Tag: god

The Sacred Journey Beyond Religion

In 2024, the Pew Research Center found that 28% of Americans check “none” as their choice of religion.

So many of us have stepped away from organized faith, not out of rebellion, but from a courageous honesty with ourselves that we could no longer ignore. For some of us, the rituals had grown hollow, the dogmas too small for the vastness of our questions. Others of us saw how our institutions had become rigid or exclusionary.

Here’s a hard-won truth that many of us share. When we trade wonder for certainty, our souls begin to suffocate. As Jesus said in one of his most enduring metaphors, you can’t place new wine into old wineskins. It will only cause further rupture.

Have you ever walked out of a sanctuary you once felt was sacred, wondering if you were leaving behind not just your faith, but the language of your soul? If so, take heart. We are not losing our spirituality. We are rediscovering it in a deeper and freer form.

The Quiet Hunger Within

All of us carry a hunger for meaning that no amount of success, pleasure, or distraction can fill. We want to know that our lives matter, that we belong to something greater than ourselves. This longing stirs in the silence before dawn, in the tears we can’t explain, in the beauty that takes our breath away. It is not a problem to be solved. It is an invitation.

So where do we turn when we yearn for the sacred, but no longer fit inside the old containers?

The Open Path

First, we realize that spirituality was never confined to human temples, effigies, or sacred texts. It is written into the fabric of existence itself. The same Presence that inspired prophets and poets is alive in each of us, waiting for us to notice.

You might glimpse it in a forest trail glowing with morning light.
You might sense it in the deep stillness of meditation, or in the laughter of a friend who sees you fully.
You might feel it in moments of awe, when the boundaries between “you” and “everything else” dissolve.
You might see it looking back at you through the eyes of your child or grandchild.

Each of these is a doorway into the same mystery.

Spiritual satisfaction doesn’t come from subscribing to the right belief, but from cultivating awareness. And as our consciousness grows, so does our compassion, our sense of unity, and our capacity for joy. We begin to live not from fear, but from connection.

Companions on the Road

Our quest for meaning is not a solo expedition. We belong to a vast community of people asking similar questions, struggling with uncertainties, and finding revelations they never imagined. Each of our companions along the way carries a spark of the mystery we seek. When we share our stories, we participate in a sacred exchange. We remind each other that the search itself is holy.

Some of us find this connection through contemplative circles, mindfulness groups, or creative communities. Others of us find it through feeding the hungry, tending the earth, or comforting the lonely.

Wherever we practice love, spirit is present. As the timeless Persian poet, Rumi, once said, “In every religion there is love, yet love has no religion.”

Evolving Notions of the Divine

Words are simply pointers. This is a crucial realization. God, Tao, Source, Beloved, Mystery, Great Spirit are all terms intimating something we can never fully capture in language. The immensity of the cosmos and its origin are better experienced through awe. Over time, we find that the divine becomes less a being “out there” and more a living presence within and around everything. We come to see that spirituality is not about believing, but about being fully awake to the sacred dimension of everyday existence.

As our understanding expands, so does our compassion. We stop worrying about who’s right and who’s wrong in matters of faith. We start asking: What helps me love more deeply? What helps me live with gratitude? What helps me serve the wholeness of life?

The Great Thrills of the Journey

The spiritual journey beyond religion may begin with a sense of loss, but discoveries soon fill that void in myriad ways. Imagine:

  • The thrill of realizing that every sunrise, every act of kindness, every moment of awareness is a form of prayer.
  • The freedom of knowing that you no longer need to pretend certainty; that questions themselves are sacred.
  • The joy of feeling at home in the universe, even without a map.

Looking back, we see that we are not exiles. Instead, we have found a calling, an invitation to grow beyond the boundaries of old beliefs and into the spaciousness of wonder.

The Infinite Yes

If you find yourself wandering beyond the walls of religion, trust the journey. Follow the tug of your own curiosity. Keep your heart open to beauty, mystery, and love. The sacred has not abandoned you. It has simply changed its address, moving from the altar to the open sky, from the sermon to the beating of your own heart.

You are still on holy ground.

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Protestin’ in the Wind

Spittin’ in the wind, pissin’ in the wind, protestin’ in the wind. Call it what you want, but that’s what it felt like on a recent Sunday.

I was visiting the care facility where my parents live in Las Vegas, so I decided to join them at their church, hitching a ride in the medical transport van. I don’t adhere to a religion, so it’s hard to sit through any worship service. But this conservative Lutheran version was especially dissonant, like a cheese grater across my brain. Every element of the liturgy made me wince.

  • Hymns that spoke of Jesus coming again in clouds of glory to gather only “the faithful.”
  • Multiple promises of being in heaven rather than working to bring justice on earth.
  • A unison confession of sin that magnified our abject condition apart from Jesus’s saving grace.
  • The Apostle’s Creed, that patriarchal relic with its Trinitarian formula and insistence on superstitious miracles.

What tweaked me the most, however, was the sermon. I had foolishly hoped that the pastor might be hip, since I noticed the motorcycle boots he wore under his alb. It was clearly part of his drip. When I asked, “you ride?” he responded, “yep, it’s the only time I feel free.”

Then came his homily. Its central illustration came from a memorial service he’d attended for a teen who died of a drug overdose. There were two preachers that day. One railed about how the girl didn’t “know Jesus,” and that everyone in attendance should be forewarned about their own salvation. The other preacher was more magnanimous. He revealed a private conversation in which he discovered that the girl had indeed “accepted the Lord.”

That assurance rankled me even more!

I know I should have restrained myself. I chose to be there, live and let live, avoid the landmines of religion and politics. Yeah, yeah. But if there’s anything remaining from my former religious leanings, it’s that I’m a protestant, emphasis on protest.

I approached the pastor after the service.

“Do you mind if I share a reaction to your message?”

“Not at all,” he replied.

I calmed my voice. “Your own scripture says that God is love. God loved this girl before she was born, during every painful hour of her addiction, and even now in whatever awaits us after death. That’s true whether or not she followed your religious formula. Do you really believe that if she hadn’t accepted Jesus, she would be banished into darkness?”

His expression changed. His smile grew tighter. His eyes narrowed.

“Yes, God is love. And God gives us free will to either accept or reject the promises of Jesus.”

It was a standard feint, not a real answer, so I continued.

“On the cross, Jesus said ‘it is finished.’ That applies to all of humanity. It’s a love so inclusive that no human mind can fully understand it.”

His smile slipped further, frown lines forming on his brow.

“You must be a universalist,” he said.

And there it was. Spittin’ in the wind, pissin’ in the wind, protestin’ in the wind. Nothing I said would change his world view; nothing he said would alter mine. In this polarized world—with our moats of doctrine, politics, and privilege—hasn’t this become the norm?

When Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde recently exhorted Donald Trump to have mercy and understand the apprehension felt by many Americans, my friends and I applauded her bravery. Face to face, speaking truth to power. Social media blew up with her image, her words, and profile pics that proclaimed, “I’m with her.”

But Trump and his allies, encamped on el otro lado del rio, were unmoved. They demanded an apology, accusing Budde of being woke, radical left, and mannish.

Spittin’ in the wind, pissin’ in the wind, protestin’ in the wind. It’s the norm, and the fact that our online news streams are shaped by predatory AI only makes the problem worse. As Paul Simon said in The Boxer, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

(Flashback. On May 4, 1970, Allison Krause, a student at Kent State University, was one of four unarmed students shot and killed by soldiers of the Ohio Army National Guard. The shootings occurred as students protested against both the invasion of Cambodia and the National Guard presence on their campus. The day before her death, Krause observed a single lilac within the barrel of a guardsman’s gun. An officer ordered the soldier to remove it, and Krause caught the flower as it fell to the ground, stating, “Flowers are better than bullets.” This quote—inscribed on her gravestone—has become synonymous with her legacy of peace activism.)

Return to the present. The US continues to arm countries around the world, especially Israel as it carried out its genocide against the Palestinians. And Donald Trump threatens troop deployment to quell domestic demonstrations.

Can you hear the wind whistling, loud and clear?

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An Experience That Shaped His Entire Life

Every family has stories told so often that they’re part of our collective legacy. When older relatives do the retelling, we might roll our eyes. Not this one again…

In my family, there are many. The time my mother caught a 95-pound Nile perch at Lake Victoria. My father setting a senior track record for the mile in his early 40s. My brother catching trout in the Sierra Nevada on a scouting trip, using only a stick, some line, and a bare hook. The time I defied my parents’ warnings and snuck into a screening of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange while it still had an X rating.

But there’s no tale as powerful and poignant as the one told by my father about an incident in his childhood. Even now—at age 95—that moment can emerge from his dementia and stir the waters of his memory. In 2019, he preserved the episode as a letter to my brothers and me, claiming he recalled it on a daily basis throughout his life.

Here’s the outline.

It was the summer of 1935, midway through the Great Depression, and Dad was five years old. On a bucolic day in the countryside, he was with his mother at the Wisconsin farm of some relatives. While she attended a quilting party, Dad went to a swimming hole with his cousin, Sally. Not unlike Dad, he boasted to her that he had just learned to swim. To prove it, he would take a raft to the middle of the pond, which was about 11 feet deep. Then he would let go and paddle back to her, putting his cockiness to the test. I’ll let him tell you what happened next.

“When I reached a spot close to the bank, I gave the raft a shove. However, I was so tired getting it to this spot, and the raft was now moving away from me so that I could not swim to it. As I began to sink underwater, I said a prayer to God: ‘Please do not let my parents blame themselves for my drowning. It was all my fault!’ As I sank, I made one last attempt to breath, but all I got was a mouthful of water. As I passed out, I was floating with white light all around me. This went on for quite some time until I sensed that someone was placing their hands on my hips and lifting me up, setting me in shallower water. When I opened my mouth, water flowed out. I began to breathe but I was blind. Then I heard Sally shouting at me, ‘Why were you down so long? What happened?’”

I won’t idealize my father. Like all of us, he had his faults, especially his workaholism that kept him from spending more quality time with us. That addiction left a vortex at the center of our family.

But in this story—what Dad always called a miracle—I see some of the core beliefs that informed the arc of his life, truly a Horatio Alger story, rising from poverty to the upper echelons of corporate America. If you are agnostic or atheistic like some of my friends, suspend your judgment for a moment and just encounter this human being I call my father.

  • Notice that he didn’t ask God to save him for his own benefit. His petition was to spare his parents from blaming themselves that he had drowned. This sense of other-centeredness and duty was a hallmark of his character. One of six boys, he was the only one that cared for his parents in their final years, providing for them physically and financially. He showed that same kind of devotion to our nuclear family.
  • He saw his near-drowning as the proverbial second chance in life. God had rescued him for a purpose, and he wanted to honor God for that reprieve.
  • After that day, he says he sought God’s guidance at key junctures in life, especially before critical decisions. Though he and I have faith perspectives that are widely divergent, I resonate with the need to find direction from a power greater than myself.

Do you have a childhood memory that lays hold to your mind and heart? Does it still act as a lodestar for your life’s journey? If so, have you shared it with others?

Here are the final words of Dad’s recollection as he transcribed it in 2019.

“When my sight came back, I walked up to the house where mother was attending the quilting party. As she saw me coming in the door, she came to me and said, ‘What has happened to you?’ (There must have been something about my face that she would ask that question). I said, ‘Mom, I just want to take a nap.’

“I kept this miracle to myself for many decades because I didn’t want my parents to worry about me. I told my mother only after she was older.

“Love and prayers to all three of you, Dad.”

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Should You Take It Personally?

It was one of those conversations with a friend that I crave—wide-ranging, both intimate and global, drawing on our interests in literature, history, and current events. During the course of it, a philosophical question arose: “Should we take things personally?”

You may have an immediate answer but stay with the question for a moment.

In his popular book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, Don Miguel Ruiz talks about the “domestication of humans.” From the moment we are born, he says, “outside” information is transferred to us internally, creating the “agreements” we make about ourselves and our place in the world. This transfusion comes through tribes, families, schools, and religions.

Given this maze of conflicting and often capricious viewpoints, Ruiz proposes the second of his four agreements. Don’t take anything personally. “Whatever you think,” he says, “and whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing they think about me is really about me, but it is about them.”

OK. There’s some truth here. How many of us have allowed our self-worth to be dragged through the muck of other people’s judgments? How many of us have allowed them to lease space in our heads, squandering our precious time and our unique destinies?

Wayne Dyer, a thinker I admired, steadfastly refused to take a side in conflicts, believing that the very act of aligning ourselves fuels the power of dualistic madness tearing our planet apart. He called us to stay centered in a place of unity and compassion for all of creation, including every single person who disagrees with us, even our enemies

Again, great value here. Many an enlightened spiritual teacher—among them the Buddha, Jesus, and Baháʼu’lláh—walked this higher plain in their teachings and actions.

But let’s go back to that conversation with my friend. Why? Because, to refute Ruiz, the decisions that people make, especially those in power, go far beyond just dealing with themselves. They affect all of us!

In our dialogue that morning, my friend and I turned to the current political scene, especially the rise of Christian Nationalism, that cult that misappropriates the teachings of Jesus and cloaks itself in American Exceptionalism. We lamented the erosion of a woman’s reproductive rights, the backlash against the LGBTQ population, the disregard for global warming, the demonization of immigrants and protestors, the undermining of public healthcare and education, and the threats leveled at social security.

Should we take this personally? Hell yes! Even if it causes some anger and angst? Hell yes! Read, really read, the background and content of Project 2025, a list of legislative and policy proposals that is ready to roll if Trump gets reelected.

Should we take the defeat of this agenda personally? Absolutely!

My friend is Jewish, and he recalled a famous poem by Martin Niemöller, a German theologian and Lutheran pastor during the rise of Nazism. It exists in many versions, but the one featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial reads: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.” For his opposition to the Nazis’ state control of churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution.

It reminded me of words from Martin Luther King, Jr. that have informed my activism for decades. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Within the wider circle of my Christian friends, there’s a lot of talk about respecting the voices of those who disagree with us. Instead of red or blue, they champion the color purple. Listen; I agree that we need to reach across the boundaries of our differences. As Jesus so powerfully said, “If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even scoundrels do that much. If you are friendly only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?” (Matthew 5:46-17a, Living Bible Translation). Can we champion the causes of justice nonviolently, opposing those who would erode our freedoms without disrespecting them? Harder, much harder, but yes!

However, if our efforts to be conciliatory cause us to muzzle ourselves and cease speaking truth to power, I object! If they lead us to accommodate the principles outlined in White Nationalist movements like Project 2025, I object!

I wholeheartedly support Kamala Harris as our next President of the United States. When I scroll through the many memes circulating around her candidacy, I love the one that says, “Rosa sat, so Ruby could walk, so Kamala could run.”

Did Rosa Parks take it personally when she was ordered to sit in the back of Montgomery, Alabama buses? Certainly! Did those who fought for school desegregation take it personally? Of course!

Parks once commented, “People have said over the years that the reason I did not give up my seat was because I was tired. I did not think of being physically tired. My feet were not hurting. I was tired in a different way. I was tired of seeing so many men treated as boys and not called by their proper names or titles. I was tired of seeing children and women mistreated and disrespected because of the color of their skin. I was tired of Jim Crow laws, of legally enforced racial segregation.”

Today, I am personally saying that I am sick and tired of Christian Nationalism and its idolatry. It’s not only an aberration; it’s a dangerous mutation. I will do everything in my sphere of influence to defeat those forces that seek to form a theocratic government in America.

And if you have made it to the end of this piece, I hope that you, too, will take this election and its repercussions PERSONALLY!

Rosa sat, so Ruby could walk, so Kamala could run!

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Test Every Truth!

(Heiwa No Bushi is a Buddhist-Christian monk. He has degrees in philosophy and theology and received classical training in both Mahayana and Zen Buddhism. He places his teachings under the moniker “BodhiChristo” which means “enlightened Christ,” an amalgam of the two rich streams of Buddhism and Christianity. Here he gives some reflections on this journey, an excerpt from my book The Smile on a Dog: Retrieving a Faith That Matters, remastered and downloadable for FREE here).

This is my story, but I believe it reflects all our stories.

I grew up in south Florida, essentially a preacher’s kid because my grandmother was heavily involved in both the southern and primitive Baptist movements. She was so devoted that when people within her circles wanted to erect a building, she loaned them the money.

By the time I was six years old, my grandmother had become a minister in that church, but she struggled constantly against patriarchy. The congregation was so misogynistic that they wouldn’t allow her to be a regular preacher. However, she was a very clever bird. She decided that every time they gave her an opportunity to fill the pulpit, she would use her grandson to introduce her. It was a way of deflecting all the attention from her, and the result was that I became a phenomenal, entertaining bit of Sunday mornings! People came to hear my grandmother because this young boy really knew how “to lay it out there.”

All that time I worked with my grandmother, I saw the inconsistency between her church life and her home life. At church she was outwardly “righteous,” but at home she would speak in ways normally prohibited. I thought it was hypocritical, but she quoted the Apostle Paul from I Corinthians: “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”

As grandma’s ministry grew, I began to feel a calling to attend seminary. I received my training and then, in my early 20s, I traveled overseas with the military. It was a time of hands-on experience, what I call “tacit education.” It challenged me to look at the deeper and wider aspects of life on our planet. I encountered many other faiths, not only seeing their beautiful richness, but their many parallels, especially the “golden rule.”

In my experiences as a Christian, I had not encountered a real moral teaching about how to treat our planet, especially “lesser creatures.” As a lover of the earth, I found a much greater connection to creation through other religions, especially Buddhism and its tremendous emphasis on caring for all living things. Jainism also intrigued me. It insisted on not naming “God,” believing there is no particular god outside of ourselves.

These religions lifted up a type of humanity that many circles of Christianity seemed to usurp and ignore. They spoke volumes of higher learning to me, and it seemed to me that Christianity did not stand up in the court of reality. For instance, where in Christian scripture was the insistence on an intimate relationship with all living things that I found so beautiful in Buddhism?

Then I thought of the parable Jesus told of seeking out the one lost lamb. He was saying to the majority, “You hold on tight, I’m going to get the one that matters.” This began to bring out what I call the “more mature” interpretation of Christ that I am trying to live out today.

In my teachings, I emphasize that there are three types of knowledge.

  • Explicit knowledge that comes to us from textbooks, manuals, Sunday school lessons taught as literal. This is a form of cultural programming, even indoctrination.
  • Codified knowledge which is the design of the society around us—from traffic signs to laws to the licenses we need to practice our professions. All this is meant to make sure that we follow the rules and remain in compliance with the status quo.
  • Tacit knowledge which we gain firsthand in the laboratories of our own lives. It can’t just be told to us; we must experience it and adapt it to reality of our own understandings.

The bottom line is that we must test any truth for ourselves! Examine it in the light of our minds, hearts, consciences, and personal experience. I feel religious institutions, especially the Christian church, should be some of the most unregulated organizations in our society. They should always call us to the high adventure of exploring a fuller spiritual life.

On this adventure, I remain a lifelong learner, carrying on something my grandmother taught me long ago. “Go beyond what educational systems teach you,” she said.

Take on the world. Tacitly hold it, experience it, live it and understand it!

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