I don't know what I'm going to say here. I voted theist. I was raised in a pretty religious family- my dad and his brothers were the first generation in forever that didn't produce a minister. I was raised Episcopalian. My grandfather was a minister. I've always "believed in" evolution, though- how could you not? I mean, the evidence is there. I had a hard time reconciling the two things though- if there had been dinosaurs, how could God have created the earth in seven days, and if that was not so, was the entire bible like a story book? When I asked this question in confirmation class- maybe age ten, the teacher told me, what if there was a different time scale? What if the dinosaurs thing really happened, and maybe that time frame of millions of years from the earth forming, and life beginning, took place in a matter of hours or days, in biblical time? Whatever, it was enough to allow me the dignity of not totally renouncing my religious upbringing. I proudly claimed to be agnostic for much of my teenage years- heck, I just didn't know. Was there a God, wasn't there?
But I came to realize, in my 20's, that proof doesn't matter. Faith is what we that believe in God have. I didn't go out looking for it- it came to me. I haven't seriously asked God for many things in my life. Maybe three. The first thing was this. I had a baby pigeon- given to me by my daughter for Mother's Day. But he had something wrong with his feet. I didn't know so much about pigeons then as I do now- it was caused by improper support in the nest. All I knew was his feet were curled weird, deformed, and he couldn't stand on them, and even though I made little braces out of cardboard and taped his feet to them, it just wasn't working. I was desperate- I wanted that bird to be normal, not a cripple. So I prayed to God, like cashed in all my chips. I said, 'God, I have never asked you for anything ever before. I haven't frivolously been asking for everything. This is the one thing I want the most of anything- is for my bird to be fixed. What I offer in exchange is this- I will treat every drunk, icky, homeless, mean, patient that I get from now on for the rest of my career as if they were my father or mother, with as much respect and caring as is in me to give." (I worked at a big inner city county hospital, and it was easy to get burned out, to not take the time to listen, to start feeling like people didn't care for themselves, so why should I (beyond what was ethically required) care for them...) I woke up in the morning- we were on a camping trip, and Dill's toes were straight. I swear, it was a miracle. He was strong, and his feet were good, and he began standing on them that day.
I did pray for another thing- like make a bargain, ask for something, and I got what I asked for, immediately, well, the next day, and as things turned out, it was a case of "well, you asked for it!" And shouldn't have. Learned my lesson there.
When my dad died, I'll never forget the eulogy. The minister spoke of my father, who'd been an engineer, to whom every mystery was a code to be broken, who researched everything, who was curious about life, mechanical things, theological things, and he said, imagine the excitement my father is feeling right now- he is unraveling the mystery of life after death- what could be more exciting for him than that? I took a lot of comfort in those words. It pleased me to think of my father being happy in death, with many untold things yet to discover.
I don't know how I feel about life after death. There's no proof. I just finished reading an excellent book by Mary Roach called "Spook: Science Tackles The Afterlife" in which she asks "What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that-the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness, persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my laptop?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schmers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.
I read this book once, "Lovely Bones," a fiction book about a girl who is murdered, who looks down from heaven and watches the goings-on after her death. How her family reacts. How the murderer is caught. I like the feeling of how heaven is imagined in that book- it's kind of like heaven is how you, yourself, imagine it to be, and for every person it's different, and it changes as you accept your death and move on.
I don't think God is a micro-manager. I don't think he controls everything that happens. I think we are left to make good decisions or bad, or even evil ones, and face the consequences. You often hear people say, how can there be a God if he would allow this (just pick any small or large horrifying event) to happen? I don't know the answer to that. I think we for the most part are left to fend for ourselves. But I firmly believe that God is up there keeping track- that every good and bad thing we do gets tallied. This has particularly affected me in my actions toward animals. I stop and help. I spend what I have to rescue an animal who someone else might throw back in the woods. I'll stop to pick up a bird who is going to die, and make sure it isn't smashed any more, and dies as peaceful a death as there is, and give it a quiet grave. I'll take a baby hawk to a rehabber. I'll take a nest of baby flycatchers, feed them hourly, wait for the rehabber to take them. I'll pick a drowning wasp out of a dish of water. I'll swerve and slam on my brakes and honk at crows to get them to fly away, and stop to let ducks cross the road, and give a turtle a quick trip across to the other side. Compassion for people is more difficult- I feel like, if you can't help yourself- why should I help you? But I try. I do the best I can.
I talk to God every night before I go to sleep. A lot of it is saying thank you. Or asking God to watch out for someone. Or saying, dear mom and dad, if you can hear me, up in heaven- and so on. It's comforting to me.
That's just some of my thoughts.
Nanci
And don't let my age put you off, I do the whole debating thing all over the place...I enjoy a good argument. Although it can be aggravating at times...humans are so stubborn. :grin01:
