I use a lot of words and habits that may seem, to an outside observer, religious. For instance, if I'm entering a scary scenario or I receive some immense blessing I may be known to cross myself. I think it's a nice way to remind yourself to be grateful and perhaps to steel your resolve when entering choppy waters, but it doesn't have very much to do with my relationship to the Catholic god.
If you can't tell, I have grown up with little to no religion, only going to church with my Baptist grandmother a handful of times. This has given me some repulsion from all organized religion, generally, that I'm only softening in my most recent years.
When I talk to people about religion, they look at me with big, glossy bug eyes and say "Parker, are you religious?" and I look back at them with my big, glossy bug eyes and say "Yes." and I can see the convulsions of confusion and heart palpations of fear course through their body. Though, the whole organized religion thing isn' really where it's at for me.
I'm in the top 10 of the biggest fans of picking and choosing, and I must say it's a beautiful life to live. Enjoy prayer or confession but don't enjoy touching little boys? You don't have to! You can take the good and leave the bad, and then go and do that to pretty much every religion! Like transformers! You can take all the cool parts and make one big, highly unique, customizable religion.
Aldous Huxley talks about this in his seminal philosophy book "The Perennial Philosophy." Essentially he says that all mysticism follows a couple common threads that are inextricable from humanity. It's not a crazy thought, in fact it seems a little common sense to me in this day and age, but that must be because it was popularized in part by him. He presents lots of compelling evidence from Buddha, Jesus, Eckhart, the Upanishads, etc... to convince the audience of his belief. It's really quite compelling if you can slog through his sometimes nitpicky and boring points.
I do not present as the #1 religion guy but I have to say, it's kind of weird that one can present as not religious at all! It's been somewhere in the ballpark of 63,000 years of being religious, why would the last 2,000 change so much?
This is a topic that one could write several books upon, something I could maybe do in a couple years but not now. I'll sum it up with two words that I think work well: technology & disenfranchisement.
Thank you for coming to my incomprehensible sermon, enjoy your day!
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