Guest Blogger Patrick with More on Grief: Where Religion Fails Me

This is the second post I offer you from the book Patrick created in memory of his sister. In light of the tragic events at Virginia Tech, I know that grief and coping with senseless loss of life is on the minds of many so this seems a fitting post for this time. I encourage you to read the prior post as well, and be sure to read Dick Rowan's comments. He lives right in the thick of this grieving community and raises hard questions about the usefulness of media impacted grief.

This is where most of religion fails me.

If God were truly "all-powerful", a God with a master plan, then he would be one sick, twisted and sadistic deity for no spirit of benevolence could unleash such horror and suffering upon those who he created in his own image and called his children.

Even if God's hand wasn't directly involved, could your all-powerful God sit idly by and watch the horror show that is humanity without intervention? Such a God would not be worthy of my worship.

Sue's death was not part of God's plan. My God is not a punishing God. And God did not "take" Sue from us, as people have said out of, I guess, a lack of words.

I think every person knows at some core level that the God they pray to is not plotting their destruction. At least one would hope, because worshipping a punishing God as we were taught--well isn't that essentially domestic abuse? Could you love someone who had the power to stop the holocaust, yet did not? Could you worship a God who could tolerate watching children starve in the dust of Africa and do nothing?

No wonder politicians love religion; it desensitizes us to hypocrisy and makes it tolerable.  And so the image of God as an all-powerful, punishing one rules in most religion. But what they're preaching, in effect, is adherence to an unhealthy relationship.

Maybe that's why the domestic abuse that Sue suffered persists. Why domestic abuse is often ignored. How abuse is too often tolerated without intervention.

And yet, it baffles people whose most frequent response to domestic violence is, "Why would she go back?" or "How coud she stay?"

If you pray to a punishing God, you know the answer to those questions.

It required no conspiracy, no "da Vinci code"-like cover-up story to perpetuate. The persistence of the

all-powerful God is a natural one. To admit that God is not an all-powerful controller of destinies would mean tossing out most of the dogma at the heart of most religion--tossing aside the politics. And that's inconceivable because to the faithful, religion is a comfort despite it being a creation of man, not God.

And  yes, I do believe in God, most definitely. I've witnesses God's work, felt God's hand. But my God is not sitting on some throne in heaven.

No, she exists--she is the light of human spirit. The joy in laughter. The life force in living things. (She?! Relax, it's just a pronoun. Anyway, you don't have to be a feminist to recognize that most of the attributes we assign in describing God are female. God would be flattered. After all, since Elizabeth I it's been mostly men who've waged war, Condeleeze Rice being a recent exception.)

To say, "God is good" would imply that God can also be bad, or even horrid. My God cannot exist in the same time and space as evil, or bad. Yet the very essence of goodness is, by default, God.

Yes, I believe in God. And heaven. So did Sue. And I'm not worried about her soul, either.

So is there a heaven?

And is Sue in it?

I think I have glimpsed heaven. Or at least, felt it.

The walk and the party and meeting Laura--the whole convergence of so many threads of life on October 7, 2006 was heaven. Perfect.

The week during the California AIDS ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles--3,200 people moving with purpose and life was heaven. Those times when our soul connects, creates and becomes one with moments of pure joy, beauty, compassion, kindness--of life, that is heaven.

Those pure and exquisite moments so difficult to define, elusive and rare yet of universal attraction; that is heaven.

Those are the very things that Sue was drawn to: joy, compassion, kindness. With her soul now free, I am certain those are the things Sue's spirit will seek.

Oh yes, Sue is in heaven. And every time we can find or create those pure moments of heaven on earth, she will be right there with us.

~Patrick Weiland

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Comments

[Kate]

Laura, thanks for posting these; and Dick, thanks for your comments as well. I agree wholeheartedly that 'grief sucks'. And I'm clear that I would not avoid it if given the chance. To avoid the cause of the grief - you bet...maybe.

But I have not had to live and grieve through the senseless tragedies that have struck the lives of these two men - and so many others. They make good sense to me and I won't presume to know how they feel.

I'm struck by Dick's comment about 'resenting' the media that brings it all back to us. I felt it even before I read his words and I wondered about how it must affect those involved to see it over & over & over. There is something so fundamentally WRONG with our fascination with other people's (esp. stranger's) grief.
But more than that is the huge disservice that is done to everyone when the spotlight hits the perpetrators in the way that is happening now with the Va. Tech tragedy and with others in the past.

It feels like part of some weird and horrific trend toward your "15 minutes of fame". I wonder what it might take for some media anchorperson to say:
"...and the perpetrator of this tragedy will remain the nameless, faceless spot of snail-slime that he is; his justifications for his action just so much wasted paper and video tape. You won't see it here."

In these times, I fear the media more than the gunman; the cultural climate more than the rhetoric. I don't watch it; I won't watch it; and I am constantly amazed at how many times it pops up in front of me anyway!

[Patricia - Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker]

Thanks for sharing your view of God and Heaven. I agree with both