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.

In God’s hands

There are some things I get at an intellectual level, that simultaneously leave me upset, disturbed, or simply astonished and wondering, “What are you thinking?” I find myself thinking about one of them right now; perhaps posting will get it out of my head.

In this case, it’s phrases along the lines of “It’s in God’s hands,” or “God is in control.”

The story goes like this: my boss’ mother just died of cancer. M has been out of the office for the last two weeks, first waiting for her mother to die, and then attending to funeral and bereavement type things. M’s mother has been ill for quite some time, from what I understand; M has taken a week out of every month to go out of state to help take care of her mother since she got here.

Today, one of my coworkers got a card and started passing it around the office. And another one of my more evangelically Christian coworkers signed the card with some variation on the above — I forget which, exactly, at the moment.

I understand, at one level, that this is supposed to be reassuring. It’s supposed to remind the person reading, or hearing, those words, that there’s something bigger than them that is in control, at a time when life feels distinctly out of control or in danger of falling apart at the seams. Intellectually, I get it.

On the other hand…God is in control of M’s mother having cancer? God is in control of M’s mother suffering for so long? These are the sort of things that leave me questioning whether such phrases really are reassuring, or are an example of some of the stupid (though well-intentioned) things people say when someone dies.

Which brings me back to the conflict that I’m still working out for myself, too: simultaneously believing that everyone has the right to their own belief, and that some beliefs (from where I sit, anyway) just don’t make sense to me. I try to be careful to frame it in such a way that it is hopefully understood that the latter is a personal perspective on my part; not a personal judgement of any individual, and certainly not a claim of objectivity. But it’s not always easy to live up to the former, and there’s a little part of me that is…frustrated? maybe even disappointed? with myself for having this internal contradiction. Which is perhaps why things like this rattle around in my head until they get an “out” somewhere.

Um, hi! It seems I’m back from an unintended hiatus. *waves*