"Come, come whomever you are:
wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Though you have broken your vows
a thousand times,
it doesn't matter.
come, come yet again. Come."
- often attributed to Rumi, it may have been another Persian poet of that time. The second line has also been translated with different words such as 'heretic', 'non-believer', 'Pagan', "infidel."
I add my harmony to the "I am an Atheist" refrain.
Why? Because, our voices and perspectives must be acknowledged and respected as part of the song of life.
I have found myself chuckling over some of the things people say about atheists. Most atheists I know have deeply-held ethics and are very compassionate people. It is a laughter borne of the sheer absurdity of the epithets. Behind my chuckle is a grip of fear. Fear of being ostracized. Fear of bullying. Fear of physical violence. Fear of being murdered. For that is history and reality for atheists. The same as every other oppressed demographic. Perhaps we can hide a little more easily than others. Still, we know what we face when outed.
We hear about religious views all the time. We have to sit through prayers at almost every event we go to, public or private. Religious references frame almost every colloquialism in our language. Marriage is a religious construct. Yet, when a few people post diaries about atheism, we get complaints about how bothersome it is to hear about it? Well, let me add my descant. My ultra-high soprano voice isn't the clear bell that it once was, so it might grate a bit. Too bad. I might have stuck with my later-in-life more buttery alto sound. Instead, you got me rankled, so I'm squeaking this out.
I will share some of my journey:
I wasn't always an atheist. I grew up Christian. I didn't just grow up going to church. I was capital "C" Christian. I read the entire Bible when I was in the 7th grade. I went to church camp. I taught summer Bible school to elementary students. I loved what I had been taught was Christianity.
I always had questions. In first grade, I questioned my Sunday School teacher, "why, if God was omnipotent, would he let bad people do some of the horrible things they do?" Or, "How can Satan be any kind of threat to God?" The answer, "he gave us free will" didn't ever satisfy my sense of logic. Because, if God gave free will, he could take it away.So, it wasn't really ours. Moreover, what was the point of free will if it meant that some people were free to take away the freedom of others? Really, only the mean people got free will. Everybody else got the shaft, as far as I could tell.
Still, I like the stories of Jesus being so nice to people. Caring for the sick. Welcoming the outcast. Feeding the hungry. Refusing to perpetuate the shaming of Mary of Magdalene: "You have loved much." That one just made my heart burst with compassion. What an awesome guy! Why couldn't everybody be like him? I wanted to be like him. To do that, I had to be a Christian. So, I was.
It's not like I had any big, traumatic event via which I left Christianity. I did have experiences which left me shaking my head. The foul-mouthed, drunken minister at the church I attended in high school. The judgmental people. My mother insisting that we had to dress up all fancy every Sunday. (God sees me naked. Why would he care?) I could see that a lot of the pomp and circumstance was about impressing one another. It was petty competition and gloating and not at all about God or Jesus. I could also see that not all Christians were the same. Southern Baptists were different from Presbyterians. Mormons were different from Catholics. Within a congregation I could find kind people and not-so-kind people. Still, I liked what Jesus was about.
Eventually, I simply grew out of the need to be in a church in order to feel connected to the lessons and concepts I had gleaned from church teachings. As an adult, I traveled around the world. I lived outside of the US for a while. I met a lot of different kinds of people. Learned about a lot of different religious beliefs and spiritual practices. I found a lot of exquisitely beautiful ways of being. I learned that people extracted and generated grace from an infinite number of paths. I also learned that people extracted and generated fear, hate and cruelty from almost all of those same paths.
It wasn't about the religion or lack thereof. It was about the people. The nature of a person would determine the nature of their practice and faith. I didn't see any God or Goddess behind all these different expressions. I saw human nature. I saw how humans generated stories of deities in order to serve their own needs. I saw how religion was used to manipulate people into "good behaviors." Sometimes with good reason and sometimes not.
This was all confusing to me. I tried embracing all beliefs as one practice of seeing The Divine in everything. I learned about the path of the Sufi International Order whose motto is "path from the heart." Nominally, it is a spiritual practice which does not impose a particular religion or belief, other than searching for your own inner truth. It's members might be Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Druid, Zorastrian, Agnostic, Atheist. It didn't matter. If you were seeking for deeper and deeper inner truths, you were on the path of the Divine.
I was initiated. I have a Sufi name. I still cherish that name. We came together in meditation and shared practices. Any formal services paid respects to all religions and all those "known and unknown, who held a light in the darkness." For years, this was a haven for me. A place for me to be what I then referred to as "beyond Christian." Seeking experiences of the divine with others who were respectful of how subjective and unique that is for each person. It is an internalized experience which no one else can arbitrate for you.
My relationship to the Sufi order ended when there was a change of leadership. I had joined the order being told that there was no hierarchy. That each person could turn to whomever they saw as having something to offer and might recognize that person as a teacher for however long that felt appropriate. Yet, there was a "Pir" (teacher) who was recognized as the Wise Elder. I did experience him as someone with a very special kind of energy. I had two experiences in which I was truly in awe of him. I am not in awe very often. So, I didn't examine closely enough how much of a hierarchy there was in this international organization. I was just a practitioner doing my thing and not interested in the politics of it.
Then, he died. What ensued was very disturbing to me. There was, quite literally, a coronation of his son in India. A man barely 30, I think, whom I had never seen and had never heard of would become the "Pir" from whom all lessons flowed. I was having a hard enough time accepting the idea of a patriarchal lineage, when I finally met him.
I was testing the waters of living in a Sufi community. I am very drawn to the idea of cooperative living in a community of intention. So, I decided to give it a try. The Pir I had known died just after I moved there. It was a very casual environment. We lived in the historic buildings of a Shaker community, in the mountains. There ended up being several reasons that I struggled to fit in the community. Ultimately, however, it was meeting the new Pir which led me to exit the Sufi Order altogether.
He showed up at this hardscrabble country setting in formal robes and one of those tall hats shaped like the Bishop in a chess set. He walked through the community with an overly-deliberate air of importance. That part was almost laughable. What was not laughable was that he announced he would be leading a series of meditation and prayer classes and in those classes he laid out a very Muslim-centric rigid practice with a lot of "shoulds." As a woman with an infant, I was told I was not welcome. He would not allow children to be present - as they were a distraction - and mothers of young children should not leave their children in the care of others. In fact, I was told that i could not participate in the monthly work days where we all did community chores, until my child was 5. I was effectively cast aside in isolation.
What really bothered me about all of this was how everyone just went along with it. This was not how things had been. This was not supposed to be a hierarchical community. Yet, they went along with all this rigid authoritarianism without a peep. I wanted nothing to do with it.
I quietly went on with my life and my own inner spirituality. I have my own ways of continuing to look deeply inwards for what feels true to me. The more I have done that, the less I have believed in the idea of a God or Goddess or any metaphysical being which has some consciousness of it's own and is overseeing the universe or human beings. The more I observe the world and sit quietly with my observations of myself, the more I see our different faiths as constructs to serve us in different ways. Some of those ways seem to serve people well and some not so much.
What I mostly note is how we take something which couldn't be more subjective and we try to form it into something we want everyone to call universal. We want our truth to be everyone's truth. But, it simply can't be. You can never experience what it is to be me and to have formed out of everything I have done and witnessed and ate and breathed. I can never experience what it is to be you. So, there is no single experience of life, the universe and everything. There is no 42.
I also note how so many of the so-called Divine texts are written, curated, edited, published, distributed and interpreted by men who give themselves as much power as they can get away with, while claiming that everyone must be adhere to their views because they are the chosen ones to hear the voice of God. That launching point alone leaves me cynical. I mean, if it works for you, ok. But, when you impose that on me and the world, that's not ok.
If your inner truth is that there is a God or gods to whom you relate, that's fine. I would never presume to tell you what is true for you. I would however, caution you to realize how susceptible it can make you to becoming complicit in some grand oppressions. The God you relate to in your interior life may not actually be the same god your so-called leaders relate to. Be careful. It's not usually personal religion which is a problem. The institutionalization of religion can lead to problems of Biblical proportion.
What I see with institutionalization of just about anything is this: once there is an institution, that institution has an interest in self-perpetuation, which becomes of more primal importance than any mission or vision that motivated its establishment. This is true of nations, churches, schools, and profit or non-profit corporations. Often, the resulting practices of an institution are actually antithetical to the original inspiration for it's existence.
Let me give an example. I once learned about and watched the practice of Spinning. Perhaps you've heard of Whirling Dervishes. Men in white robes with tall black hats spinning in unison. It looks and feels very impressive when you are present while group of Dervishes Turn to music.
I loved the idea of ecstatically spinning as a form of meditation. At one event I attended, we were invited to come to the floor and spin. I did. Afterward, someone approached me and suggested that I might learn the practice as I seemed to have a natural propensity. I figured it would be an interesting thing to learn, so I agreed to attend some classes.
I was given a little history. The original Whirling Dervish was Rumi. Rumi was a highly respected scholar/poet/spiritual teacher. As such, he had a scribe. Someone who literally walked around writing down what he said. So, we know a lot about his adult life. He used to abruptly stop walking and start spinning around, like a child. He said that children knew what it was to be in the moment, ecstatically letting the divine flow through them. From what I learned, at the time, it wasn't any kind of disciplined art form. It was a free-spirited, spontaneous letting loose.
Yet, as soon as he died, people established a school to teach people how to "Spin". If Rumi was just doing what children do naturally, what was there to teach? Well, apparently, they had to teach you to starve by sitting outside the kitchen for three days before you were allowed to enter the school. Then they had to teach you to put your first and second toes around a nail pounded into the floor and to spin around that making your feet bleed. It goes on from there. A discipline of having every part of your body in exactly the position they claimed it should be in. The foot which comes up, should rise to exactly a certain level along the calf. The head should tilt at precisely the angle they claim allowed the divine energy to flow perfectly. Nothing could seem less ecstatic to me.
I left the class. I had experienced ecstasy in just spinning on my own. Suddenly, this joyous activity was a form of torture and frustration. I clearly needed a lifetime of teaching - for which I was to give my devotion to this oh-so-wise person who would deign to impart to me the lessons on how to Spin.
All I could think to myself was that Rumi must have stopped turning in his grave. This eccentric man found joy in spinning around and for the past 725+ years, people have used his name to extract fealty and some kind of ego-stroking title of Wise Teacher and to control how other people whirl.
I wish this were a one-off example of the human experience. Instead, I consistently see a pattern. People come together with a common inspiration or motivation and once they form an entity designed to carry out that a mission, the entity has a life of its own. The people who end up joining the entity have varied personal motivations for having their voice heard through that entity rather than as a independent voice. It's always an amalgam of constructive and destructive reasons.
I can see how one seeks out the community of church, for instance. I long for a community where I can feel connected to other people who create space together for the pursuit of inner truths, the honing of compassion, the bonding of being there for one another, and the practice of justice. I long to have that without the imposition of turning to the words written by authoritarians and without the invocation of some kind of superior being.
Using those third-party arbiters of truth and justice comes with a lot of practical problems. The first and foremost being how you figure out who is hearing the one real voice of this God. Since you can't prove what no one else can hear, you too often get those who are charismatic and have self-motivations which don't serve the greater good making that claim and forcefully insisting that everyone dance to their tune. Somehow, they become Master and everyone else is a slave to their whims regarding the Word of God. I simply can't abide that kind of authoritarian oppression. If your proclamations don't ring true to me, I'm not going to tell you they do. I won't give up my own guidance system. Women have suffered mightily due to the proclamations of religious men. I come with my own senses and sensibilities for a reason. I need them to survive and thrive. I have a sovereign right to my autonomy. I don't trust anyone who tries to override my senses with their own.
I don't believe in a God or gods. I find more truth in the energetic connectedness of all things being uncovered in quantum physics. I can feel when the energy of life is flowing in a way which brings ease and joy into a moment. I call it grace or exquisiteness. I totally get that I breathe out molecules which another breathes in. The atoms of life are in constant exchange. Through that understanding I have a strong sense of justice and compassion. We are all one in a paradoxical way.
I embrace paradox. I hold my truths to be self-evident to me alone. I will walk through my life proclaiming them as my truths. I will passionately pursue the paths which my truths point me to. At the same time, I hold that my truths could be completely absurd. That, when the universe is looked at through some other lens than mine, there is no way that anyone would affirm my truths. Tomorrow, I may find out that everything I think I know is a fiction.
I accept the paradox of this. This is how I can have my beliefs while allowing you your beliefs. I accept that my beliefs are as true to me as can be and that yours are to you. That either one of us could end up being correct and that both of us could end up being so very wrong. I'll do my best to make the case for why I see things the way I do when it comes to establishing how we work together - whether it's as friends, family, working on a project, building social structures or making laws and taking actions in the name of our common group. I'd expect that you would do the same.
Here's what I request: do it respectfully. Don't impose how you see the meaning of life on others. You'd have to wield power over someone to do that. That's tyranny. Accept that they have their own beliefs and allow them to hold their own truths about the underlying nature of existence. Leave everybody their bodily autonomy. Don't be concerned with what anyone else feels or thinks. Don't be concerned with what they do unless it harms someone else and/or threatens someone else's autonomy. All that matters is how we treat each other and that we don't get in the way of each other thriving as best we can. Come to the aid of those who need support for their own liberation. Don't then make them feel obligated to you or required to adopt your beliefs or practices. That's not liberation. That's just a transfer of oppression.
Wielding power over others only perpetuates cycles of power struggles. Empowering everyone to strive autonomously, knowing that others will stand up to protect that autonomy generates a sense of devotion to the collective out of appreciation, rather than an obedience to authority out of fear. When we fear, we strive to break out of the fear by overpowering those whom we fear. When we appreciate, we strive to nurture those for whom we have appreciation. I know which atmosphere I prefer to live in.
That atmosphere is not generated when you tell someone that their beliefs make them less than human or unacceptable. You generate fear. It is not generated when you claim that stating my beliefs is an offense. Would you have me silenced? How exactly?
Hitting you is an offense. Depriving you of food is an offense. Poisoning your water is an offense. Denying you health care is an offense. Forcing you to dress the way I say is an offense. Forcefully moving you to a dangerous place against your will is an offense. Controlling where you go or what you learn is an offense. Describing what I believe is not an offense. You may not like it. Perhaps you feel uncomfortable with it. That does not make it an offense. Silencing those who would speak. That is an offense. You can only silence people via force or threat of force.
We are all a part of the human race and it is one ginormous chorus. The disharmony is not eradicated by silencing voices. The exquisitely complex harmony of it can only be properly expressed when every voice is raised.
I am atheist. Can you hear me singing?