Reflections On Religion

I'm grateful for my NYC Zoom meeting where the topic was exactly what has been on my mind of late. I'm grateful for the fellow sharing about creating a pipeline to their Higher Power, it got me thinking about how I establish this connection. I'm grateful for a second day in a row where I logged higher than average elevation gains. I'm grateful when my mind is able to just focus on the immediate act of putting one leg in front of the other during a run where the feeling of fatigue starts creeping up. I'm grateful for listening to a super interesting podcast that challenged my views and encouraged me to see the perspective of a side I'd dismissed. I'm grateful for a long walk in Cheesman with Harper where he found multiple sticks to awkwardly carry in his mouth. I'm grateful for the small, simple life I've cultivated in sobriety that fills my cup in wonderfully satisfying ways.

With Easter + Passover happening, podcasts I listen to randomly discussing faith in-depth, and of course God being a perennial topic at AA meetings, I've recently been thinking more about my ever evolving relationship with religion.

During my early childhood religion was quite present and mostly pleasant. I definitely didn't understand the dense Vedic text much, but I enjoyed hanging out with my extended family, especially my cousins who were around my age, at the weekly religious gatherings we had. To me they were fun little social events where us kids attempted to sit quietly for a few hours as my grandfather lead our Havans. The real fun began afterwards. We ate delicious homemade Indian food, played table tennis or badminton, and just laughed at one another's stories.

When I started realizing I was gay, probably around 1st Grade, I intrinsically knew that religion and me would have a tough road ahead. I couldn't explain exactly why since the word "gay" hadn't entered my vernacular, but I felt that I was carrying an "evil" secret that would forever condemn me in front of God, my family, and society overall.

Luckily the gift of procrastination can be a lifesaver, at least for me in this context. I could leave any confrontation with hard truths for my future self. Nobody was pressuring me to have a girlfriend or get married so it was best to simply ignore the burdensome secret, put it in a tiny box in the dark recesses of my mind to address at a later date. Unfortunately my punting on any form of honest self-reflection also meant growing increasingly distant from religion. The rationale being that associating with religion also meant confronting a personal truth I was too afraid to acknowledge. I adamantly delayed opening that Pandora's box of problems for as long as I could.

My mid-twenties was when drinking began and for a few years vodka made me feel like a superhero. That secret little box in the corner of my mind was but a tiny dot while drunk because alcohol helped me find the happy, joyous, and carefree existence with ease. An ease I'd missed throughout child as I was always walking on eggshells from fear of being discovered. Religion was obviously absent during this period except in the short, superficial interactions I had with family, who were in far off, dreary NYC while I lived in sunny, beautiful California.

Unsurprisingly procrastination with self-honesty caught up with me as alcohol became all-consuming. It's a bummer because the Tito's bottle made it incredibly easy to think in clear, often binary, terms. My mind operated in the following manner: I had to tell lies, especially about myself, because telling the truth would hurt you so truthfully speaking I'm doing this to protect you, to help you. Of course if you didn't appreciate the myriad of hoops I was jumping through to make you feel at ease then kindly f*** off while I drink more. In this fantasy world you were always the bad person while I was the saint. Such unfortunate, inexplicable logic meant I cultivated a deeply antagonistic relationship with most everything and everyone around me, including religion and religious people. Ironically I briefly had an ex who was very adamant about his Jewish faith and suffice to say we butted heads quite a bit.

It was my arrival into the Program that finally got me questioning my perspective. One of my earliest AA memories came that first day at the sober home on the UES. We had some sort of house meeting and somebody talked about "God" in the Big Book. The guy next to me saw the flustered look on my face and immediately said, "Don't worry, it's a God of your own understanding". I didn't know exactly what those words meant, but for whatever reason the way he said it along with my gut interpretation eased my mind enough to ensure I didn't shut down.

From that day on it has been a slow, but beautiful journey in deepening my personal understanding of spirituality, "defining" my Higher Power, and making peace with the religious people in my life and their religion. I often credit AA for saving my life by giving me a design for living I can get behind. The Steps have been a framework that I can leverage to analyze whether I'm engaging in the right set of actions. Fellows give me their wisdom and courage so that I can find a way to walk through my own troubles gracefully. I look at the epic mountains here in Denver and think when I pass away I don't know what will happen to my soul (if anything), but what I do know is that the particles of my body will rejoin the ground to serve as fuel for whatever new life form Earth wishes to make. That notion makes me feel connected to something much much greater than myself.

My codification of these truths/practices in sobriety has granted me ways to more healthily revisit religion. In its purest form I think religion is one of humanity's most beautiful creations. While the stories can be fun to listen to as a child, it's the morality in them (if interpreted properly) that are meant to remind us to love and serve people from all walks of life regardless of their condition. That makes a whole lot of sense because I too use AA's literature in a similar fashion to help me be the best version of myself while navigating a complicated world.

On Easter Sunday when I observed the happy families walking to their churches it made me appreciate the fact that religious communities are incredibly important for creating social structures we as human beings require to feel connected, to feel less lonely. I do the exact same thing, but my kinship is in AA meetings. I found my community finally after decades of isolation so who am I to judge someone else for finding theirs at a church, temple, or synagogue?

The above mental shifts don't mean that I'll soon be joining a certain religious denomination. AA still satiates a lot of my current spiritual needs. What I am super grateful for though is my happy detente with religion and religious people. I can see where they come from because fundamentally I can see how AA's lineage is derived from religious doctrine. Not just from Christianity, but all religions. I even notice my own Hindu ideology reflected in the pages of the Big Book.

In making peace more or less with religion it has inadvertently let me make peace with my uber religious family. This hasn't translated into them treating me with the acceptance I'd like (they've been annoyingly resilient with their stance on sexuality), but I can see them as individuals simply trying to get through life with as much serenity as possible using the design for living that has served them for decades. By engaging in the exercise of finding correlations between my engagement with AA and religious people's engagement with their faith, I've been able to extend grace to folks I previously despised while also not drinking over the fact that I cannot change their minds.

I think it's safe to say my journey with religion has been a tumultuous one. However thanks to AA I am in a place where I'm able to interact with religion in ways that feel productive and sustainable. It will be interesting to see where the evolution of my thinking takes me as my sobriety matures. For now I feel liberated by inhabiting a space of tolerance and curiosity around religion rather than distrust and derision. I hope that whatever comes with this ever evolving relationship I can remain honest, open-minded, and willing for all of the adventures.