This seems to be the week for point people to others’ blogs rather than having my say here. There’s been so much good stuff, and I haven’t even posted half of it.

Today’s must-read comes from Arwen. I’ve stumbled across Arwen’s posts on a few different blogs, and while I don’t always agree with her, I do often enough that I decided to pay her blog a visit. A recent post on Pandagon (if you read this, be sure to go through the comments — they’re the best part) was the tipping point. The post essentially boiled the need/desire for any religion/spirituality (it was all lumped together) down to a childish game of carrot and stick. Arwen’s responses painted something much more nuanced, something that resonated with me. The more athiestically-minded commenters didn’t seem to get what she was saying and kept bashing a strawman of what it must mean to be spiritual rather than addressing her actual comments. I found this frustrating, and said as much in a comment on her blog.

Perhaps Arwen found not being heard as frustrating as I did, because today, she posted some more complete and uninterrupted thoughts on what it means to believe in God. It’s long, but worth the time.

A few gems…

As a description of what a spiritual experience might feel like:

Sense of trust, connection, awe, wonder, love, and security. The paradoxical feeling that you are important, divine, eternal, perfect; and simultaneously irrelevant, flawed, miniscule, limited, mortal, and ridiculous. A sense that this is amusing in some way. A feeling that you should help, heal, tend, mend, or create positive things, and an extreme aversion to violence, coersion, manipulation, rage, or greed. A sense that other people are not so different then you, or that, in fact, they are you, or perhaps that you are them. Or none of you are anything: the words that describe this feeling are variable and probably based on culture. There is a sense that the woes of the world are paradoxically meaningless and meaningful: that there is an imperative to make it better and yet a sense that it doesn’t *really* matter, in the long run, because everything is filled with rightness. A sense that a curtain has been pulled back and you can see the whole beautiful, tragic, winning, losing, painful, joyful disgrace and wonder that is the world.

I found myself nodding as I read that one. Yes, it’s something like that for me, as well. That sensation, those thoughts — those are what keep me returning to have a chat with God even after a day (or five) where I’ve thought the entire idea of God is ridiculous.

On allowing others to define what Christianity “must” mean:

Do I believe in God? I’ve been told by atheists that my description of the divine is changing the subject because we all know that “God” is by definition a white bearded Patriarch who hands out favours and punishment and discipline (and, I suppose, “God Hates Fags” signs.) And I say that those people have let the Religious Right or people in their personal experience with a religious agenda hand them their definitions. I don’t accept the Religious Right’s definition of anything, frankly. Well, maybe white glue. Or 2×4s. I’m certainly not going to let them define ‘Christian’ for me: the man or myth Christ as written in their very own text said TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, and accepted prostitutes as friends, hung with lepers, threw a good party, and reaffirmed that worldly things are not worth being a dick over. One should shower the world with love and acceptance - while protesting injustice, sure, but Christ certainly didn’t stand outside the temple with a “God hates Moneylenders” sign, and certainly didn’t go to Moneylender Alley to do so. Yet people with Christ on their lips and hate - or even, indifference - in their hearts send troops across the world to blow the arms off of other people. No. Ridiculous misreading. Black is White misreading. Forgettaboutit.

Allowing others to define my spiritual options for me (if you’re a Christian, it must look like THIS) is exactly what drove me away from church and God for most of my 20s and early 30s. It’s only been in the past year, really, that I’ve begun to recognize the box *I* had put God into. Once I opened the lid, I discovered that God is much bigger than I’d ever assumed.

Read the rest here.