Losing (and Finding) My Religion

In honor of Earth Day, I post this today!

I have finally found my religion. I've been practicing it for a number of years now, but all of sudden I have a name for it. Pantheism.

I was raised Roman Catholic. And all that goes with that. I got faith and education and rules galore. I went through all the motions: weekly church, the requisite sacraments (Baptism, First Communion, Confession, Confirmation), years and years of CCD. I have been a professional wake-goer since a young age. We went to mass on important holy days (Feast of the Assumption anyone?), kept the Baby Jesus out of the manger and wished the little clay babe a happy birthday before getting our presents on Christmas morning, and told tons of non-Catholic kids that we knew we had dirt on our faces on Ash Wednesday. Right around high school, I either started listening better at mass or I started thinking better in general, because that was when I started wondering what I was doing there. I didn't like what I was hearing, all of a sudden. First year of college, I stopped going completely and when home for summer or visits, told my mother I wasn't going with the family anymore. I told her (and meant it, even if it sounds like a good way out of it) that I didn't want to go and disrespect all the people (including her) who really believed and wanted to participate by standing there hating every minute and not believing any of it. I kept going on Christmas and Easter, but that was it.

Through the years, I've considered finding some other organized religion. Episcopalian would make sense. You know, Church of England. Created by Henry VIII out of the tenants of Catholicism so he could get divorced. Basically the same deal as Catholicism, but with far fewer rules and a lot more tolerance. I tried it. Felt weird. I've never really considered anything beyond that, since I finally figured out that I really don't dig the organization of coming together in a room on a schedule to worship. I just don't get anything from that.

There's been a few times when I've felt really lonely and I've sought it out. Once, I went to an entire Catholic mass in Hanoi, in Vietnamese. I had no idea what was being said, obviously, but the cadence of the mass made sense and I knew when to kneel and what was happening during the consecration (what Catholics call turning the wine and bread into the actual body and blood of Christ). It was a cool experience. I also finally cracked and went to a mass in Ita, Paraguay, since every damn week, they played it over the loudspeaker anyway and it woke me up. All in Spanish and Guarani, so I didn't get much, but again, the cadence felt familiar.

As we all know, the sex scandals hit the church. By then, I was already disillusioned enough. I somehow had turned out pro-choice, pro-birth control and pro-tolerance for just about anyone and their lifestyle. All those things are in direct opposition to the teachings and beliefs of the church in which I was raised. And I started hearing more and more of these big-church preachers on TV and in the media promising people that as long as they were saved, all would be well. For almost all of the 2000s, we had a president who pretty much believed that God was telling him what to do, and many of those things weren't all that nice. So all the God talk added to my further disillusionment.

I just don't go in for organized religion or God in general. I have been speaking of the Universe and its plans for me for a very long time. I tried out using "The Goddess" in place of God for a while, but that just felt false to me. I went diving on Easter Sunday one year and told my mother that I felt closer to some other being or God doing that than any visit to a building would do for me. She still tells people about that as evidence that I actually have faith.

As far as I'm concerned, my faith has never been in question. I've been telling my mother that my relationship with God is between me and him and does not need an intermediary (church, mass, priest, etc.) for years. Slowly, I've figured out that my faith is less in some unknown guy in the sky and is more a core belief that everything is interconnected. My actions affect others. My actions affect the Earth. My actions and my attitude affect me and how I experience the world.

When I want to feel connected to something bigger than I, or when I want evidence that there is indeed something bigger in charge or that my faith in fate is not unfounded, I head for nature. I head for the woods. I head for the sea. I head for a mountain. Gimme a tree in bloom and my ability to sit under it any day over a hard wooden bench and speaking in monotone with 200 other people.

I have just recently learned that I am, therefore, a Pantheist. I was explaining that I don't really have a religion but believe in nature to my new supervisor, and he said, "Pantheism!" (He knows a lot of things, many obscure.) I then promptly forgot to look it up for a while until somehow it came up with my mom. And so I did a little research. And I found out I am indeed a Pantheist.

What Pantheists believe is basically summed up easily by the beginning of the Wikipedia entry for it: "Pantheism promotes the idea that God is better understood as a way of relating to nature and the Universe as a whole - all that was, is and shall be - rather than as a transcendent, mental, personal or creator entity. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. Although there are divergences within Pantheism, the central ideas found in almost all versions are the Cosmos as an all-encompassing unity and the "sacredness" of Nature."

Some of the Transcendentalists were Pantheists. You know, Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman. Those guys who sat in the woods and wrote stuff. Makes sense. Apparently, it was such an up and coming religion in their time, the Vatican got all threatened and issued the Syllabus of Errors to decry this and any other close iterations. (Fit throwers, those Catholics.) And so, Pantheism didn't move from a heyday into an actual day. There have been some other famous Pantheists, too: novelist D.H. Lawrence, scientist Albert Einstein, architect Frank Lloyd Wright and some other dudes I've never heard of. Apparently Avatar (a little movie recently) has been accused of being Pantheism-ish.

All I know, is that when I get off the ski lift and I start down the hill and I look around at the snow and the hills and the ice crystals, I know something's out there. And I believe in fate, and faith and the Universe's plan for me and I believe that what I do in synch with that, matters. I know that in the breath of the dogs as they race across the silent frozen lake in Maine, there is peace. I know that being a visitor under the ocean when I dive allows me to participate in the world of the fish and the animals and that seeing them interact (such as watching the shrimp and goby share a home) is because Earth says it is so and so it is. I know that in the early morning, in the silence as I canoe across the pond there is hope.

I can sit and look at a heron on the dock at my aunt & uncle's house in New Hampshire and wonder at its being and its shape and color in a way I don't wonder about much else. I believe all is linked and that we are all responsible to each other and to every being and that I am lucky the plants provide me with oxygen. I feel really light in the spring, when everything is blooming. It's all big and whole and a circle that creates energy and us and a system that sustains.

I'm pleased to have a name for this. This feeling I've had for a long while now. This motivation for asking someone to turn off the tap when they aren't using it. This desire to plant a garden and delight when it grows. This energy I have to spend time in nature. This strong belief in the Universe and it's plan for me, which I have the ability to help mold. Pantheism.