Religion

In high school, I loved my US history class.  I didn't love history in general, but this teacher, Mr. M, was really something special.  His class was riveting, like story-time!  He challenged me rigorously in my writing and thinking.  It came as a bit of a shock to teenage me who had previously coasted along getting easy A's based on grammar alone.  Mr. M liked us to organize our papers according to PRIMES:

Political
Religious
Intellectual
Millitary
Economic
Social

It's a good system.  I might approach writing about my recent experiences this way, except for one thing: I can not handle the Political right now.  I'll sum it up like this: politics is torture to me.  Men who want nothing but power are feeding my shame and isolation, because that's what is popular.

On to religion!

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I hope to treat this topic in two pieces: what I think of religion and Laurel, and the very different and more academic topic of my interpretation of religion with respect to abortion.  Today, my internal experience.

I hold the opinion that religious beliefs are intensely personal.  I resent it very much when a stranger knocks on my front door to ask about them.  Perhaps it comes of living in a region with rich religious diversity, or from being raised in a church that celebrates spiritual differences.  Whatever the cause, I am no proselytizer.  I believe my spiritual beliefs are personal, and I don't particularly want to change your mind if you hold different ones.  I can respect good people of all kinds.  I can disdain jerks of all kinds, too.

I am not a deist.  I always hear atheists ask to explain "why not!?"  But I don't even understand that question.  I'm not a deist because I don't believe in one God or in many.

Yet, when writing yesterday about how I felt in the moment I made my choice, I very carefully picked the word, "grace."  I felt full of grace.  For two days, I had felt nothing but anguish.  I had cried until I cried myself out, then cried some more.  But in that moment of turning towards an abortion, it felt as though my very soul was filled with light. 

A more spiritual person might well have felt the same thing and used the term divine grace, or perhaps they would have felt the very presence of God.

Instead, I interpret it as clarity of mind and purity of intent, the feeling of being my best self and doing the very best that I can from a solid foundation of my deepest, most precious values.  Whatever your reading, it is an important sense of goodness from a place of inner peace.  It feels right.

Sometimes I wonder if an expectant mother might have some secret information about her baby, some private intuition.  Sometimes I wonder if I was flooded with this feeling (via god or myself) because I actually was sparing my daughter a fate worse than death.  Maybe people who feel strongly called to carry their pregnancies to term are working on similar knowledge of their own situation -- what if their babies are more likely to be okay than mine?  Maybe somehow they know, and somehow I knew.

Maybe. 

This is a dangerous fancy of mine.  It is a lovely idea, and great comfort for me (who can never know for certain how things would have been if I had not intervened in the pregnancy).  But it does a disservice to all parents who carry to term, praying fervently and listening to their inner wisdom and living with virtue and strength -- only to experience no miracles.  No exceeding of expectations.  No relief for their deserving child's suffering. 

Worse yet, my lovely idea does a disservice to those who get no hunches and whose babies are born still or sick of their own accord -- those parents who never have a prenatal choice presented to them.  No.  These parents are not ignorant or spiritually lacking.  They're just unlucky, like me.  We parents and our sick or deceased children are all unlucky, and there's just no sense to be made of it, no justice to be had.

It is a hard pill.  The writer who has been helping me to swallow it is Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun.  I am no more Buddhist than I am Christian -- that is to say, I draw from both teachers eagerly, Buddha and Jesus, but I don't subscribe to either of their religions.  The Buddhist way of seeking to know the uncomfortable, precarious impermanence of our nonsensical human condition, that has strangely brought me more peace than anything else.  Embracing the unfairness and the pain and the mortality to reach a place of peace and love. 

It's hard work, looking square at my child's mortality and my part in expediting it.  It's not easy to accept randomness and unfairness of the situation.  It's not easy to embrace a sea of sadness.  But when I do, when I can go there, it's a very peaceful place to be.  Above all, it's something I can believe in.