Name a person I wish I didn’t have to deal with today…
It is a Sunday, I don’t see many people outside of family on Sunday so there is not physical person I wish to avoid. I actually want to spend time with them.
However, since it is a Sunday… I suppose one could say that I wish I could avoid God.
I guess it would be better said that I lost Jesus, and wish to avoid him. For so long God and Jesus were so deeply intertwined in my thinking in some ways. I have been a lifelong agnostic theist. Last Easter, I read some posts and as I pondered what was intended to be a triumphant message about Christ and I decided then and there that the tradition of my ancestors was inherently and devilishly flawed and that I could not do it any more. It is hard to let a tradition like that go, but it flew away. It broke my heart in a way, as well. I tremendously respect religion, as flawed as it is, the flaws rest in human interpretation and manifestations… but at the core of them is something that is more dramatic, it is about community. So, now it was learning how to relate to my community in the absence of Christ as someone I found relate-able.
The spiritual life of the human is something I have always found intriguing; from the days as a 8 year old who was deeply disappointed that the Greek gods did not exist and a move into a Roman Catholic school which edged in to time spent among dutch reformed Christians (again in school, not by choice and a dreadful experience), to my days as a deacon in my ancestral church.
I see God, but he has no name.
Blair Necessities 
I’ve fallen away from the traditions of the church since my latest move (going on three years, omg!). I would like to say that my three attempts I’ve made to the local catholic church warrant my absence, but it doesn’t, I should keep trying. (Catholic guilt at its finest) In reality I liked my old church and how welcome I was there. I love teaching there all those years. But what I’ve come to understand is that I love my church, maybe not so much of my religion. The previous pope changed our mass and I can’t find my way with it. I used to love mass. I keep thinking I’ll learn it and then love it eventually, but it hasn’t happened and I keep slipping further and further away. I wonder what that means? I’m totally rambling, your post clearly spoke to me and is causing great thought. In the end…I love. I love everyone with so much of my soul. I want to do good all the time and I’d help anyone who needed help – to me that is Jesus and God and Mary….whatever you want to call it. I don’t think we need to show up on Sunday to prove our love, it’s what’s in our heart.
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justcath – it is the traditions that I loved, but they became rather meaningless to me last year. I struggle with that so much. To me, as an agnostic theist, church is about community and I am just not feeling it much of anywhere. The huge irony being that I love the new Pope and think his message is so important that I want to go where he wants us to go and I am just not finding any path there that feels right.
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