Growing up, religion never played much of a part. Well more specifically, religion was never presented to me as a truism. My grandmother is Buddhist, but my mom is agnostic and therefore allowed us to decide for ourselves what path we wanted. She sent my sister and I to Christian sleep-away camp and me to a few years of Catholic school where our administrators were Sister Mary and Father Rick. We celebrated both Easter and Christmas. I used to set up the porcelain nativity scene under the tree each year until we moved our celebration to my aunt's.
However, at family gatherings we still burned incense for our ancestors and made extra food or fake-money offerings on occassions like April 5th (Chinese tomb-sweeping day). I kind of liked the idea of communicating with my grandfather in the underworld and making sure he had good food and enough money. To protect us from danger, my grandmother gave us prayer tokens for our rear view mirrors when we started driving. I don't really drive anymore, but I keep a pendant of the Goddess of Mercy in my wallet.
Religion became to me like a philosophy of which there are many viewpoints all of which can be right. Would a Christian approach be better for this or a Buddhist? Do I feel a need to go to confession today or meditate? I agree religion is important because it is a way to deal with life. I keep an open-mind though beyond tolerance. We don't just tolerate other races or sexualities; we accept them. The concept of God has become fuzzy in modern times anyways with so many interpretations. Sure, sometimes you're right, but other times they are. I don't think I could ever choose a religion because I would never be able to adopt all the theology that comes with it as unquestionable truth. I would be ousted from all houses of worship for heresy. However, to be Godless seems like one of the worst things to be these days. You can't claim allegiance with any group and apparently atheist are also the minority that Americans would least allow their children to marry. That's bad news for me unless I find myself another atheist! Imagine a Godless nation of atheists? Extremists would bomb our homes and evangelicals would burn our important books--like maybe our diaries. Well, that probably won't happen considering atheists are also the hardest demographic to identify because we won't even identify ourselves...yet.
On brave days, I would say I'm atheist, but on cowardly days agnostic. I am responsible for what happens to me, but sometimes when things get tough you look for a little extra help. On the flip side though, a recent conversation with a friend that was raised Catholic revealed that on bad days she can loose her faith in God, but on good days she remembers to thank him. Get thee to a nunnery! Those Catholics and their confessions.
This brings me to a book that I've been interested to read for awhile ( and the point of this post). It's called Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, by Stephen Batchelor who is a disrobed monk. Has anyone read or heard of it?! It seems like a peaceful, middle ground of thinking and at worst a unique story. I'll definitely let you know my thoughts if I ever get my hands on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment