Personal/Stories

I’ve gotten several email messages recently from people who said they appreciate what I’m doing here on the Church of the Churchless. Well, I appreciate the appreciation. We churchless still feel a need to belong. But it’s a lot more difficult to share a sense of camaraderie with those who aren’t a part of organized spirituality because, obviously, we’re not organized. Nor do we want to be. So I get a lot of satisfaction from cyberspace pats on the back. I also enjoy, in a different fashion, the occasional missives from true believers asking me to please, please, just shut…

I can’t say that I’ve experienced Zen’s Great Doubt. Or the Dark Night of St. John of the Cross. But I do know what it’s like to lose my keys. I’m hoping that this was a message from God. Or at least the Key Fairy. Last Thursday afternoon I started to rush out the door, semi-late as usual, to drive to my martial arts class. I reached into my hip bag for my keys and found…nothing. Now, this lack of finding pretty much describes my daily search for my soul in meditation. But the difference is that earlier in the…

I’ve been having a strange sensation recently: I’m alive. It’s accompanied by: One moment I won’t be. Amazing. What’s even more amazing is how many days there have been out of the total I’ve lived (21,065) when I didn’t have this sensation. I took life for granted. I didn’t envision my own non-existence. Maybe it’s taking getting older and passing the 21,000 day mark to begin to appreciate the marvel of being able to appreciate anything. I’ll be walking the dog, or standing in Tai Chi class, or getting out of bed in the morning, and suddenly I’ll be struck…

Bear with me, Church of the Churchless visitors. This personal story concludes with a churchless moral. Idly watching a high school teen flick on Comedy Central, “She’s All That,” while stairmastering this afternoon, I was taken aback when a character spoke some lines that could have been said by me at his age—with some slight modifications. I heard Zack, a senior, tell Laney (in so many words): “My dad wants me to go to Dartmouth. He always has. It’s just been expected of me. He’s always saying, ‘Zack, you’ve got to make up your mind about college.’ But I know…

Life, death, consciousness, psychic phenomena, science, acceptance. Last night the conversation at our monthly Salon discussion group covered a lot of ground. There were just five of us, fewer than usual. Two believers in “something more,” two scientifically-minded skeptics, and me—the balanced Libra who bridged the two camps. Generally our group focuses more on politics and Bush-bashing than anything else. Yesterday the conversation was predominantly personal and philosophical. For me it was a delightful grab bag of what I like to talk about most: the Big Questions of Life. Consciousness. Lynda, our hostess, had recently attended several workshops about brain…

Last night my wife and I spent several hours engaged in stimulating conversation with six friends. The eight of us covered many topics. When we turned to miracles and psychic phenomena, our discussion got passionate. Usually it’s considered that religious/spiritual people have the most passion about their beliefs. For example, “The Passion of the Christ.” But scientific sorts can be equally passionate. Our group included a Ph.D. chemist, a Ph.D. computer scientist, and a scientifically-minded attorney—each of whom forcefully argued for the primacy of reason, well-designed experiments, and laws of nature that aren’t arbitrary or capricious. They didn’t put much…