Agnostic Christian?

In a work ‘break-out session’ during our college’s opening day activities, I participated in a group activity about identity. We had to make a little pipecleaner sculpture representing 4 parts of our identity, and I chose marital status/region/sprituality/family structure. I was a mother, wife, from Seattle and….agnostic.

When I said the words out loud I almost fainted. It’s the first time I’ve ever said that out loud, especially to viritual strangers. And when the president of the college (who happened to be in my group) and another group member went in explaining their identities and said they had also chosen spirituality, and said they were Christian, I noticed myself all aflutter inside. My first reaction was to say “wait, I meant Christian. Yeah, I’m  Christian, you guys, don’t listen to anything I say,” but I didn’t say that. I just felt it. The uncomfortable desire to want to fit back in.

It was an honest answer in an honest moment. Though sometimes the answer will be Christian. And sometimes I might say Buddhist. Because I feel like I’m all of those things. Buddhist. Christian. Agnostic. I’m not sure how those labels all work together, but they feel true in this moment. Just like sexuality, it’s hard for me to quite fully feel encompassed by one label. But that’s for another post.

So here I am, in this place of unbelief and belief.

We went to church last Sunday and it was so sweet. I didn’t feel cynical and angsty. The songs were lame and I sang them anyway. Potamus sang with us, in his little toddler cooing, ahhing, voice. He paid attention during the sermon, though the little bag of cheddar bunnies was far too crinkly for  my liking. We chatted with people afterward and it felt lovely to have a sense of community.

And yet I wasn’t convinced. It felt like home, but it didn’t feel like answers. It just was. I was. Like floating in warm water, rather than trying to fight a current, or swim upstream, or any other cliche about something being a struggle. I feel okay with where I am. Like maybe the answers will come to me, or maybe they won’t but as long as I’m asking questions I’ll be okay.

Though I’m not going to tell my parents the whole agnostic bit. Because they’d probably shit themselves. And that’s just not something I’m interested in cleaning up.

…and nothing but the truth

Yesterday my bestie loaned me a book that her grandpa recommended: Proof of Heaven by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander. It was a fascinating story chronicling  his decline into a week-long brain-dead coma caused by bacterial meningitis, where he has a near death experience. There was even an adoption theme woven throughout (where the guardian he meets in ‘heaven’ turns out later to be his biological sister that had died right before he reunited with his biological family. It was fascinating to read such a skeptical doctor, with such a great knowledge of medicine and the brain, write about this very personal and beautiful near death experience where he became enlightened spiritually. Super cool.

Except it is all bullshit.

Well, maybe not all, but I gobbled the book up in a few hours the afternoon sunshine, and was so excited that I googled the book. And found a link to an article debunking the whole thing. Well, maybe not debunking the actuality of the experience on the other side, but certainly debunking all the medical aspects of the story. Like how the doctor didn’t have the most rarest form of bacterial meningitis, that according to the doctor (who treated him) it was a medically induced coma and that he was actually conscious during that week, though in a very hallucinatory state.

Ouch.

Of course this back and forth ‘is it true, is it not true?’ thoughts come on the week of Zen pen where were are exploring writing from our soul. To be honest, my soul feels so torn by all of the spiritual mumbo jumbo about. I want to believe…in something…anything. No, I don’t want to believe in something, I want something to be true. I want to have confidence in something. I sometimes even want to believe in the Christian stories that  I was taught as a kid/teenager/young adult. Something. I feel like  I’m floating in the abyss of unbelief, a hungry ghost of a soul, wailing and looking for truth that doesn’t exist.

Except, at one time, that truth existed for me. While not a coma-induced near death experience, I once, at such a low point that I thought of death as an option, had a vision/hallucination/psychotic break(?) where I saw Jesus (at least that’s who I perceived him to be, it was a glowing white robed shining figure) who picked me up in his hand, out of a dark hole, and put me on a grassy field. I wasn’t depressed after that for almost 2 years. It was because of that experience that I was baptized as a Christian and started to attend church regularly. While I’m not proud of my fundie evangelical years, that experience was beautiful and authentic and clearly what I needed in that moment of time.

But here I am now, 12 years later, and not even sure God exists, let alone the whole religion based off some dude who lived a bunch of years ago. It feels like a ‘dark night of the soul,’ if I were to couch it in religious terms, though at this point…what’s a soul anyway?

I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I’m tired of feeling lied to, tricked, hoodwinked, duped, and confused.

 

Living your own Cloud Atlas?

I took this photo of performers when I was living in Jaipur, Rajasthan India.

So, on the recommendation of a friend, last week I indulged in the 2 hour 52 minute movie, Cloud Atlas. If you’re not familiar, the basic premise of Cloud Atlas is that souls are eternal, and are born into different bodies in different times and interact with other souls. This particular movie shows quite a few love connections across the ages, with souls somehow finding and interacting with one anther…really showing the meaning of SOULmate!

The idea of reincarnation was foreign and forbidden just a few years ago, but lately, I’ve begin to wonder….what if? There are quite a few interesting reads out there in book form, or on the internet, trying to prove that reincarnation exists. In some sense, it makes practical sense, since, if we believe that souls are eternal, what are they doing before we are born, and after we die, as we (in the Christian tradition) are sitting around waiting for the final judgment and re-establishment of paradise. It seems a lot to have an eternal soul that only gets to be in an Earthly body for max 100 years (and many, for much much shorter times).

One interesting story I came across, was that of Anne Frank/Barbro Karlen. Apparently, very young children, often ‘remember’ having past lives, and in some cases, these ‘lives’ are able to be figured out to be actual people. I watched a documentary once where a kid remembered being a pilot in war, and the details added up to be a real dude. So, in this case, Barbro was a young girl born in Sweden 10 years after Anne Frank died in Bergen Belsen, the story goes on to say:

hen she was less than three years old, Barbro told her parents that her name was not Barbro, but Anne Frank. Barbro’s parents had no idea of who Anne Frank was, as the book, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, also known as The Diary of Anne Frank, had not yet been translated or published in Swedish.

I can’t imagine having this happen to me, in such a detailed and difficult way. Barbro wrote about how hard it was for her as a young girl telling people who she really was, and feeling like she was a different person (having trouble calling her parents her parents), because people didn’t seem to believe her. And then discovering, at age 10, that her diary had been published and that she was really a famous person. Mind tripping!

But…less drastic than that, are those deja vu or other experiences people have where they report, “we had an instant connection,” or, “it was like I had been there before!” Has that ever happened to you? Other people say that if you have a particularly strong affinity for a certain location in the world, or particular time periods (like WWII or ancient Egypt).

Which makes me wonder, about some of my own affinities. Like, my obsession with India, and how I would confess to my close friends, that I am “brown on the inside,” meaning, that I actually felt Indian on the inside…which is a strange thing for a white girl to say, you know? And then I had a dream where I was seeing India from my own eyes, which sparked a trip there. Other things I feel an affinity for are ancient Egypt, WWII, and indigenous people in North America (either/both PacNW or plains). But, when I listen to the rational part of my brain, I just wonder if I feel an affinity toward those places is because I learned about them in school. Also, how can by interest in mermaids be explained? Ha! I’ve also had experiences where I’ve met someone and we instantly click…could that be meeting a soul I’ve known before? Perhaps?

So, what are your thoughts on the possibility of reincarnation? Any experiences where you were like “whoa, I’ve been here before,” or instantly connect with someone where you just feel like you’ve known them before? Do share!

Premonitions?

At what point does someone become considered a psychic? Or a medium? Or a fortune teller? And what point is it all just a big coincidence?

Because, some freaky shit’s been going on for awhile now, and I’m starting to wonder…

For example: I have, with 100% accuracy, predicted the gender of over 7 pregnant women in my life…including my own pregnancy AND a few people that I only know online. And two of those pregnancies I also predicted when their baby would be born.

And then there’s the matter of my mother-in-law. Last July I was heading with her to my best friend’s wedding. I cam to pick her up early and she said, “we have a few minutes, I’m going to go downstairs to put on my makeup.” As she was heading down the stairs I said, jokingly, “don’t dislocate your hip! We don’t have time for that today!”

She didn’t hear me, but about 5 minutes later she starts calling my name, and I rush downstairs finding her slumped over, hip dislocated, going in and out of consciousness. Yeah. Hip disolocated. Granted, she has a history of hip dislocation, but still, it was quite…uncanny.

It’s been 10 months, and grandma watches Potamus 2 days a week. We’ve been going along swimmingly, and then, last week I started to feel worried. Not my normal unfounded anxiety worry, it was something different. And I said, “I think you need to start carrying your cell phone with you, especially when Potamus is here, because I think you’re due to dislocate your hip.” Everyone laughed, but I was being serious.

And then, yesterday, at lunch with my sister-in-law, I said it again: “I’m worried about your mom. I think she’s going to dislocate her hip.”

Not 40 minutes after I pick up Potamus from her care, did I get the call that she had dislocated her hip and I was needed to let the firefighters/EMT’s into the house (they couldn’t find the spare key and she didn’t want them to break down the door).  When I talked to my sister-in-law, I just kept remarking about the fact that we had JUST discussed it earlier that day and that I was really concerned.

So what do I make of all of this? Are premonitions real? Is it just a coincidence? Because I have several more experiences like this, and they just seem so strange!

Thoughts? Have you ever had a premonition that has come true?