Finding faith.

[pasithea]

Someone passed me this link earlier tonight and I've spent most of my evening reading it. It's long but really worth the time. http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=b3a6052347cd3263818ea7854f0f22c1&t=72552

My 'fall from grace' wasn't as severe as hers, but so much of what she writes about hurts me in some way that I don't think I can explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it.

Religious people tend to see me as hateful and bigoted against their beliefs, that I'm foolish, making comments about their beliefs without a moment's thought or care. It's really not true. I became who I am by slow painful degrees. I was devoutly religious when I was a child, I believed it all.. But like her, slowly, cracks began to appear and when I asked questions, I was met with contempt and it only made the cracks deeper.

My great grandmother died almost exactly a year ago. My mother wouldn't even tell me where her funeral was, would not let me come and weep and remember her. I loved my nana so much but because of who and what I am, that final goodbye was taken from me and destroyed the last tiny sliver of faith I may have had.

it hurts so much to be alone and I cannot look back at their faith and feel anything but the pain of being thrown away. discarded as defective. I tried so hard to be what they wanted. for years I tried and the more I tried the worse it got, and when I couldn't be who they wanted, I tried many different churches, different people, I threw myself into wicca with just as much ernest desire to believe, belong, be part of something. something had to be wrong with me. i tried everything

i'm only halfway through Laurie's story and i know it gets worse before it gets better and maybe better isn't even the right word. nothing will ever feel as safe and happy as the absolute conviction of faith, there are s many nights I prayed and prayed to believe to feel to be one of them again. some nights i still cling to the final shreds of the wicca i adopted later and cry out to my gods and goddess, desperate to feel that once again but it's dark. there are no gods for me

and while it is so painful, i wrote about finding faith, not losing it. the one ray in it, the one thing that started to give my life meaning was learning to believe not in some magical god that would set everything right but to believe in myself and the world around me Do good deeds, live a good life. we are all gods and we can make this world as beautiful as we dare dream if we only put faith in ourselves and dare try.

it doesn't always provide comfort and answers and it doesn't stop these tears from flowing, and I'm not happier. But, for me, it's better to let those things go and not see the world in pure black and white. There is more than one answer to everything, more than one truth, more than one way of being. I don't have to like something in order to respect it, and that is the one thing that puts me at odds with all religions. I do not know the right path. Life is a trick question. It doesn't have a right answer.

Religion is the Cliff Notes the story of your life. It can be good for helping you analyze some parts of it, but too many people try to use it as a way to cheat.

Take care, you lot. I'm going to go back to reading now.

Comments

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

Sometimes there are no answers to questions. I think you just have to accept that. Some people don't, obviously.

[centauress.livejournal.com]

I think... That's why my mother raised me as I did. Gave me the option to believe, or not. To know, or not. My sister chose to believe, to have faith - and faith in people.

I chose... Well, I had no faith in people. I have faith in the world. When I see the dark, I see the universe - the whole universe is there, and we can grasp it, where none have gone before. Maybe we're just life, maybe we're not. But I know what is here, and now, and looking into the sky I can see the magic in a reflection - and the rock faith of the universe, the beauty of everything in perfect harmony of orbits and light and gravity. In my head I know where it will go, what's pulling on it - and that there's more that I cannot see, more lines of connection, more orbits.

From the atoms in my body to the greatest galaxies, the same forces are there, the same orbits, the pulls, the tugs, energy between being the sparkl and beauty in the world.

That's what I see when I lay back and look at the dark. A world larger than can be imagined.

World neither good nor bad, but always beautiful, and always, with it's mysterious reflections and darknesss, always magical.

Awesome

[awolf.livejournal.com]

Religion is the Cliff Notes the story of your life. It can be good for helping you analyze some parts of it, but don't too many people try to use it as a way to cheat.

Wow. :)

Trickster

[qdot.livejournal.com]

There a lot I could say, but, as usual, we're on the same wavelength with this one. So, just

*hugs*

[lazarian.livejournal.com]

I could never understand why that somehow I was considered broken or lacking because I didn't hold up the same cross as the people I grew up with, and after a while it stopped mattering to me. It seemed proclaiming to be Catholic was just a merit badge, a common umbrella that everyone huddled under and shook their heads, wondering when I'd come to my senses. I decided that I didn't have to join a church sanctioned club to measure up to them.

Conviction to a religion isn't faith. And the most important faith to have is that in yourself and the people you love.

Take care.

[lazarian.livejournal.com]

I started reading and I couldn't stop. It was worth it.

It's odd. She found salvation by turning her back on god. Her ex-husband was a prick - he never had any faith in her at all. It seemed that instead of him beating her into subservience, he used his religion to try to do it for him. And the fact that her mother used her god to erase to herself the fact that she abandoned her was awful, and then telling her that she had to find her way back to the very thing that shackled her all her life must have felt like a knife being twisted to her. She's got an incredibly strong heart.

It felt good to read that, and it's been bookmarked. Thanks.

[smashwolf.livejournal.com]

I feel like most of the imte I am in the same boat as you. That feeling of pupose, and belonging in life can easily be filled by faith. But the scars of my past prevent me from having a blind faith, and all religions I have tried to adapt to over my lifetime require a blind faith, to jsut accept them at face value, and my analyticalo mind cannot stop asking "why" and my cracks are deeper every day.

Ultimately the only faith ican have is in myself , and the "pack" of people close to me.

To day, I felt peace form the simple things, falling asleep in my fox fursuit onthe couch wiht one of the dogs on either side of me, while the housemates played video games. To me, I felt liek everything was perfect, and for those moments, I didn;t need faith to feel like I was exactly where I belonged. I was just an animal living life, and that was all I needed to have faith in.

One day I'd like to have you up and talk about these things over a glas of wine...

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I've been slipping back into being a hermit and I should stop that. I live less than a mile from Inaki's new house and I've never even gone over to borrow a cup of sugar. Once I get done with midterms, I should make time for interacting with people instead of machines and art supplies.