Thought Picnic: Losing my religion

A new realisation

My Christian upbringing is carved from that which I have experienced from my mother; intense, intolerant, cultist, fearful, stressful, encumbering and consequently presumptuous.

Compared to my dad whose Christian devotion is borne of reason and reasonableness whilst still being an active level-headed member of the laity, I have now found that experience and knowledge leaves me quite understanding of Christian doctrine and some interpretation without much affiliation.

Yet, I have my own stories of stupidity and foolishness that I once thought were demonstrations of faith and conviction with guilt seemingly tailoring my instinctive schizophrenia that vacillated between saint and sinner after each breath. It was unhealthy.

Losing my religion

The sum total of my religion is now tending towards the agnostic, I doubt I will ever become an atheist or apostate, there is too much superstition primed into my upbringing to be so entirely rational as to be humanist, experience of the unexplainable indicates there are things that have no clear expository words to relay to others of an unencumbered mind.

There are intricacies about interactions within humanity and inexplicable circumstances be they fate, luck, destiny or providence that make up a mix that is captured in the past, playing out in the present and unknown beyond that. We are all the more products of every kind of influence, direct or otherwise, conscious or subconscious, by commission or by omission, even by nonchalance, indifference or accident.

Finding a place of rest

This becomes the mystery of individuality and commonality, the maze many of us negotiate through success, failure and stagnation, it is why I am sometimes close but mostly distant, having relationships that last decades and others I have never been able to advance to any meaningful end in which loss and grief has been suffered.

Also in that is the inability to cherish familial ties well enough, the unresolved and unforgiven by reason of not communicating looms at every point that the big elephant in the room seems to be not measuring up in many ways that do give others a sense of dissatisfaction about me as I try to be unburdened by the expectations of others. It is my kind of keeping a low profile.

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And yet

Between depression and hurt, the squabbling amongst those who invite me to take sides rather than placate and ameliorate conflict, I am no more sure of who to hold dear or to love. This leaves a sense of the unfulfilled and the unaccomplished, a grasping for something that seems to be out of reach yet driven by the view that anything is still attainable. I am caught in the horns of a dilemma that brings its own excitement.

All the talking and the therapy sessions are running in my head, my discomfiture is one new understanding of the complexity of an individual, the man you see is just a fraction of the man himself.

I started this blog a few days ago having written the first three paragraphs and this was supposed to be linked to the previous blog, I hadn’t finished the third paragraph before I realised that the link that seemed to be well formed as the inspiration for writing did not seem to so well formed after all. I left this blog where it was and went on to write the one before this with a new line of thinking. I returned to finish this blog with a narrative and ending I never before anticipated until now.

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