Am I Still Spiritual?

I have wondered on occasion these days if there is any part of me that is still spiritual, even by the widest definition of the term. Even after I stopped believing in Mormon God, I tried to believe in other versions of God, from a Mother God to some kind of nature God. I experimented with a few other versions of Christianity (Catholicism, Community of Christ). I liked certain aspects of both of them, but I’m not sure that I felt compelled. A non-punishing God feels good to me, and sometimes I want to believe in something like that. But why do I have to? I mean, the kind of God that I could believe in turns out to also be the kind of God that wouldn’t need me to believe, wouldn’t demand it. And I’m not sure I see the benefit.

After leaving Mormonism, I think I kind of need to not feel compelled by God. I need to not feel urgency or demand from any kind of God. I also need to not believe in an after-life because considering that might be real tends to increase my suicidal ideation. (If I don’t have to live in a meat sack and experience pain in all its forms, sign me up for that!) I need to believe that God does not punish us for any reason. That God is the kind of parent I would be for my children if I had all power and all knowledge and was all-loving and all-good.

Maybe I will come back to some kind of spiritual practice. Or maybe I will come to see that what I am already doing is spiritual. After all, as my kids sometimes laugh at me about, I walk at least a couple of hours a day outside. Because I love to see and feel nature. Even in the winter, I get outside often and for as long as I can stand it. I love to see the sky and smell the air and have the sense that I am one of the creatures of the earth, not more or less than the others, but part of the whole experience. I am not a great gardener, but what time I spend on my lawn and on my few plants, I love to be in presence. I even have a practice that is a bit like prayer, closing my eyes and envisioning good things.

I also will fight to the metaphorical death anyone who suggests that I must believe in heaven or in Jesus Christ in any literal way. I don’t and being pressured to conform doesn’t make me any fonder of those doctrines of Christianity. I don’t think that Christianity is the only way to live a good life and sometimes I don’t think it’s even one of the ways to live a good life, at least not in America with many of the nationalistic, racist, and intolerant versions of Christianity that I see being used to bash the rights of those who are already marginalized. But I digress.

I hold very lightly to the idea that I had an experience with my stillborn daughter. I don’t know if that happened or did not happen. I am aware that the experience of feeling that she was still in existence somewhere and that she was not angry with me—this helped me to let go of some of my long-held self-hatred from her death. People often believe things that they want to believe. Or that help them to stay alive. I wouldn’t press this experience on anyone else as “true.” I am still not sure that I would say I believe in heaven or an after-life. But I probably wouldn’t argue against them quite so vehemently. Unless it’s Mormon version of those two things. Then I will scream myself hoarse (mostly in private).

When I was Mormon, I only thought there was one good kind of “spiritual,” the Mormon kind. The other kinds were fake, false, evil, or just plain silly and deluded. Sometimes ex-Mormonism turns out to be just the upside-down version of Mormonism, with just as much judgmentalism and self-righteousness, and just as much certainty. I’m working hard not to lean that way. So I think I will just talk about spirituality in an uncertain way, an artistic way. I had a dream. Like the pharaoh’s dream. But I’m not looking for a anyone to interpret it for me. My dream means different things in different phases of my life.