One of my favourite advice columns in Cheryl
Strayed’s Dear Sugar series was her response to a letter from a woman
questioning the existence of God. Her six-month-old daughter had, against the
odds, survived surgery to remove a brain tumour, and a lot of people had been
praying for her (agnostic) family. The woman told Cheryl that the terrifying
event had left her wondering whether there was such thing as God, and if so,
had he saved her daughter’s life? But if God existed, she wondered, why had he
let her daughter get sick in the first place? Strayed’s reply was, as always, shoulder-droppingly
moving.
“What if you allowed your God to exist in the simple
words of compassion others offer to you? What if faith is the way it feels to
lay your hand on your daughter’s sacred body? What if the greatest beauty of
the day is the shaft of sunlight through your window? What if the worst thing
happened and you rose anyway?”
The reason I love this passage so much is because it
beautifully sums up what religion means to me – not the dedication to
please a supernatural bearded man who condemns and judges, but the innate
compulsion to honour the powerful spirit of love that exists around us and
within us. Something we can channel to give us strength, something that
inspires us to be more and give more, something reflected in the extraordinary
beauty of nature, something that serves as a life raft when we are adrift in
stormy seas. Something vastly more powerful than we could possibly imagine.
It’s sometimes difficult for people to understand how
I can believe in angels and in God yet not conform to any church-based faith.
It’s sometimes difficult for me to explain this.
I realise everyone has their own views on religion,
and I don’t wish to force my views on anyone. I totally understand that there
are all sorts of reasons institutional religion appeals to people – a sense of
certainty, for example. I respect everyone’s right to determine their own
values and faith; this is simply the expression of what feels true for me. To
borrow another Cheryl quote: “My truth is not a condemnation of yours.
Last week I went to a number of sessions at the always-brilliant Sydney Writer’s Festival; one of the standouts for me was social
researcher Hugh Mackay’s talk entitled Finding Meaning Without Religion.
Around two-thirds of
Australians say we believe in God or some ‘higher power’, but fewer than one in
10 of us attend church weekly. To me, that indicates that people are
searching for spirituality in their lives without pledging allegiance to a
church’s definition. We’re individually searching our
hearts for what’s meaningful to each of us. I suspect for many people that
search leads not to stories in ancient lands and gardens, but – as Strayed so
eloquently put it – the “way it feels to lay your hand on your daughter’s
sacred body”. Or as the Dalai Lama says simply: “My religion is
kindness.”
What being religious, or spiritual-but-not-religious,
gives us is a sort of roadmap – albeit sketchy – to navigate this
confusing and sometimes bitterly unfair world. It gives us hope and it gives us
meaning. Essentially, religion is people putting their faith in
something larger than themselves.
If you find that larger thing in scriptures, hymns,
rituals and visits to religious buildings, that’s wonderful. If you don’t, Hugh
suggests you look for your own sense of meaning “in the eyes of the people who
love you, or who are at least prepared to put up with you” (lol). There’s a
Maori proverb from my native New Zealand which says: He aha te mea
nui o te ao. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. That means: What is the most
important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.
I’m paraphrasing here, but what Hugh is suggesting is
we place our faith in the ties that bind us and the love we have for each
other. That is something both tangible and intangible. We often think of
religion in terms of salvation and redemption, yet when you look back to the
darkest periods of your life, who saved you and who helped you find redemption?
I’d wager it was the people who love you.
I’m not at all saying institutional religion is invalid, I’m simply saying that in my personal experience, matters of faith are best reduced to a framework of love and compassion. I find that in the
divine, but I also find it expressed through the people around me.
Hugh explains: “It’s in our DNA to be cooperative
and to form community. The way we form community is to behave in kind, tolerant
and respectful ways towards each other.” Instead of what religion you
belong to, he wants to know: “What kind of world are you dreaming of? And
how does this affect the way you go about your life and treat other people?” Perhaps
this is what Ram Dass was getting at when he suggested we “treat everyone we
meet as God in drag”.
Those questions, Hugh says, are far more important
that what box you tick in the religion question on your census.