Hot button issues..let’s get some of those out of the way. COVID has taken the world. I guess that’s a big topic. It is in circles I’m in. First off, I’m vaccinated. Completed my Pfizer jabs in April. All went well. Completed my shingles series earlier this year. First one of those put me in the bed for about 2 weeks. I was really sick. Second-nothing. I have no problem with vaccines-I don’t understand the uproar-well, I understand it from a behavior point of view. I remember when the community received sugar cubes for polio. There is a story about social media for another day but my great uncle was a pharmacist. His brother was a medical doctor. So was his son. We take medicine pretty serious. Ppl I knew died from COVID last year..more this year. I’ve never seen medicine and science as political but rather common sense.
Politics I’m skipping for now. Moving on to weather. It’s getting cooler. It’s a nice change but I’m getting tired of hot weather and cold weather. I don’t have central heat or A/C any longer so it’s tough at times. This summer hasn’t been so bad. Last February I thought the cat and I would freeze to death. It wouldn’t warm up. There’s only so much 30-40 degree (F) high temps I can take with a space heater but we made it. Not sure how many more years I have. My memory is going and it won’t take much to get me down for good. Fell in the tub one night and kept thinking..what will the girls do when they find me days later? I made it out after some time but I made some changes. More on my health later.
And then we come to what I have been avoiding posting. For years I searched for meaning in life. I believed if I shared what was important to me that I would find others with similar quests – and answers. What I found wasn’t what I sought. I came from a background of love and inclusion – not this exclusion type of belief. I met ppl from all walks of life and various religious beliefs. It was the best thing that I could have been exposed to. I saw the goodness of others and the bad..I saw ppl posing as good who were really selfish and bigots..can I say that? I had a love of life and ppl. I wanted to share that with others. I was shocked at ppl on social media and in real life. Friends weren’t really friends. I had to learn to accept that and it was tough. By 2017, I was trying to rationalize my belief in a god of love compared to a god who would send ppl to an eternity of hell for lack of belief or they didn’t pray the right prayer or they weren’t baptized with the right amount of water or someone didn’t chant the right incantation at the right time or they didn’t give enough – tithe or gift – or their heart wasn’t pure enough or they just didn’t ask for forgiveness……and on and on. By 2018, I was trying to hang onto my faith by saying I believed in a universal god – that everyone was included in the eternity of the next life and not judged that their god was the wrong one. That didn’t last long and I knew it wouldn’t. I knew where I was headed. I didn’t want to let go but by end of 2018 I left my faith. I’ve needed to write about this for a long time. Ppl have asked me why and there are a lot of reasons but the biggest one was that my god – my god belief – just wasn’t big enough. That’s the simple truth of it. Today I am a humanist.
Something happened when I realized this. The conflict was over. I felt a weight lifted. I also felt that I had to give up everything to get to this point of peace and I do mean peace. It was the most energizing peace I have felt for the longest time. You see there was a thing about non belief that I began to admire and that is the good ppl do is genuine. There is no threat of hell or promise of heaven. It’s purely doing for one another. As I learned in my newfound belief or non belief I also realized I was living on faith but without faith. Now that sounds strange but you can actually hold on too tight. It’s not really faith. So when I left I felt I was living more like what I was supposed to be living as a Christian. I’ve lost friends because of this change and others have distanced themselves from me. It is what it is. There is way more about this I want to write but not now. I will have to add that all of the ppl who used to yell at me every day that I was going to hell when I was a Christian….well, that had an impact and so did the many ppl who judged others so harshly. I also learned that just as all theists are not alike — neither are atheists. I don’t fit in there either. So as usual I’m marching to the beat of my own drum – singing my own tune – and learning that isn’t such a bad thing. 🙂
Garden2day 