Jun 06 2008
Joys of Retirement SEVEN - Becoming Spiritual
Joy of Retirement SEVEN - the joy of Becoming a Spiritual Adult is the greatest joy!
Faith and Spirit don’t have to be sad and stodgy. The church I attended as a child soon lost me once I attained the age of “reason.” I had questions and there had to be reasons and explanations. Nope. Just believe, I was told, because the church says so. I won’t even go into details because it is so sad…a sad commentary on our religious leaders and on our religious faith. There seemed to me at a very early age to be little that made sense out of what we were told was sinful. And all the “fire and brimstone” talk didn’t make a “loving God” seem very real. I quickly lost faith in my religious mentors. So did most of my cohorts…it was all pretty much over for us by the eighth grade. If fourteen-year-olds could tell it didn’t make sense, then we pretty much lost respect for adults who continued to try to sell this to us. Either they were trying very hard to sell us a bill of goods that they couldn’t believe in anymore themselves, or else they were simpletons who never advanced to the age of reason. In either case, I, for one, found them to be sad and out of touch. Many of these most vocal religious leaders have been discredited, revealed as hypocrites, sanctimonious phonies, sexual perverts and predators. Shameful examples of the religious ministry of Christ which they claimed to represent.
Fifty-some years later, in retirement, I have some time to consider that “Something” greater than ourselves, and more and more feel that the “Something greater” is part of us, within us, and that we ourselves are part of “Something greater.”
We could all be pretty content if we only followed our hearts. Most of the organized religious groups in the world depend on fear and guilt to control their memberships. Mostly religion is about earthly power and earthly greed.
When I began to believe that the Universe is integral to my being and that my being is integral to the Universe, I began to find meaning in every day drudgery. I began to believe that it does matter what I do and say. That I do matter. I believe in Passion, Love, and “being” rather than doing. The beliefs that came out of the far east and India, the traditions, the many aspects of the truth that have been passed down for thousands of years, these beliefs that should have been honored in the messages of Jesus’ ministry, were obscured, ignored, falsified, and hidden from generations of the followers of Judaism and Christianity. Now it has come full circle, and the beliefs are united as one. In the Truth there is only One.
