Blessings of the Wobbly Brain - Faith

In yesterday's post I mentioned that one of the problems of my wobbly brain has been an inability to accept "reality" when it comes to relationships.

"Since the United States government declares this man to be Santa Clause..."

This is also true of my relationship with all that is "unseen" or "invisible," as the Nicene Creed avows.  I have never seen a ghost or magical "little people" (Irish leprechauns, Icelandic huldufolk) but I believe it's possible they exist.  And I "know" that Creator exists, even though I also accept as valid all the arguments against God that my beloved and respected atheist friends can muster.

My mind does not need to do flip-flops when faced with paradox.  ("And when Ben Casey meets Kildare it's called a 'pair-o-docs'.")  

When I was a child, I believed in the God of Catholicism as well as the God in the Pledge of Allegiance.  And when those two Gods came in conflict, as they did when I was in fourth grade, I went with the One that made the most sense to me -- the One that spoke of equality.  The story is that when I was in fourth grade and going to CCD - Catechism class -- on Mondays after school, I engaged in debate with the Novitiate Brother who was teaching the class.  He was saying that according to Catholic belief, no one who wasn't Catholic was getting into heaven.  I knew that some of my friends who were perfectly good people were not Catholic.  So I asked about that, asked something like, "What if there are good people who follow all the rules but who aren't Catholic?"  And I'm sure I wanted to argue further, probably putting up my little hand and talking at the same time saying, "Yes, but..."  (I did a lot of talking in class throughout my grade school years.)  

My question about fairness arose from saying the Pledge every morning, especially the words "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all."  And I also knew that "all men are created equal."  And if we are all equal and entitled to liberty and justice, how come the Catholic Church said we weren't?

The upshot was, I dropped out of CCD that year.

A few years later, I had my first and most powerful mystical experience, perhaps also made possible by my wobbly brain.  I was lying on the grass in the yard of a neighborhood friend.  We were playing some sort of game but there weren't people around me at the time.  What I remember is that the world grew still as I looked up at the stars and I was swept with a feeling of connection to all things.  I became one with the Universe and God spoke worldlessly in my heart about God's presence. 

So I knew God was real even if the Church that served God had problematic players.

Even so, for reasons I'll discuss later, by the end of high school I was an atheist and remained one for over a decade.  But sometime in my late 20s I had a remarkable experience.  A friend invited me to come see her baptized into the Catholic church.  I went to the service at the little campus church at Idaho State University.  As the priest prepared the Eucharist, I suddenly realized I still believed in the magic of transubstantiation.  

I had to sit down with myself!  "If you believe in magic," I asked myself, "Does that mean you still believe in God?"

I didn't have an answer to this until a short while later when I had the experience of God reaching out to me in a very odd space and letting me know that the Divine existed.  So pretty much since winter, 1984, I have been a believer in the Trinity with the caveat that I have also believed in many other expressions of the divine.   I have never been able to believe in the exclusivity of the Creator because it just doesn't make sense.  But believing in that invisible Creator does!  Paradox.

Over the years, I have performed my own Tarot readings and visited with professional card readers.  I've also engaged in other forms of "sacred play" to engage the Unseen.   

And, I have to admit, I "believed" in Santa Claus long past the time I should have done.  This is why I have such a strong attachment to the movie, Miracle on 34th Street. "Faith is believing in things that common sense tells you not to."

In other words, not to put to fine a point upon it, I am a "magical thinker."  While intelligent and educated enough to question the validity of any magical beliefs, I still hold them.  And experience little to no cognitive dissonance as I do so.