. When I have my occasional direct words aimed at God as seemingly something outside of me—what most folks would recognize as my nearest thing to traditional prayer—it definitely is all about gratitude. I don’t make direct requests. I give direct thanks, usually for a simple but beautiful moment where the Divine just seems to permeate every bit of the moment. More often than not, it is when I am either observing Nature’s beauty or watching my kids be the miraculous little creatures that they are. Sometimes it simply overwhelms my heart, and I just whisper, “Thanks, God.” Those are my conversations with God.

Even though traditional prayer is a rarity for me, because of my worldview that holds everything as fully God, it may be reasonable to conclude from that that all of my thoughts, words, and deeds are a form of communication with God. When I hear of a religious extremist’s story of withholding medical treatment from their suffering child, preferring instead to “leave it in God’s hands,” I usually find myself shouting at the screen, “But YOU are God, and so is the DOCTOR and the MEDICINE! Please pray, of course, but DO SOMETHING! To not try to save your child is actually taking it out of God’s hands, not the other way around! Your hands are God’s hands!!!” I know that is not how everyone sees things, but my view shapes my perceptions.

With that said, and if my thoughts and actions are my form of communication with God, then I am totally guilty of making my prayers into Wish Lists rather than Thank You Notes. Almost always I am in STRIVING mode. I am thinking about or doing something that is about me striving for something else. Something more. Something better. I am trying to get out of this situation and into one that speaks more truly to who I am and what my dreams are. I can be pretty single-minded about it, too. The translation of this—given my concept of God—is essentially that I am not grateful for where I am and I want to get out of here. In regular prayer terms: “Please God, rescue me and bring me the type of success I desire!”

That is the source of the quick jolt of guilt I received when I read that Facebook post this morning. It hits me on a parallel to the way it hits other people, even though we pray differently. I am just as guilty as making my prayer a request rather than a “Thank You.” Seeing that more clearly now is a great reminder for me to become more about the NOW. It means that I can, even in the midst of my striving for better and more, become more fully present and aware of all the wonderful gifts in my life as I now know it. I think of the health of my family, which has been really, amazingly good throughout my life (knocking on my desk right now!). I think of my convenient work schedule and the corresponding opportunity to spend so much time with my kids. I think of my ability to share my words with you and others all over the world. I think of all the freedoms I have because I live in America, and all the comforts I enjoy—clean water, safety, a warm home of my own, to name a few—as a middle-class member of this society. These are all things well worthy of my deep and abiding gratitude, and not just once in a while. To fail to become more aware of these fabulous gifts—and thus more consistently grateful—would be a show of immense disrespect to my beautiful life and the magnificence of the God I believe in.

It doesn’t have to mean that I must stop striving to improve my life and the world around me, however. Even in my haste to improve myself and my station, I can still acknowledge and honor the wonder of the gifts I am presently living with. The concepts of Striving and Gratitude do not have to be mutually exclusive. They don’t have to compete with each other. So, I can take time to step out of my actions—the bulk of which are Striving things—to say “THANK YOU,” which is a Being thing. I can be both grateful and ambitious. I can say prayers of thanks and do acts of ambition. Oh yeah, and I should probably take a few moments to just sit and BE. To stop thinking and striving. To just ENJOY. That sounds like it would be okay, too. I am pretty sure God is in that silence, too. I will meet Her there.

How about you? How do you pray? Open up your journal and think about your relationship with your Higher Power. What is the tone of most of your communication? Are you usually there to ask or to thank? What do you ask for? Big, general things, like world peace or an end to hunger? Or smaller, specific things, like your blind date to go well or the weather to be nice? Do you feel guilty asking for things for yourself? If everything you do is actually a prayer about how you want your world to be, what is your lifestyle saying about what you desire the most? Are your actions more grounded in the present, or are you like me and often focused on building your someday? How often do you consciously thank your Higher Power, for either your life in general or a specific stroke of good fortune? Do you believe in a God that picks and chooses which prayers to answer, which wishes to grant? Do you think that showing more gratitude would make God more likely to answer your prayers? On a spectrum from All Requests to All Thanks, where do you land regarding your conversations with God? Leave me a reply and let me know: What are you grateful for today?  

Personify abundance in all you do,

William