My Spiritual Void
Feb 26, 2009 Family, I Forgot to Tag, Parenting, Plunges, Thoughts and Perceptions
Last weekend, at my girlfriend’s 30th birthday party a stranger leaned in to me and whispered “To be Godless is to be mindless.” and walked away.
“Hm.” I thought to myself, while sipping my umpteenth vodka-cran. “What a Freuding ASSHOLE.”
I looked for him, but strangely enough he had disappeared. I am not even sure that I got a good enough look at his face to be able to really identify him from the next sap at the party. So there I stood, seething at the audacity of this unrequested, unsolicited comment from the unknown man at the private party. The room throbbed with great music and an air of celebration, yet I what pulsated through my veins was the fact that someone pushed their beliefs in my eardrum… without allowing me an opportunity to rebut.
How dare he assume that I was Godless!
Who is he to decide what it truly means to be Godfull?!
I have been thinking about this comment. It replays in my mind over and over again as I try to make sense as to why he decided to tell me, and not someone else. Did I look interested in his beliefs? Did I look like someone who would resonate spiritually with this statement?
Obviously… right? Cause here I sit 6 days later, absorbing each and every syllable.
I have come to the conclusion that I could have quite possibly been over thinking his statement. Even if I was not over thinking it, I have begun to process exactly why a cord struck when his breath hit the side of my face. I think it is because I have run from anything religious since I was a teenager. I am uneducated and ignorant on most things “Godly”. Other than the small stints of summer bible camp with my grandparents every summer, and an interest in AWANA when I was 13… I have no experience in organized faith. I do not draw support from any church, in fact the few times that I have gone to church in recent years, I have felt uncomfortable and out of place. My parents are not religious… in fact my mom was removed from the entire Mormon community for dating a black man. They both left the doors open for my brother and I to explore it for ourselves… but I never really did…
A few years ago, I posted a blog about my concerns internally that I was denying my kids (well, kiD at the time) the experience of church and faith and … that piece of life that I was not given. As I watch my kids grow up, I still wonder if I am a bad parent… one who is making a faith decision for them. How does one introduce it? If I am not sure what or WHO I believe in… how am I supposed to guide my kids in the right direction? When these questions arise, I feel like finding a big rock and crawling under it. I just prefer not to talk about anything that has to do with it, and it is 100% because of my lack of information.
And then there is Chrissa. Someone who is so important to me, someone who believes so deeply in her own faith. I am inspired by her, I admire her, but I am also jealous of her strength in this avenue. I have read several things that she has written where regardless of mention of faith… I could tell that it was drawn from something that she experienced within her church community. Maybe it isnt that I am jealous of her strength in her faith, maybe it is that she has been so lucky to find a sanctuary where she can go and just be Chrissa. I have yet to step foot into a place where I know that I belong. And I know that until I do… until I am able to fully release any and all biases, uncomfortable feelings and stigmas… I will feel this void within my spirit.
There is a void within my spirit.
I can run and hide from it until I take my last breath, but it will be there for as long as I try to deny it.
Has someone ever given you an unsolicited statement, or piece of advice that you may not have wanted… but it resonated anyway?
How did you process it?
What do you take from the statement “To be Godless is to be mindless?”
Tags: awana, celebration, church, faith, god, godless, mindless, party, spirit, unsolicited advice, void
