Statement Concerning My Spirituality

I cannot point to any religion or church that I embrace fully and without qualification or reservation. I am close to several, but subjected to close inspection I would have to be termed lapsed, apostate, or heretical. That, in my opinion, is the price of integrity, honesty, and truthfulness, which, I suspect, very sadly, places me squarely in a minority among any people of faith.

Perhaps I simply place a higher premium on the accuracy of words. When I say something like the Nicene Creed, or even the Apostle's Creed, I can fully affirm that I believe them, but ... I believe them as I understand them.

If I am anything, I am perhaps, what Pagans would call a "Solitary Practitioner," only in my case it would be better termed a "Solitary Ecumenical". I will share in any religious context, what I believe and can share in that context. I do not force my beliefs on anyone, nor will I put them in the position of trying to understand my beliefs, unless they ask me to explain something of them. Neither will I permit them to force their understanding of their beliefs on me. I am not focused on making other people follow some way of life. I follow mine, and I share both space and fellowship with others in this universe as best I can, on the friendliest terms that I can.

I refer those who want to understand my stance better to The Diamond Metaphor, where I try to define my religion and spirituality in an understandable fashion ... at least what I hope is better understandable. My "facet" in this diamond is, as best as I can tell today: Episcopalian, with Catholic, Pagan, and Buddhist leanings.

I feel that there is one overarching reality which we all share. This includes the metaphysical reality. If God exists, then He exists here, to some degree at least, with the rest of us .... with all of us ... influencing and being influenced by all of us. He (or She or It), being metaphysical, is not easily described. 

I like to use the example of the Moon, which we have pretty well established is a rock in the sky, orbiting the Earth. 

Yet very many ancient Greeks worshiped the Moon as Selene, Artemis, or Hecate; or among the Egyptians: Khonsu, Thoth, or as the left eye of Horus; or among the Sumerians Nanna , the god of wisdom, and cattle. 

The point is not that the Moon is not a rock, but it is, rather, an experience. We experience it in a metaphysical manner - it does possess that aspect. When I look at it, I see it as a rock orbiting the Earth, but I can also appreciate it as a bright and beautiful feminine form, metaphysically. I can see in the Moon both Artemis and cooled lava. One view is of a physical object ...as we interpret it ... the other is a reaction to a metaphysical reality in my mind, conditioned by my social and cultural history, as well as other influences found in my subconscious -- personal and collective.

This is because we each are in essence metaphysical beings who react to the universe around us in an objective and subjective manner, to both the physical and metaphysical realities. We think and we feel. And we imagine. All of these things enter into the construction of our personal realities.

When I judge a religion, I am assessing a metaphysical reality, that has much history and which has been the object of much speculation by a host of metaphysical beings, trying to assess it in terms that spoke to them in personal and cultural realities that I can only speculate on today. 

Yet to some degree I can share in some of it. I can, metaphysically, touch their minds: through what they imagined, and wrote, and drew, and so on ... and through what other people thought of their neighbor's personal realities; through what I can imagine of all of their personal (metaphysical) realities. 

Not just of people in the past, but in people today. Religion is concerned, absolutely, with the metaphysical. Based on it we can, and do, generate physical repercussions in a physical reality -- and the personal metaphysical realities embedded in it. We drop bombs, even today, on people based on what we imagine about them, for things they have never done but might do.

So when it comes to other people's religion, I am concerned with what I can understand about their religion, and what I can affirm in them. what I can understand and accept, and, usually, table what I cannot. I might not agree to feel what someone else feels, but I will not deny that they feel what they feel. I do not see the Moon as a goddess, although I can understand that some people do. I can even understand that these people are reacting to a metaphysical reality; that is they are not reacting to the rock in the sky, but rather to a reality in their hearts and minds, which I can judge only if it is in my heart and my mind. People feel what they feel.

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There is, however, the question of realities that are in inherent conflict. As in one person's reality demanding that they kill another person because of something they imagine about that other person's reality. 

This falls in the realm of ethics and morality. Fortunately, most religions have very similar moral codes, and when they differ, I ask myself, "Are these differences irrevocable or simply distasteful?" Murder and killing are irrevocable. Stealing and even imprisonment are not.