It’s Your Journey

I think it’s the nature of human beings to struggle with what is really real when it comes to transformative experiences and impactful coincidences. We give them a weightiness and significance that seems to rise above normal everyday life. And yet they are unprovable because they are individually subjective.

Did I make that up? Was that experience real? Is there something beyond what we see with our eyes that imbues life with meaning? Or are we simply associative creatures applying purpose to things that are just random experiences and events?

I have a new found respect for those who are willing to examine what they have been taught and what they think they believe. Who step out on the plank of skepticism not knowing where it will eventually lead. Who are willing to take that precarious step.

Religious skepticism is serious business. It’s not for the faint of heart. If you like comfort and consistency and predictability it can be disconcerting. A bit like being set asea in a small boat without the visual of land. Because all your life, from your earliest days, your parents and culture grounded you in their historical faith. A faith that explains everything, that gives you guidelines to live by, supplies you with a God who personally cares about what happens, and tells you that if you’re faithful you’ll live forever.

A long time ago I said I didn’t want secondhand belief. I was searching for something that I could actually say I knew was real. I had no idea that that would eventually lead me to questioning everything that I had been taught about God, faith, and religion.

The reason that I’m writing this is to say that life is a process. Everything that happens affects us whether it is something we consider to be a deeply spiritual experience or something traumatic that throws us into a potential existential crisis. These things happen as part of life. It’s normal to want to focus on the things that make us feel safe and push away the things that make us uncomfortable.

I’m not sure where I’m going to land, but I feel like I have this open file box in front of me and I’m sorting through all the stuff I thought I believed about my experiences, unexplainable events, apparent meaningful coincidences, and basic beliefs. It’s like a bunch of old ticket stubs, notes written on scratch paper, and straggly bits of string. I’ve decided to try make sense of it all, put it in alphabetical order, and get rid of all flotsam and jetsam.

We’ll see where I end up with it all. But as a wise woman said to me not long ago, “It’s your journey.”