Wednesday, August 3, 2016

On a Personal, Omnipotent God

In December of 2004 the Indian Ocean experienced a traumatic and historic tsunamis caused by an earthquake.  This world event struck me really hard.  It was compounded that I had been having dreams about drowning in ocean waves for weeks.

I wondered "why did this have to happen?"  I realized the answer was there is no reason and there is no omnipotent force behind the weather.  There is nothing to learn from such disasters (unless we are not doing proper disaster planning on personal and governmental levels). 

Then July 5th, 2005 I woke up from nightmares again at about 5 in the morning.  This was still photographic images of bobbies and caution tape and people crying.  I then went to the spare bedroom to check my email and that exact image was the first image on my Comcast news feed.

I then started doing a lot of soul searching and dealing with Cassandra Syndrome.  What was the purpose of these dreams?  Was I supposed to be calling government officials to be warning them?  No.  That couldn't be why I was having the dreams.  I would never get through to the people that needed to hear the message and would be put on some sort of watch list or, most likely, be ignored as crazy.  I came to the conclusion, with the help of my teachers, that I was just open and picking up on wavelengths of the world.  I decided to make a pact with myself not to have prophetic dreams about anything I can't control.  It worked.  When Katrina hit that August, my connection to it was through the insurance industry and not through my dreams.

That still left me with dealing with a world that didn't seem to have any divine oversight.  From this my conception of God changed.  Until that time, I felt that God was watching over me and had an invested interest in me personally.  That was one of the Christian assumptions I had not questioned.  After those devastating tragedies, I decided that while there seems to be some sort of mathematical order to the universe and laws both physical and beyond our perceptual capacities, there is not a higher order being that is looking out for us based on our priorities.  A God that keeps black holes doing what they do doesn't care about my heartbreak or whether I live or die.  I am insignificant.

This is the similar thinking of when I get ant traps, flea medicine for the cat, or fly traps for the kitchen.  When I eat things they die-- plants or animals.  We make choices and some of those choices are tragic for others such as the ant, flea, or fly colonies I don't want infesting my home.

One of my mother's favorite songs, that we played at her funeral was one that I heard her sing solos of several times at church.  It's "His Eye is on the Sparrow," and the words go, "his eye is on the sparrow, so I know he watches me."


I think this is one of the fallacies that made me mad at an unfair, or uncaring God.  I am glad I had already crossed this bridge because it seems just as unfair to attend my 93 year old maternal grandmother's funeral and my 68 year old mother's funeral in the same year.  Why did a woman who tried to be a health nut, who was strong, and mentally capable get incurable, terminal cancer, discovered at Stage IV?  There is no reason for this.  It just is.  There is no "everything happens for a reason," or lesson to be learned.

This idea is also freeing.  It has freed me from thinking that I must always comply, that I must always try to please people.  This kind of thinking is codependent first of all, but also takes away autonomy and personal power.  Furthermore, it shift blame away from personal responsibility.  If you do what you're told, whether it be from your parents, spouse, or church, you never have to question if it is right.  That assumption spreads to not questioning the zeitgeist, or "way of the times" of popular culture.  These questions pushed me to a harder, albeit more satisfying way of self-reflection and self-examination.  It also gives one greater responsibility to speak out when something is wrong, no matter how unpopular.  I came across an idea a couple years ago that while this may not be the path of the greatest, happiness, it is one, for me, of the greatest satisfaction.  The adage basically said that you can choose whether you want an interesting life or a happy one.

 Maslow had a lot of thoughts on this.  He felt that people who were self-actualizing did not depend solely on laws or cultural values to find a moral compass, but had to listen to their own sense of morality in order to benefit society.  Self-actualization isn't easy, but it's an admiral goal to strive for.

It is these types of ideals that give me meaning, rather than adherence to lines from bible camp songs that allow me to shirk responsibility.  "Jesus loves me," (but he'd love me more if I was male and not bi, queer, what-have-you).  The implication is that if I am of Jesus's chosen people, then he loves me and I am good.  (Let's not even add to this by mentioning that if I am one of Abraham's "sons" then why don't I keep passover? Didn't understand that at all as a 6 year old).  I can ask for forgiveness of my sins and it is washed away with communion wine.  Yeah, not a world I can live with.  I live in a world where nobody is "good" or "bad".  There is no we and them.  We exist in kindness, love, compassion, limited perspective, errors, and frailty.  We strive for ourselves, our families, our ideals.  We kill microbes, bugs, food, each other, and ourselves.  We lash out and say cruel things.  Such things can have lasting consequences.  Cause and effect, action (or inaction) and consequences-- that is the world I live in.  We are all in this together, whether we can admit that or not.


2 comments:

  1. Hi there!

    I might have told you this already, but I once made a playlist of all "Goddess" songs. Songs that weren't necessarily religious, but spoke to me on a spiritual level.

    One of these songs was "Crystal Ball" by P!nk.

    Being supremely proud of myself for creating this playlist, I was driving down the Parkway on a sunny day, singing my heart out to all these songs. By the time I got to P!nk, I was imagining that these were songs being voiced by the Goddess herself. As if it were not some female musical artist, but the voice of the Feminine Divine. Then I got to the line: "...and I'm learning to be brave in my beautiful mistakes .."

    And it was jarring, because I had always thought of the idea of deities being, well, infallible.

    And I thought: "Oops! Didn't consider that line when I added this to my playlist! I mean, what would the mother Goddess say if she heard a song ascribing MISTAKES to her, no matter how beautiful they were?"

    And then just as quickly, I realized exactly what a Goddess would say. She'd say: "Who are YOU, little man, to tell me that I can't make a mistake?! Who are you to call me infallible. What am i, some perfect imaginary being that you cooked up to fulfill some kind of idealized deity that you have in your head? What kind of deity would I be if I never made mistakes? Surely not one deserving of worship from you!".

    And I realized that she was right. Okay, maybe I was just making this whole conversation up in my head and not ACTUALLY channeling the words of the Goddess, but this more than anything spoke to me on a spiritual level. A Goddess who could be brave in her beautiful mistakes, one whom was not afraid to make mistakes. That's the kind of deity that I could relate to. The kind of deity that I could say: "Hey, I think I f*cked up..." to; and she'd say: "Yeah, you did, but guess what? So do i sometimes".

    ---Craig

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi there!

    I might have told you this already, but I once made a playlist of all "Goddess" songs. Songs that weren't necessarily religious, but spoke to me on a spiritual level.

    One of these songs was "Crystal Ball" by P!nk.

    Being supremely proud of myself for creating this playlist, I was driving down the Parkway on a sunny day, singing my heart out to all these songs. By the time I got to P!nk, I was imagining that these were songs being voiced by the Goddess herself. As if it were not some female musical artist, but the voice of the Feminine Divine. Then I got to the line: "...and I'm learning to be brave in my beautiful mistakes .."

    And it was jarring, because I had always thought of the idea of deities being, well, infallible.

    And I thought: "Oops! Didn't consider that line when I added this to my playlist! I mean, what would the mother Goddess say if she heard a song ascribing MISTAKES to her, no matter how beautiful they were?"

    And then just as quickly, I realized exactly what a Goddess would say. She'd say: "Who are YOU, little man, to tell me that I can't make a mistake?! Who are you to call me infallible. What am i, some perfect imaginary being that you cooked up to fulfill some kind of idealized deity that you have in your head? What kind of deity would I be if I never made mistakes? Surely not one deserving of worship from you!".

    And I realized that she was right. Okay, maybe I was just making this whole conversation up in my head and not ACTUALLY channeling the words of the Goddess, but this more than anything spoke to me on a spiritual level. A Goddess who could be brave in her beautiful mistakes, one whom was not afraid to make mistakes. That's the kind of deity that I could relate to. The kind of deity that I could say: "Hey, I think I f*cked up..." to; and she'd say: "Yeah, you did, but guess what? So do i sometimes".

    ---Craig

    ReplyDelete