Does this count as my morning page?

As we reclined last night digesting the delicious veggie enchilada surprise Joan (Jay's mom) made along with the 3,000 pound zucchini cake topped with real heavy whipping cream, the subject turned as it often does to talk of the heart and of God and what we thought about all that and where we were. I met Jay and Shelli a year and a half ago and we talked about the same things and at the time I think we were all in different places than where we are now. Jay remarked that it was interesting that when we get together, it seems like the conversation always turns here, while it seems that in general, when people who are all over the map in terms of their hunches and ideas about God get together, this is one of the most avoided topics.

I realized that with almost everybody we've visited or met so far on the trip, we've talked about spirituality a lot. That doesn't surprise me too much since making some connection with that universal presence is a big part of this trip for both of us, and I think we both feel like we're floundering around in murky water. Sometimes it's been comfortable and fun to share and listen with others and other times it hasn't. But I don't think there's been anybody we've seen that have had the same ideas when you get past the similar labels and down into the deeper core of people. Some have been in a spot of questioning and transitioning long-held beliefs and trying to figure out where to stand on shifting sand; some have quietly assumed that there's something like a God or universal presence without needing to think much about it or have a desire to pursue its meaning at all for their lives; some have been straight up atheists; some have held traditional conservative beliefs about the American Christian God; some have felt uprooted and almost abandoned by a God they thought they were walking with and now don't understand and can't find; some have found God in the poems of Mary Oliver; some have been ethical but non-attending Catholics; some have been anti-religion Jesus followers; some have been religion-friendly Jesus followers...I can't even imagine how many other people we passed by or briefly talked to that had other ideas about what divinity looked like, felt like, how we accessed it and what it meant.

It strikes me over and over as so interesting that we can all have such different ideas and experiences of what "God" means and is, but yet most of us still seem to think that our one way of understanding God still has to be the right way and that everyone must share the same conceptualization and opinions. Isn't the closest we'll ever get a conceptualization that feels like we're on the right track at this particular moment?

But even writing that, I can feel the absurdity creeping in. I have my ideas about what God means...it's the power of creativity and not destruction, of building up and not tearing down, of connecting and not separating, of loving and not hating, of understanding and not judging. And it gets my panties all up in a bunch when I hear people casting aspersions on XYZ group of people and separating them out from the rest of us and then claiming they're doing God's work in love to make XYZ better than they are - whatever God it is that they say they're following.

Maybe this is why people avoid talking about it. There are no unarguable answers, but we each still feel like we do have a few right, unarguable answers. It's also interesting to me how some people can not wonder. They can comfortably sit with atheism or unexamined beliefs -- or just accept that there must be a God and give it the mental thumbs up and go on with life without a care in the world. Through all of my various stages, including my high school atheism, I've woken up almost every day and wondered, curiously poking around to see what I run into. Many times, it's felt like a burdening cloud on my brain because I'm always wondering but don't really seem to come up with much, returning constantly to square one and saying, "But is there anything really beyond this?" I don't particularly want to have a world without layers, without mystery and divinity. As Mary Oliver writes, "each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly every morning." I'd love to understand like the blazing lilies on the pond.

But anyway. I'm going to follow Camille's advice from the other day and go lighten up and have some fun...for at least 10 minutes. I brood so much you'd think I'd start laying eggs.