Some Thoughts About God, Religion & Spirituality
What makes Virgil interesting is that in addition to being a damn fine detective he is also a writer, an avid fisherman and a bit of a playboy.
But he is also another thing. He is a spiritualist. He thinks about God. Just for a while. But every day.
God Is Thought About...A Lot
There are a lot of people in the world who think about God. Relatively few of us are raised without some sort of religious influence. We are taught about God, whether his name is Allah, Buddha or Jesus or whatever.
All these gods, and there are a ton of them, are defined in pretty much the same way. They are all benevolent. They all have rules by which we must abide, in order to obtain our eternal reward. And they all espouse love for our fellow man.
So, when you look at it that way, you have to really start to wonder what the hell is going on.
Because ever since people started worshiping these gods who exist as symbols of love and peace and benevolence, the primary activities on this planet have been hatred and war and intolerance.
And all in the name of God.
Is Religion Really Necessary For Spirituality?
I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty strange.
I was raised as a Roman Catholic. I was baptized, took my first communion and was confirmed in the Catholic church. I was also an alter boy and a member of the Columbian Squires, which was like a junior league of the Knights of Columbus, which is the old boy’s network of the Catholic Church.
But one day in the summer of my 14th year on this planet, I was lying on the grass under a tree in Oaks Park in Fort Erie, thinking about God when something happened.
A question popped into my head.
The question was, “If God is all-present, as the Catholic religion and, well, probably every other religion that has a single god tells us, why do I have to go to a special place to worship or be close to my god?”
This question was really the beginnings of a revelation that changed my life. Because it stuck in my head and would not leave. And on the Sunday following that ‘revelation’, for want of a better word, I asked my mother that same question.
My mother was a pretty devoted Catholic herself. But I think she just liked to get all dolled up to go to church, cause she was a bit of a cutie. And it was kind of a social thing back then as much as it was a ‘religious’ thing. And that's alright. A lot of people look at it that way.
She stared at me for quite a while. I could tell she was thinking it through. Then she just shrugged her shoulders and said."I don’t have an answer, honey. At least not a good one….but I’m going to church. You can come if you want.”
Finding God By Losing Religion
And that was that.The day I excommunicated myself from the Catholic church.
I didn’t really think of it in those terms. And I honestly didn’t really mind going to church. It was very peaceful there. There was good energy and there was something strangely seductive about all that prayer going on in Latin.
I didn’t know it at the time but it was the beginning of my evolution from religion to spiritualism.
I thought about god a lot after that and it took a number of years before I was able to think of god as anything but the religious icon that the Catholic Church had burned into my brain.
But one day in February 1979, I finally understood. Because that was the day I first saw my son Daniel come into the world.
And on that day, and in that moment, it became clear to me that God is not something that is apart from us. God is something we all have inside us.
We Are God. And God Is Us.
And just like the Catholic Church taught me, God really is all-present.
If we could only see that.
If we could only strip away the veneer of dogma that forces the separation between us. If we could only learn to see clearly how much alike we are. If we could only learn to ignore the meaningless differences and get on with living this miracle as part of one God, which is all we really are, who knows how far that could take us.
I know this will never happen. Because let’s face it, not everybody here on earth lives in the same century.
We are seeing that quite clearly in the rise of terrorist groups who hide behind the notion that they are doing their gods' work by killing the infidels. We see it in the rise of fundamentalism and the astonishing number of charlatans who prey on religious people to line their pockets while they promise these poor souls salvation and other forms of false hope. We see it in the way religion is interwoven with politics and how god is used too often as nothing more than some talking point, and the bible is used as a hammer instead of a pillow.
If you have moved beyond the belief that god exists only as a religious construct welcome to the club. If you are among the faithful, I wish you all the spiritual fulfillment you can get. Because at the end of the day, spiritual fulfillment is really what god all about.
If your business has reached the point where talking to an experienced communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.
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