Some background to my spiritual path

[elainegrey]

Once upon a time (in April of this year) tenacious_snail asked me, "How did you come to be involved with the Society of Friends? What is your spiritual journey? "

I kept putting off answering that to when i could do it justice, which is the general mode of my procrastination. Yesterday, i saw the meme from batswing that asks

The problem with LJ: we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you.

I figured i should answer the last question, first, since what with "The Death of LJ" being a constant theme showing up in a variety of places, i shouldn't waste any questions.

I grew up in a church-going family but one that wasn't overly doctrinal. "What will the neighbors think?!" was probably the more used frame for shaming than any Divine wrath. I was regularly exposed to the Presbyterian church, which shielded one to some extent from the Bible belt excesses. My Mom's family had been Presbyterian, and it was not easy for me to identify what of the upright, dour soberness came from being a Navy family and what came from being Presbyterian. My Dad's mother was a searcher, having rejected the claims of Catholicism when her mother died of an abortion, and who was a radical for her time and place (south Georgia). She was involved in Christian Science when my Dad was growing up, and had moved on to various New Age-y things by the time i was born.

My Mom has been interested in historical understandings of Christianity, so that counters her more rigid legalistic understandings of the world in that she is aware that the Bible was written in different times and places, and that there's a great deal of context we don't have for the writings. My Dad is a questioner and searcher, mulling over various theological conundrums. They had books on Zen Buddhism in the house as well as Biblical history; i read tons of speculative fiction.

There was nothing for me to particularly rebel against in my faith upbringing. Science was supported and valued, the principles taught were not strict so there wasn't a strong stench of hypocrisy to reach me as a teen -- and, if anything, the last Presbyterian church to which i belonged had an advocacy for social justice that made my father uncomfortable. (He was in the reserves and could see himself sent off to Nicaragua, thus the sanctuary movement distressed him.)

What got to me was Ayn Rand and the interminable congregational prayers of confession. I didn't connect with the highly general and metaphorical confessions, and something in the Ayn Rand i was reading triggered me to question. (I questioned what she wrote, too, but was far more interested in contrasting the Fountainhead to Dorian Gray as exemplars of Art Deco and Art Noveau.) When it came down to it, i could not believe in a God that create beings that the diety would then desire to debase themselves. I think i had an instinct based on my own creativity: the creation might not be perfect, but it's not the creation's fault -- and the doctrine of predestination means that Presbyterian answers to the free will issues were, to me, absurdly complicated. At that point, i rejected the formal structure.

In college i did not attend any church or formal religious structure. I took a great deal of philosophy classes. My conclusion was that one could debate and theologize for centuries and not *solve* any of the questions: one had to live it. So i'd found the experiential path and began it. At that point, i probably would have asserted that once or twice i'd felt the awe of the Divine and i'd read writers like Anne Dillard who made the experience of the Divine seem possible. I was aware of the concept of panentheism as distinguished from pantheism and would claim to be the former.

In grad school i found the Christian Association on campus when noticing a women's worship group. I didn't have much company from women in the physics department and worried about getting too close to the guys when my love was so far away. The group introduced me to Starhawk's writing's -- which resonated with me -- with feminist post-Christian critique, with with social justice theories, and so on. It was an enriching ground of progressive spiritual thought. I attended Friends Meeting as a tourist and felt i'd come home. So i attended Meeting, made deep friendships with Christian witches and Wiccans, explored the runes, attended the CA and designed worship experiences, began to recognize even more intellectually issues of privilege, dealt with the sexist biases in my physics department, and went through a great deal of therapy for depression. I learned that i was deeply shaped by Christian belief so some pagan and heathen beliefs did not align with my fundamental beliefs. I realized i tested Gods: the Divinity needed to meet certain thresholds of moral direction before i would worship that Divine.

In the end, after deep experiences of transcendence and connection, i name the Divine of my experience The Beloved.

And, after a call from my sister and some unhappy physical experiences, i must get off to my day!