Meditation and Spirituality For The Sake Of Being Spiritual

Since my diagnosis roughly 3 months ago, the spiritual side of me has become more alert and awake. Today when I ran into my primary care physician outside of the office, he asked me how I was doing and I told him I was doing well...that I was "watching & waiting". He said how he would hate that, not being able to actively fight. He looked me in the eye then and said, "It's got to make a person religious."
For me, I do not believe that CLL has made me religious, it has made me spiritual.
I have done religious. Growing up as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, I was very religious. I was so religious that I was terrified that God was going to strike me down the day that I came to the realization that Jehovah's Witnesses do not have sole rights to "truth". I remember the day that I gathered the courage to explore other religions, other denominations within Christianity. I will never forget the fear and exhilaration that I felt when I walked through the doors of a mainstream Christian church. As a JW, we were taught that other Christian religions were of  "Christendom", and were the "Great Harlot" and that churches were houses for demons. I was overcome with emotional release at being free from what had felt like chains of mental imprisonment. I felt the love of God as He led me out. Please do not get me wrong. There are many good JW people. People with good hearts who just want to do the right thing. I just feel that they are being horribly deceived by an organization of fallible, imperfect, men.

My hunger for the spiritual has always been strong. I have always been able to find the spiritual, the awe inspiring, the amazing and unearthly in the mundane. I have always loved God. I devoured the plethora of Christian literature, music and prayers that had been off limits to me before. It was as if I had been starved for years and then thrown into an all-you-can eat buffet. I could not get enough. I had looked outside the box I had been living in, and I was in love with what I found. I felt such freedom. Freedom because no one came to my house in suit and tie to check in with me if I did not attend a meeting or get the required number of hours in the door to door ministry that month. I felt freedom because main stream Christianity seemed to love everyone. Accept everyone. Because isn't that what Christ was about? About love? About acceptance. About reaching out to those who were broken and bandaging them up?

But within a few years, I began to feel disillusioned. I looked around and realized that most of the followers of Christ, picked and chose which verses they would deem the most important, and then use those verses to make a safe and comfy world for themselves to live in. A world that was filled with people who thought just like they did. I was disillusioned when it seemed to me that the Christian "right" were the one of the most unloving, judgmental, greedy group of people around. More concerned with individual rights than taking care of their brother. More concerned with homophobia than with obesity, greed, lying...etc.

And perhaps it is my Jehovah's Witness upbringing, but I was never able to wrap my mind around hell. Hell. It is preached in most churches and is the most horrific, awful, gut wrenching, unloving, unkind teaching that anyone could dream up. I mean after all, its not as if your tortured for a moment and then you die. No. Your tortured for eternity. Without let up. Forever. And ever. For a choice you made as a broken hurting human. I've talked about it before, I know. But if God is love...then there is no hell. And if there is a hell...then God is not who He says He is.

But now, now I feel like I have opened Pandora's box, because I do not know what I believe. Who put the books of the bible together? Are they really the inspired word of God? Because if they are, there are so many questions. So very many questions. I continue to move through the questions, cherishing the journey.
 I think that God is bigger than our mistakes. I think that God is bigger than our denomination. God is more than a gender. A race. A religion. A sexual orientation. I do not think we can box God into human form, but I think that we try very hard to do just that.

Lately I have found peace in Christian Mysticism, in Meditation, chants, peace, stillness. I listen to Jewish Rabbi's and Enlightened Catholic Monks, to Buddhist teachers and spiritual philosophers. I light incense and candles and close my eyes and rest in a stillness that is so profound that I cannot give it words. I can only sense it with my spirit. A connection to life, the source of life, God, other humans, nature...a beautiful connection that requires nothing of me, except that I receive it. And I have decided that it is okay to live with the questions. Questions are part of the great experience of this life. For some, unanswerable questions are more than they can bear, and so they choose to cut the spirituality out of their life like a cancer. For me, I just keep walking towards it, because I love God. Do you think that God could be angry because we chose to worship incorrectly? I cannot put that much humanity into the Source of life.

Thoughts on Wonderful

(This is Peanut, the little life inside my sister Jenna)

When I first began this post, I had initially titled it "Thoughts On Tragedy". My sister Jenna (you can read her blog here) is expecting a baby this August, and until a few weeks ago she thought that everything was perfect. But everything wasn't perfect as her 20 week ultrasound showed. The baby boy growing inside of her is not perfect.

20 years ago I walked into labor and delivery with a perfect daughter inside of my body. A child I had known intimately for 9 months. A child I had named, dreamed about, sang to and loved. Hours later, I lay in a hospital room with my daughter, only I felt as if she were a changeling from an old fairy story. She was not perfect. She was broken. The list of what was wrong with her was so long it threatened to wrap itself around my throat and refuse me another breath. It took a couple of hours before I could even hold her. I felt betrayed and alone. I did hold her though, and God poured his love through her eyes into mine and I saw that she was perfect after all.

I wonder now, as I think back on the life and death of my daughter Whitney, whether I would have wanted to know ahead of time what was going to be. I think about Jen, carrying her baby that for 20 weeks was perfect, was hers. Now he is someone else. She has 4 months left to think and contemplate on what life will bring when he is born. 4 months to worry if he will be okay.

There is good and bad in both I suppose.

Whitney had something entirely different than Nick and Jen's baby. He may have something far gentler, or it could be much more severe. Tests and time will tell.

I absolutely hate that my sister has to endure this. I am angry that she cannot continue to be the Jenna 'before'. But I praise God, because she will never be the Jenna "before" again. She will be so much stronger, be filled with love she never knew existed, and have an empathy born inside of her that she never knew possible "before". If you knew my sister, you would know that this is saying a lot. She is loving, caring, giving and empathetic already. She is a mother, every inch of her a mother.

I ask your prayers for little "peanut". I believe in the promises of God and the miracles that he can and does cause to be because of prayer. I know that if it is His good will, that He will heal that precious life inside of my sister, and make him whole and healthy and strong. But I know too, that if His will is something else, that it will be just as beautiful. I look at the ultrasound photo of him and my chest cannot contain the love I feel. I am literally brought to my knees with the enormity of it. I cannot imagine how Nick and Jenna must feel. He is so beautiful and wonderful. His disease is a tragedy, but he is a miracle.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:1-5 ff. (NIV)