Question month: Do you believe in a deity or deities?

Copied and pasted from my comment to a friend’s LJ, where the post was: “Do you believe in a deity or deities? Why or why not? Give a brief, conceptual description of these beliefs, and of your relationship with deities and/or religion.” I was pleased enough with my response that I wanted to preserve it here.

I believe there is a higher power out there. I call it “God” in certain company, but I’m very careful about how and when I use that word, because I don’t mean it the same way that most of the Catholics (or possibly other Abrahamics) use it.

“God,” to me, is a kind of shorthand for “the divine higher force that set things into motion”. God is abstract, without body; “spirit,” if you like. God, Godself, is not gendered, male or female, but can take many forms, including recognizably gendered beings. I believe this is why there are so many different deities who have been called by so many different names around the world and throughout history. I believe there have been many holy people who have had especially close relationships with God. I believe signs and miracles are still possible in the present age, and not relegated to the periods recorded in various holy books. I believe that very few, if anyone, can truly know all of God. I believe that shouldn’t stop anyone from trying, in the pursuit of being a fuller, better, more compassionate human being. I believe gender and sexuality pose no barrier to being a holy person, or pursuing knowledge of God.

I was raised Catholic, but left about five years ago when I realized that my views on God, specifically regarding God’s gender or lack thereof, were not compatible with Catholicism. I’d had other points of disagreement before, but felt that if I couldn’t agree with the Catholic concept of God any longer, I probably didn’t belong there anymore. That break, and finding my way into Unitarian Universalism, has been both terrifying and freeing. I don’t know where I’m going, but UU is where I belong now, and for now, that’s good enough.

Laughing Buddha

*dusts off account and logs in*

Well then. Briefly, 2007 sucked. It was a year of one loss after another, one crisis after another: my fiancé’s mom died, my grandfather died, I got a new boss, my choir director retired, other family members had severe illnesses. By December, I was just hanging on until midnight on the 31st; as arbitrary as the flipping of a calendar year might be, I just couldn’t stand 2007 anymore and needed a new start, and why not go with one already selected for me?

It worked for a few weeks, and then I hit what I’m guessing was something of an annual mid-winter slump. Plus our wedding was suddenly less than five months away, and the list of things (we wanted) to do for it was approximately four pages long, single-spaced. H made it, which seemed like a good idea at the time to help keep us on track, until it turned into a huge burden and we burned ourselves out one weekend trying to knock a bunch of items off the list.

In any case, this is just background information. I’ve ended up at Borders several times in the last few weeks, and each time I ended up in my favorite section, and found myself pondering a specific non-book item. After trying to wait out the slump and stress, and failing, I finally picked up this little guy: a Laughing Buddha Box. Something tactile to remind me that things aren’t all bad.

Darnedest thing — it works! He’s got the biggest grin on his face, in the middle of an open-mouthed belly-laugh. I look at him, and I can’t seem to help but smile back a little bit.

Between him and the Serenity statuette in this user icon, one day, I want to have a little mini-altar shelf — something high enough to be cat-proof, where I can see them on a regular basis. I even have a shelf I built back in middle school that I could use. I’m reluctant to mount it now, partly due to space issues, partly because we plan on moving in the fall. On the other hand, since my regular altar space is sadly underused these days, it might not be a bad idea to go ahead and do it anyway. Especially if it helps me keep a little more centered while taking care of the finishing touches on the wedding, and the job hunt we plan to engage in once we’re back from our honeymoon.