TheBanyanTree: why I get turned off, and how I turn back on

[Julie Anna Teague]

I have gone to some church or other most of my life, albeit with 
years-long lapses thrown in here and there.  I suppose you'd say I have 
always been a spiritual-minded person, a truth seeker.  "Keep the 
company of those who seek the truth--run from those who have found it." 
So says Václav Havel, and I have to say I agree.  I was raised, 
indoctrinated, and dunked under water in the Methodist church, which 
was more about community in our very tiny town of 500 people than it 
was about spirituality.  I guess the one good thing that came out of it 
was that I was forced to read the bible, and that has served me in good 
stead in many a Literary Criticism class.  It also gave me a decent 
foundation in knowing what I'm talking about in discussions that take 
on a religious bent.  Likewise, I'd indulged a little in most of the 
major religions' holy books.  You can't argue about something you don't 
know without sounding like an idiot.  There are a few parts of the 
bible that I've always felt were uplifting and worth remembering.

Lost my senses a time or two and attended some Southern Baptist 
churches, either at the request of my mom or of a boyfriend I once had, 
and egads, was it ever frightening to realize I would burn in hell for 
having any kind of fun at all.  I think not.  Even went to Catholic 
mass a few times with my MIL who is a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic and 
husband who is a severely lapsed Catholic. Attended a church called 
Unity for a few years because I liked the preacher, a real down to 
earth guy who had some useful life advice and who ended up marrying my 
husband and I.  But then he left and the Susie Creamcheeses took over 
and we couldn't handle going there anymore for fear of being encased in 
a  permanent sugar coating.  I've gone to the Unitarian Universalist 
church on and off for twenty plus years.  They are about the closest 
thing to what is going on in my head concerning spirituality, but 
sometimes I just have to run screaming, even from UU types.

This past Sunday for instance.  The music is usually great (they pull 
from the University's world reknowned music school).  And they had an 
Arabic professor read from the Quran in Arabic, "sung" the way it is 
supposed to be in it's native language, which was stunningly beautiful 
and moving.  But I swear, the whole rest of the service was about 
patting ourselves on our backs because we were UUs and thus more 
enlightened than everybody else.  Not in so many words, but that's how 
it came across to me.  Even the humorous moments had a feeling of, "We 
can laugh at ourselves because we are so damned superior to everyone 
who is not as enlightened and open minded as ourselves and wouldn't get 
the joke."

It wasn't just me, either.  Husband expressed the exact same sentiment 
when we talked about it afterwards.  I like a good dose of humility in 
my spirituality.  I'm not better than anyone else.  Maybe I've had some 
of the scales fall from my eyes in some respects, but so have a lot of 
folks, in this way or that. I tend to believe that Karma will come back 
and bite me in the ass for feeling superior to anyone else, for 
believing that *I* know the truth, as hard as it will for stealing 
something or lying to someone or any of those seven deadly sins, or 
however many there might be in this day and age. (Surely we've added 
the deadly sin of scamming people out of their life savings and secure 
retirement in a ponzi scheme or by running a large corporation into the 
dust while making off with ones own billions?)

Most of the time, I just go on my own way, puttering in my garden and 
thinking about spiritual matters as I watch stuff grow.  Or hike in the 
woods or look at the sky or watch a bird or commune with my sons until 
I'm completely wonderstruck by it all.  I can appreciate a sense of 
community.  I can appreciate the power of a hundred souls all 
meditating on world peace in the same room.  But, bottom line, I can do 
without all the other bullshit, because I realize I have most of the 
tools right here in my own heart to make some kind of path through this 
crazy world.

Julie