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God and Faith and the 'Good Book'
Aug. 3rd, 2011 10:12 pmFrom The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
Thus our experience and perception of God in the world may be limited and different, may even change, but that doesn't define or limit the Source.
People quite often think I'm pretentious when, daring to ask of whether I am religious or not (daring because I was always told never ask about religion or politics), I will tell them that I'm not a religious person, I'm a spiritual one… but to me there is a big difference. To me, God and spirituality don't necessarily go hand in hand… and I certainly don't have to be of a particular religious persuasion to have a spiritual experience.
Case in point… two of them just to prove it:
A long while ago, a friend and I were engaged in a series of… I suppose you'd call them 'rituals' meant to empower and rebalance the earth. During one of these, in the middle of the Rollright Stones in Oxford, I felt as if an unseen person had stepped up behind me and joined with me in my part of the ritual… and for the skeptics among us, I could still see my friend, so I knew it wasn't him. For me, as a Wiccan, this was a spiritual experience.
More recently than this, as a teacher in a Catholic school, I was required to go with the children to mass. (Still a Wiccan, and that was quite an experience in and of itself.) On one such occasion, having just sat down from receiving the blessing (couldn't take the host – not Catholic), I felt as though someone had put their hand onto my shoulder. I turned around, thinking the teacher behind was trying to attract my attention, to find her happily kneeling in prayer – not her then, but someone definitely did, and it was too big to have been one of the children. Shortly thereafter, I was – for no reason at all, (it was silent in church) – suddenly moved to tears; another spiritual experience… just as powerful as the first and not a hint of being tied to any one religion.
The human soul is to God is as the flower to
the sun; it opens as it approach, and shuts
when it withdraws.
--Benjamin Whichcote
Thus our experience and perception of God in the world may be limited and different, may even change, but that doesn't define or limit the Source.
People quite often think I'm pretentious when, daring to ask of whether I am religious or not (daring because I was always told never ask about religion or politics), I will tell them that I'm not a religious person, I'm a spiritual one… but to me there is a big difference. To me, God and spirituality don't necessarily go hand in hand… and I certainly don't have to be of a particular religious persuasion to have a spiritual experience.
Case in point… two of them just to prove it:
A long while ago, a friend and I were engaged in a series of… I suppose you'd call them 'rituals' meant to empower and rebalance the earth. During one of these, in the middle of the Rollright Stones in Oxford, I felt as if an unseen person had stepped up behind me and joined with me in my part of the ritual… and for the skeptics among us, I could still see my friend, so I knew it wasn't him. For me, as a Wiccan, this was a spiritual experience.
More recently than this, as a teacher in a Catholic school, I was required to go with the children to mass. (Still a Wiccan, and that was quite an experience in and of itself.) On one such occasion, having just sat down from receiving the blessing (couldn't take the host – not Catholic), I felt as though someone had put their hand onto my shoulder. I turned around, thinking the teacher behind was trying to attract my attention, to find her happily kneeling in prayer – not her then, but someone definitely did, and it was too big to have been one of the children. Shortly thereafter, I was – for no reason at all, (it was silent in church) – suddenly moved to tears; another spiritual experience… just as powerful as the first and not a hint of being tied to any one religion.
