Category Archives: spirituality

family, spirituality, the ongoing saga of my job

Catching Up

So, I spent all day at work thinking of things I wanted to put in my blog tonight. Now that it’s time to post… I find myself feeling particularly unmotivated to write… but I’ll do it anyway, for the sake of my audience. So, Beth, Erk, Sheryls (who apparently are the whole of my devoted readership), here’s your latest post.

Last Week: Loni reminded me in conversation of the time a couple months back when I was called in to our supervisor’s office and interrogated about Loni’s habits, particularly regarding religion in the workplace. I’d known I was being led by the verbage of the questions, but I had to answer truthfully. Turns out that Loni did get written up as a result of Mary’s and my comments and answers. She’s apparently prejudiced against other religions, and had treated Mary (a Catholic) in a degrading manner. Loni knows that the “investigation” was started by a complaint from a co-worker. What Loni still doesn’t know, though, is that Mary is the one who started it…

Saturday: The Annual Waterville Community Garage Sale. Usually a treasure-trove of thrifty goodness. This year, however, it was a big piece of crap. I think everyone on our little trip got one thing. I got the best find of the day (IMO), an 11×11″ HP graphics tablet from 1987. (I gotta make this thing work with Photoshop…) Kris got a Vonnegut book, Mark got some 45’s, and Aaron got… um… a book? I forget. Disappointing, to say the least.

Monday: Nothing like a good old-fashioned 12-hour workday to get the blood pumpin’. Been a while since we had one of those. (Been a while since we had two new temps on a Monday.) And afterward, I went to Jerome Library on campus to photocopy wedding music and return the music books Donna had borrowed for me. Had to buy another friggin’ copy card, too, since I gave mine to Aaron when I graduated and thought I’d never need it again. Dammit.

After going to the library, I decided to take a walk around campus. It was nice out, and I’d wanted to take a walk, anyway. I walked all the way across campus, from the library to Shatzel Hall. I was actually scoping out potential wedding photo ops when I climbed the steps of Shatzel and checked out the pillars and the railing — and discovered someone’s CD wallet (which appeared to be a stolen restaurant check folder). Right in the front, once I opened it, was a CD I’ve actually been interested in (but not enough to actually purchase): Zwan. I looked, and thought, and pondered, and left it there. I’m so proud of myself, leaving it there for someone else to steal.

<girlie stuff>
Today: OMG, I am never wearing a thong to work again! I just bought a couple in my last spree of Lane Bryant shopping (sure, $40 is a spree for me), because I didn’t actually own any real thongs, and I was curious. The cute little thongs that came with my wedding lingerie didn’t seem too bad, so I figured, WTF. Never again. I won’t go into graphic detail (which I could), but feeling like I had a wedgie at my workstation all day was no picnic. The point of underwear, to me, is not to have to think about the fact that you’re wearing it. Instead, I alternated between having it up my crack and having it balance stupidly on my ass, very un-thong-like. Neither was comfortable.

— Oh, and BTW, I never realized how dimply my big ass was until I cranked around and looked at it in the mirror at home, framed by the wondrous thong. I know, you didn’t want to think about that. Well, neither did I. Deal.
</girlie stuff>

Mom called me up today, too. She said that her weekly Tuesday visit with Memaw wasn’t… well… very interactive, I guess you could say. Memaw has apparently refused to be kept functioning by mechanical means, otherwise she’d probably be on a respirator by now. She’s on a morphine drip (mmm… morphine…), and isn’t really very coherent. Mom said she sat by the bed and held Memaw’s hand, and every now and then Memaw’d come to and realize who was there, and they’d smile at each other, and then she’d go back to being dazed and in pain. It sounds like she really doesn’t have too much longer now. I hope that’s true. I’ll miss her, but I’ve been missing her for months now, since she’s honestly only a vague likeness of the Memaw I knew. She’s ready to go. Not to say I won’t be sad, but… I’d be sadder to see her carry on like this.

And I can’t really discuss my beliefs (or lack thereof) with Mom right now. She wasn’t comfortable with my departure from stardard Christian Protestantism already — now that Memaw’s about to die, I can’t very well tell Mom that I don’t know if The Entity Formerly Known As Memaw will even exist once she breathes her last breath.

See, I was having this doozie of a brainstorm the other day. If the human soul-personality-consciousness resides in a given body by a series of electrical impulses in the brain, then once the brain stops functioning… what happens to the soul? Well, what happens to computer software when the hardware on which it resides goes bad? You’ve lost it. It’s gone. The only way software can exist is with hardware on which to store it. So… if the only way your unique self will exist is in your brain, then once your brain stops working… poof. No comforting out-of-body experience, no dead relatives, no pearly gates. No fire and brimstone, for that matter.

Which begs the question: if you no longer exist, how do you know? What do you have to compare your non-existence against? If your current universe exists by virtue of your having experienced it, what happens when you no longer have a vantage point? This is the part I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around.

That’s why I liked to believe in an all-encompassing Force or Tao or general life-energy from which we are all born (and perhaps reborn). I used to think that, depending on how strong-willed or charismatic you were, your soul might exist as itself for a little longer before being absorbed into the collective consciousness. But now, after seeing Memaw fade… I don’t know. She is — was — a strong-willed woman, with a sense of humor and opinions and fire. Now, she’s just there. Will her soul live on?

Don’t you think I’d like to believe it will?

Don’t you think I’d like to resubscribe to the Mormon notion that she’ll go to the Spirit World, where she’ll be with her family and old friends and new friends and learn about The Gospel until the Second Coming and the Millenium of peace? Don’t you think I’d like to believe that after the Judgment she’ll make it to perhaps the second level of Heaven (aka the Telestial Kingdom), where most good Mormons will go? And don’t you think I’d like to believe that she will have Eternal, Everlasting Life? Wouldn’t that be more convenient? Simpler? More comforting?

No, instead I have to be in the midst of a little Belief Question & Answer period with myself. Bah.

spirituality

What Religion Are You? The Belief-O-Matic Knows!

Oh, yeah — Merry Christmas. 🙂 As an initial side-note, I visited my Memaw in the crazy two-day Cleveland Christmas Extravaganza (more on that later). She was doing much better than on Thanskgiving, and insisted that she will dance at my wedding. — Now, how do I break it to her that there won’t be dancing…?

So, Beliefnet.com informed me in my daily Hindu Wisdom e-mail that the Belief-O-Matic knows what religion I truly am. Since I’ve recently been curious about this, I answered the 20 questions and awaited the results:

Other notable placers include Nontheism at 60%, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the religion I was raised in and have denounced) at 47%, Hinduism at 46%, Jehovah’s Witness at 35%, and Roman Catholic at a whopping 16%.

First off, I know the percentages are bullshit, because I checked out Match #1, and the Unitarian Universalists do not agree with all the answers I gave. Secondly, the religion I’ve been studying on my own, Pantheism, appears not to be represented at Beliefnet. On the positive side: though they sound particularly harsh to me now, the Mormon beliefs are laid out truthfully and correctly, which gives me hope that the other religions are represented properly, as well.

I’m still not convinced that there’s a religion out there that fits me to a tee. At this point, I’m content with picking and choosing bits and pieces from various religions that sound about right to me.

spirituality

Spirituality

When I was seven years old, I never doubted what was taught to me. I had a Heavenly Father who loved me and wanted me to be happy. If I prayed to Him, he could watch over my friends and loved ones, or bless our food, or make my headache go away. And someday, if I was good, I would go up to Heaven and be with my family Forever.

When I was twelve, I was a young woman of faith and integrity. I knew, as any faithful Mormon youth would, that the Church was true, that Jesus was the Christ, that the Book of Mormon was a true record of His visit to the Americas, that Joseph Smith was a Prophet, and that the president of the Church was a Prophet on earth in these latter-days.

When I was seventeen, I never failed to believe in and act upon what I knew was right. I recognized that many of my peers found my beliefs strange and different, and I thrived on that. Although I began to skip meetings and services, I still knew in my heart that the Church was true.

When I was in college, I began to open my mind to other ideas. I learned about Sociology and the history of the concept of religion. I learned about other belief systems. I roomed with an agnostic who completed her conversion to atheism during the very years I knew her. I stepped back from what I had known all my life. I realized that I didn’t truly believe it anymore. Maybe I never truly did.

Now, at the age of 26, I’ve come to an uncomfortable discovery: I’m ready to believe in something again.

The place that Church and Religion held in my life has not yet been filled with something meaningful. Don’t mistake me to mean that I’m actively seeking a Christian congregation to go join. Or Jewish, or Buddhist, or Islamic, or Wiccan, or Druid. I’m ready to find what I know is right, and true, and good. Maybe God exists. Maybe He actually watches us. (Maybe we’re His bowl of sea monkeys that He stirs up every millenium or three.) Maybe God is only a concept for a Unity that we as humans cannot physically comprehend. Maybe there is a Tao, or a Force, or some other universal power of which we are all part. Maybe we each have much more mental power than we realize. Maybe, when we pray, we make our own prayers a reality, due to our sheer force of undoubting belief. Maybe when we die, we’ll each wink out of existence and into oblivion and the impossibly profound concept of non-existence.

I don’t know.

I don’t pretend to have the answers. Diana’s Manual of Spiritual Consciousness doesn’t exist — and if it did, it would only apply to me, and me alone. You would have to determine what applied to you, and adapt the knowledge to your own beliefs. I don’t hold the answers.

…But once I figure something out, I’ll let you know.