Confessions of an unlikely Anglican

The faith I grew up with was very clear about the trappings of Anglicanism: they were wrong.

Pomp and circumstance, you see, was wrong.
Grandly wearing robes to proclaim how holy you were was wrong.
Incense was imposing irrelevant ritual on approaching God, and was wrong.
In fact, all irrelevant ritual was wrong. (And all ritual was irrelevant.)
And clearly, set prayers from a prayer book were stale, meaningless, inhibiting communication with God… and wrong, too.
Kneeling down to pray? Also wrong.
In fact, traditional styles of prayer were best avoided altogether. Real prayer should be spontaneous, from the heart, and preferably wordless. This demonstrated how close to God you were. *

I was very sure of myself.


Trying to get close to God, under the circumstances, was entirely a matter of trying to feel close to God – preferably by closing my eyes and conjuring up the feeling from nowhere. This, in my experience, was rather like trying to become a die-hard football fan by sitting in a dark room and telling myself that football was my favourite sport.

Feelings can’t survive wholly independent of actions. They fade and die. And, when your faith is entirely about feelings, faith dies along with them.


Thankfully, when I was fifteen I encountered two very sensible people: a pastor at my church, and a high school drama teacher. They both told me the same thing, in different ways.

“We’re not just souls, drifting through space; we’re physical bodies, too. And what your body does affects your soul.”

“Try scowling at someone and talking in a happy voice. It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“Smiling helps you feel happy. Tensing your muscles helps you feel stressed. Kneeling down helps you to surrender yourself.”

“If you’re going to act an emotion, you’ve got to put all of yourself into it.”

“God created us to be physical. He wants us to be that way.”

This was when I started realising that maybe Anglicans weren’t boring people who preferred meaningless rituals to encountering God.


I have learnt, very slowly, that my soul is affected by my body. That external manifestations of worship aren’t a distraction; they’re a necessity.

When I worship, I kneel down, raise my hands over my head, fall flat on my face, and sit huddled and still. I light candles, read daily prayers straight from the prayer book, pause at the door of sanctuaries, and do almost everything else I can think of.

It doesn’t inhibit my faith – it feeds it.


I have always believed that God existed, but for a long time I was stuck, emotionlessly wishing I could create the perfect emotional reaction to him, so that I could prove to myself that I really had a relationship with him.

Oddly, it was when I stopped seeing my feelings as the primary point of my worship that the feelings started returning.


_____________________
* Possibly this is not what my church meant to convey to me – but it’s certainly what I thought they meant, at the time.


--Deird

 

 

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Comments

[Lila]

Deird, this was full of good points and food for further thought. I'm an ex-Episcopalian. Ritual is important to me too--still.

[Jarred]

I was raised in a Baptist church. Liturgy* and ritual were bad. It wasn't until I became a witch and started learning about the impacts that liturgy and ritualized actions can have on one's psyche that I began appreciating all that "fancy stuff" that Catholics, Episcopalians, and others do that I used to mock.

Having gone to a charismatic/full gospel church during college, however, I never had any problem raising my hands or otherwise bodily getting into worship.

* Baptists don't have a "liturgy." They have an "order of service." What's the difference? Well, that's simple. "Liturgy" is bad. An "order of service" is good.

[Jamoche]

Every so often my choir director tries to get one of us singers to lead the pre-rehearsal prayer. Now, we're Catholic, so traditional prayers are just fine, but she still has a hard time getting takers and she finds it frustrating - we all do pray, right? Don't know about the rest of them, but for me the problem is that I'm in the choir because singing is how I pray: words - even words provided for me - aren't so easy to deal with. Real prayer is not one size fits all.

[sarah]

Deird, I just wrote about this...

[[I have always believed that God existed, but for a long time I was stuck, emotionlessly wishing I could create the perfect emotional reaction to him, so that I could prove to myself that I really had a relationship with him.]]

...on my blog. Funny how that works, huh?

Well, the post's not totally about that, but it is about God and feelings.

[Kristin]

This post resonated a great deal. I read Stanley Hauerwas's autobiography sometime last year, and I remember him saying that he grew up in a Methodist church, though all of the Protestant churches near his home in Texas were *actually* Baptist. Meaning that you had to "get saved." And he never really could because he just didn't *feel* anything that everyone described.

I also grew up in the Bible belt, and it's that same emphasis on a close and personal relationship with Jesus that I've never understood. I've never *felt* anything either. I decided a few years ago that, if I ever return to church, it will probably have to be an Episcopalian one. To me, ritual suggests reverence, and I'd more easily summon that than some kind of improvised prayer in front of people designed to show everyone how much I "love God." And if nothing else... Solace and meaning can be found, I think, in ritual itself. Which is important, since most days I call myself an agnostic.

[Martha Mary]

(Long time lurker, first time poster here - and dreadfully nervous to boot. This place is awesome, but a little bit frightening)
Thank you so much for putting in words things that had often lingered unspoken around my brain! I was raised as a pragmatic agnostic ("everybody is Catholic here, so we baptize our children and participate in all the big ceremonies because that's what people do, but actually the whole thing is a lot of rubbish"), and when I converted to Catholicism, I spent a lot of time explaining to my parents why my going to church, kneeling, getting up at some frightening hour to go to a morning mass during the Advent (I'm not sure how it is called in English and Wikipedia is unhelpful) weren't signs of being brainwashed or a peculiar manifestation of rebellion against them, but something that helped me be closer to God.
And another thing - faith that is not practiced or is limited only to mental acrobatics dies, like many virtues. It's not really whether works or faith are perceived as better by God (well, frankly, the whole works vs faith thing sounded to me like a way to get out of, on one hand, doing good and hard things, and on the other, of being kind and loving God - "because I give money to charity") - works, both of the doing-good-things-for-other-people, and of the doing-good-things-for-one's-own-soul variety, keep faith alive.

[Will Wildman]

Welcome to posting, Martha Mary. Nothing to be frightened of; your turns of phrase are entirely awesome enough to justify confidence. (Also, I'm pretty sure 'Advent' is correct, although you can probably leave off 'the'. Is English an extra language for you? I wouldn't have guessed so from your post.)

[Jarred]

Martha and Mary: well, frankly, the whole works vs faith thing sounded to me like a way to get out of, on one hand, doing good and hard things, and on the other, of being kind and loving God - "because I give money to charity"

Interesting point, and I think your interpretation is valid in some cases. In other cases, I think there are other factors at work.

To me, the "faith vs. works" argument is also about "how 'good' is 'good enough'" and the all-important issues of self-perception. (See: People who feel they have to "do enough" to be "good" and "worthwhile," versus people who "do good" from a state of knowing we're "good" and "worthwhile" already and our actions are an expression of that state of being.)

Interestingly, the sermon at the non-denominational church I attended with a friend yesterday was all about the idea of when our "being" and "doing" don't seem to match up.

And welcome to the discussion. :)

[Jarred]

Oops, that should be address to Mary Martha (one person) not Mary and Martha. My apologies.

[Froborr]

Totally irrelevant to the conversation at hand, but Martha Mary's post made me think of it: Kipling's "The Sons of Martha" is classist nonsense served with heaping scoops of privilege, but "they do not preach their God will rouse them/a little before the nuts work loose" are among my all-time favorite lines in English literature.

Kneeling down helps you to surrender yourself.

This is very similar to the reason my mother gave why you should never, ever kneel.

[Lonespark]

I love this post. The tension between love of ritual and accepting as woo that helps people get in the right frame of mind to enact social justice is pretty strong in my family. My father hates the trappings of religion, and to a great extent culture. To him any money spent on celebration is food taken out of the mouths of the poor, and any tradition of reverence is a step down the road toward burning people at the stake. Or taking food out of the poor, or being willing to kill for ideals, or all of the above?

[Martha Mary]

Will: yes, I'm from Poland, and although I read a lot in English, I only rarely use it actively, and I guess that shows :) Thanks for the warm welcome!

Jarred: that's an interesting take; so the "works" people would be those who try to do enough to "earn" heaven? Something like saying the RTC magic words, only more time-consuming. I guess one can twist both sides of the issue into something destructive or selfish.

[Albanaeon]

Good post. I think a lot of it comes down to WHY you have the rituals and pomp. If it's to brazenly proclaim an allegiance, then I don't see much difference really between a Catholic Mass and an Evangelical service (except Catholic songs are better. Can only take so much endless "Jesus, Jesus" before getting a little tired). If they are to help get you in, for lack of a better term, mood, then I don't see a problem with anything a person does to get there. Within some bounds of course...

Kneeling down helps you to surrender yourself.

Perhaps this is the Taoist in me, but in many ways, surrendering to something can get you to control it. For example, in Tai Chi, I yield to the blow, but in doing so I gain the energy and am able to direct it to where I wish it to go. Of course, it is a different idea of surrender than our culture is used to. The West tends to put an idea of being dominated in surrender, which is not looked very well on. In Taoism, you may be letting others exert power over you, but you are looking for ways to bend it to your needs by exerting pressure in exactly the right way. Or failing that, simply refusing to be moved. It's not easy, but I am often surprised by how much you can really do by "surrendering" and then guiding others.

[Bruce]

Ritual does serve one purpose: to focus the mind and put it into a suitable state for the prayer or meditation. It's not relevant to the prayer or meditation itself, per se, but it provides a framework for it and a trigger for a state of mind conducive to it. And sometimes it just creates a familiar and comforting environment, or plays a part in telling a story of the faith (the Mass, the Passover seder, and the hajj all have elements of this). It's never a waste of time unless the ritual itself becomes more of an end than a means ..

[Froborr]

@Bruce:

I used to consider myself staunchly, staunchly anti-ritual.

Then came the year in which my family had Thanksgiving at a restaurant.

It threw off the entire rest of my year!

So when my mother talked about not doing Passover a couple of years later, I had a Seder at my apartment with all of two people. I wasn't about to let it happen again!

...I'm a little bit more open to the idea of ritual being occasionally important, now.

[hapax]

I really really don't want Deird's lovely post to be overshadowed by the heated discussion on the nastiness at t'other thread.

Alas, I don't really know what to say about it except that when I first read it, it made my heart dance.

Which pretty much is the point. Everyone has a different (if we include the option of "none of the above" under "different") way of experiencing the Above / Beyond / Beneath / Within of transcendence. For me, it's all about ritual, and sensual, embodied ritual at that.

Which is one of the reasons I want to drag out my "It's More Complicated Than That!" cluebat when someone refers to a "Platonic disdain for the body."

Yes, as a neoPlatonist, I am extremely conscious of a mind / body duality. (Actually, a spirit / mind / body *trinity*, but let's keep this simple.) And this distinction is usually understood hierarchically.

But the hierarchy isn't one of absolute value; it works more like one of ... transmission, I guess. The spirit is *expressed* through the mind; the mind is *expressed* through the body. Likewise, the body *shapes* the mind; the mind *shapes* the spirit.

To "disdain" the body would be like saying that when I paint, I "disdain" the medium (watercolor, oil, acrylic) because it's the color that's important.

[Hashmir]

(Mostly cross-posted at New!Slacktivist.)

If I may go off-topic for a moment, I have an acquaintance who, though quite liberal (for Texas), still maintains that while gays should have equal rights (including the ability to become pastors and such), homosexuality itself is still a sin. He feels that this position is immaculately tolerant, and that as long as he supports "real" changes like laws and policies, his religious belief that it is sinful is unassailable.

To put it another way, he appears to actually hate the sin but love the sinner -- but I cannot get across to him that that's simply not acceptable when it isn't a sin. I mean, it would be if you never mentioned your view that homosexuality is sinful, but if you insist on constantly talking about it, then you are still causing harm.

So, I was hoping that someone here might know of a link or resource that addresses this very specific issue: "I support LGBT rights, but homosexuality is still a 'minor' sin." I'm pretty sure anything I try will simply be met with, "But it's my belief!"

----------

On-topic, now:

As an atheist who used to be dismissive of religion outright (the idea being that it ranges from "harmless fluff" to "dangerous lies"), it's actually this kind of difference in how people "connect" to their deity/dieties/whatever that changed my view.*

I've since concluded that different people simply belong in different belief systems or religions. I mean, there are innumerable religious groups that no one belongs in, but if we limit ourselves to belief systems that lack enormous moral failings, the point is that there are simply people who are better off in one or the other.

For instance, I'm quite certain that I would have ended up an atheist almost no matter how I grew up. My family is functionally atheist, but we live in Texas, and at no point in my entire life did the idea of spirituality even begin to connect with me. As an individual, there is probably no religious view that would work for me as well as atheism.

However, other people feel things differently. It took me a long time to understand that and acknowledge it as being valid, because I had only ever seen people describe spiritual experiences as a form of manipulative trickery.**

So, some people simply like feeling connected to a single, personal deity. Others favor a less personal, but still existent, creator. Some people like to draw some sort of purpose from a creator, while others are entirely unconcerned. Some people get much more out of physical actions and ritual, and some people find it does nothing for them (like me).

I don't mean to imply that people "pick" a belief (as opposed to us Enlightened Atheists, presumably), but rather that every human, as an individual with hormones and brain chemistry and a personality, will get the most out of some given spiritual approach.

----------

* Along with a huge helping of Fred Clark.

** Which it totally was, by the way. I loathe Texas churches so very much, and this is one of the reasons -- they love to take mundane things that everyone feels, and then insist that that is totally God, yo. The result of this is the infuriating (and explicitly stated) notion that I, as an atheist, simply cannot be experiencing beauty, joy, or love the same way they are, because they're feeling the joy of God.***

*** The other result of this is the creepy events certain groups have on campus. Last year, there was one that was ostensibly about healthy relationships.

In fact, it was about how you really just need more God and abstinence. See, they target people who are vulnerable -- such as teenagers who have never had a positive sexual experience. So, you've got a bunch of students, who have maybe never had sex or a serious relationship, or maybe have only had bad or exploitative sexual experiences. Either way, they ultimately all have the natural desire for sex and intimacy, but they don't understand how to place that longing in the framework of healthy relationships.****

So, these groups seize upon them with promises of explaining healthy relationships, and then basically try to convince them that what they're really feeling is a longing for God. Despicable.

**** Of course, sex outside of a committed relationship still has a place in that framework.

[Deird, who is supposed to be working]

Sarah - I just read your blog post. It's very fascinating, and sounds kind of like we're coming from the same sort of background...

(Also, your parents clearly rock.)

[Mary Kaye]

There's an interesting book _Persuasions of the Witch's Craft_ by Luhrmann in which the author becomes a participant-observer in a number of Wiccan and other pagan groups, and asks the question, as a sociologist, "how do people convert to paganism and why?"

She comes to a very clear conclusion, which is that people become pagans by performing ritual, and the changes in beliefs and mindset follow as a result--not, as people tend to think, the other way around.

This fits my personal experience well but I'm surprised to find that it seems to be more general than that.

Interestingly, while Luhrmann does have some mystical experiences, she doesn't end up a pagan: performing the rituals did change her mindset somewhat but it didn't change her belief system in the end.

I think that the whole focus on *belief* is a characteristic trait of (some branches of) Christianity: it's not as central in a lot of other religions. You can reasonably be an atheistic pagan or an atheistic Buddhist or even an atheistic Jew, but an atheistic Christian is not going to recognized as such by the majority of Christians. I can't speak for the majority of pagans, but our public rituals did have open atheists who attended because they wanted to feel an emotional connection to the seasons and rhythms of nature, and that was not generally a problem for anyone. They regarded the gods as metaphors or myths, I didn't, but for most rituals that we'd consider doing for a public Sabbat that didn't lead to a clash.

Other Wiccans will likely disagree, but I regard Wicca as more a set of techniques, a ritual style and toolkit, than a belief system. Some of those tools make less and less sense the further your beliefs are from the Wiccan consensus, but it's entirely possible, for example, for people who think that there are a multiplicity of distinct gods, people who think that all the gods are manifestations of the God and the Goddesss, and people who think the gods are metaphors or archetypes to do productive ritual together.

Conversely, I might do a Wiccan ritual to Odin, and one of our Asatru posters might do an Asatru ritual to Odin, and despite the same god we would not seem (to this pagan observer, anyway) to be doing the same thing.

If you come from a belief-centric worldview this tends to make Wicca "not a religion at all." But a lot of faiths don't make much sense from within that worldview: both Buddhism and Shinto are really problematic. I heard a wonderful talk by a Tibetian Buddhist monk who was of the opinion that theology is a fun parlor game but shouldn't distract you from the real questions, like "how shall I do good?"

[Nev]

I never was able to get that emotional response (so it was a relief to admit I was an atheist), but I can't go a year without celebrating Passover. It would just be wrong.

The idea of a personal, emotional relationship to God sounds sort of individualistic, but ritual, to me, is the exact opposite. When I hold a Seder, I'm affirming that we are connected spatially to everyone else at Seders around the world, and temporally to people who have held Seders in the past. (And the future, I guess.) I know "connected" sounds awfully woo and corny, though; it's a bit more like "in community/fellowship with".

[Mmy]

@Mary Kaye: think that the whole focus on *belief* is a characteristic trait of (some branches of) Christianity: it's not as central in a lot of other religions

Isn't this similar to the difference between an orthodoxy and an orthopraxy? The latter has always made more sense to me as a basis for a civil society (but then I am an atheist.)

[Lila]

Hashmir: So, I was hoping that someone here might know of a link or resource that addresses this very specific issue: "I support LGBT rights, but homosexuality is still a 'minor' sin." I'm pretty sure anything I try will simply be met with, "But it's my belief!"

The only useful response I can think of to "but it's a SIN" is "Then don't do it. But don't try to enforce your beliefs on the rest of the world. Do your Jewish and Muslim neighbors get all up in your face every time you eat a barbecue sandwich?"

[Rose]

This is why I light candles, burn incense, and say the Franciscan Rosary -- because the ritual(s) bring me closer to God, my Blessed Mother, the Queen of Heaven. And I got here by rejecting the Catholic Church many years ago (still have lots of disagreements w/it), traveling the route of Atheism, Agnosticism, and eventually winding-up here, in the Zen of now, saying: Hail Mary, full of grace...

[truth is life]

Of course, one of the nice things about Anglicanism is that if you're someone who isn't like Deird, and the ritual does bother you--then there are member churches who don't do parts of the rituals. Handy.

Which it totally was, by the way. I loathe Texas churches so very much, and this is one of the reasons -- they love to take mundane things that everyone feels, and then insist that that is totally God, yo. The result of this is the infuriating (and explicitly stated) notion that I, as an atheist, simply cannot be experiencing beauty, joy, or love the same way they are, because they're feeling the joy of God.***

Really? Texas churches *in general*? Texas has quite active non-Fundamentalist (RTC, etc.) churches, you know. For example the Catholic church (which has nearly as many members as all the Baptist denominations, as of 2000), the Anglican church, and so on.

Which is one of the reasons I want to drag out my "It's More Complicated Than That!" cluebat when someone refers to a "Platonic disdain for the body."

I suspect that's one of those things that comes up because of a fundamental difference of experience. To the person saying this, the Platonic doctrines *have the effect of* (or at any rate *to them* feel as if they) disdain the body, and then that person is unfortunately generalizing their experience to other people who may not feel the same way. I think we've discussed that before...

You can also get that impression from Plato sometimes, but I somehow doubt that he's the be-all and end-all of Platonic thought (despite the name!)

[Amaryllis]

except Catholic songs are better. Can only take so much endless "Jesus, Jesus" before getting a little tired
Unfortunately, that style has gotten to be a cross-denominational plague.

So here's that good Anglican poet, George Herbert, on the usefulness of beauty in worship and worship spaces:

THE WINDOWS

LORD, how can man preach thy eternall word ?
He is a brittle crazie glasse:
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.

But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy storie,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy Preachers, then the light and glorie
More rev'rend grows, and more doth win;
Which else shows watrish, bleak, and thin.

Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and aw: but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the eare, not conscience ring.

[Hashmir]

Which it totally was, by the way. I loathe Texas churches so very much, and this is one of the reasons -- they love to take mundane things that everyone feels, and then insist that that is totally God, yo. The result of this is the infuriating (and explicitly stated) notion that I, as an atheist, simply cannot be experiencing beauty, joy, or love the same way they are, because they're feeling the joy of God.***

Really? Texas churches *in general*? Texas has quite active non-Fundamentalist (RTC, etc.) churches, you know. For example the Catholic church (which has nearly as many members as all the Baptist denominations, as of 2000), the Anglican church, and so on.

Fair enough; I should have been slightly more specific with my wording. Rather than "Texas churches," it should say "mainstream Christian churches in Texas." My problem isn't with each individual church in Texas, nor is it with Christianity. My problem is with the effect of Texas culture on mainstream churches.

I'm probably not being very clear, so let me try to make sense here. Culture is a complex thing, and religion is only one part of that. For instance, at Texas A&M, I can tell you that a protestant Christian here likely has more in common with a (probably libertarian) atheist here than with another protestant Christian in Boston. And a Texas Democrat is vastly different from a Maine Democrat.

By the same token, mainstream churches in Texas on the whole tend to pick up a lot of the same memes. I can go to just about any Father's Day sermon from any mainstream church and listen to a white guy talk for an hour about how important gender roles are. I can go to any sermon on sexuality and know going in that the absolute best I can hope for is, "gays maybe aren't going to Hell, but these false studies show that they can't hold stable relationships and have a life expectancy of 30 years thanks to STD's, so you still shouldn't give in and join the 'lifestyle.'" I can go to any youth group event and watch them flat-out tell an auditorium of middle-schoolers to never ask religious questions of your atheist friends if you're feeling unsure about something.

There's a reason I said "churches" and not "Christianity." Growing up, I thought Christianity was stupid. Then I learned better and thought the people around me were stupid. Then I found Slacktivist, which taught me that the churches were stupid.

So I guess that's one place I should have been clearer: I didn't mean to say "churches" as in, "all churches in Texas, because fuck religion." I meant it is in, "the individual, human-run churches in Texas, rather than Christianity or Christians."

I mean, there statistically must be some awesome churches in Texas, and I don't mean that snarkily. By definition, I wouldn't know about them because they're not running the show. Hell, they're in the same boat as me.

[MadGastronomer, who popped back up after a busy weekend to WTF misogyny and 'splaining]

Other Wiccans will likely disagree, but I regard Wicca as more a set of techniques, a ritual style and toolkit, than a belief system.

I, for one, concur completely, and had the same experience of practice leading to belief. Wicca is a religion of practice, not belief, which is something we've actually discussed here before.

[Dav]

I find the churches of my youth awful from a purely aesthetic sense. I do think that humble space can be godly, but a lot of evangelical churches seem to go out of their way to keep their worship spaces as much like a Comfort Inn conference room as possible. They're not sterile, exactly, but they're stagnant and dull. I always secretly envied Catholics, who I imagined as always having stained glass or something pretty to entertain them. We were also told that Catholics had gobs of gory martyrs lying about to worship, which sounded fun. (Yes, getting through sermons without dying of boredom was more of a goal than spiritual edification.)

[Elizabby]

Hi Dierd, thanks for posting this - interesting to hear the opposite POV. I'm an Anglican currently attending a Baptist church and I encounter quite a bit of the attitude you mention in your opening paragraphs. I have completely failed to describe to everyone I encounter why prescribed prayers can be beautiful and uplifting beyond what I could personally compose on the spot, and why ritual and ceremony can celebrate and add value to daily life.

Last time I spoke to someone on this subject they grudgingly admitted that lighting a candle *probably* isn't sinful idolatry, in and of itself, but it is still better not to do it.

Which is why I haven't tried to talk to anyone about this for a while. Interestingly, CS Lewis had quite a bit to say on this subject, and though he seems to be widely read in general, this part seems to pass without comment...

[This Wicked Day]

This is fascinating. As an atheist, ritual is something I sometimes miss - not enough to keep attending a church I no longer believe in or join the Unitarian Universalists, but enough that I do enjoy it when I can participate in ritual forms that don't carry very much expectation of belief. I go to carol service most years, because at Christmas all sorts of not-usually-practising people show up, and I've greatly enjoyed the rituals I've been invited to by my pagan housemate.

I seem to be a bit of an oddity amongst the atheists I know in that I *have* had experiences I would describe as . . . numinous, I suppose; moments of heightened sensibility and connection with a greater whole. I just don't understand them as divine in nature or origin - for me it seems to be more about briefly feeling like I *understand* the enormousness and wonder of the universe and my existence in it. For me such moments are nearly always brought on by places rather than actions, though I've known particular actions to magnify the impact of a place - singing, a lot of the time. A memory I treasure is of doing a Thelemite vibration ritual at West Kennet long barrow - eighteen voices intoning together in this narrow, dark, echoing space. It still gives me shivers to remember. (Good shivers.) Listening to the choir practice under the great arch at Wells Cathedral was another one.

Both of those happened in places which were purpose-built for the experience, as it were, and also weighted with history; but I've had moments that happened just lying in the park, looking up and suddenly being acutely aware of the size of the sky and the weight of the earth underneath me.

Somewhere online, I can't now remember where, I came across someone who described their very similar style of non-belief as "ecstatic atheism". I like the term very much, but I've never seen it used anywhere else.

[Jarred]

@Mmy: Isn't this similar to the difference between an orthodoxy and an orthopraxy?

Yes, exactly.

I'll also note that one of the reasons I tend to like orthopraxy over orthodoxy is that it's easier to say "right practice" and keep in mind an implied "for us." If other individual people or groups have practices that differ from mine, that's okay. It may make them and what they do "different" and even "something else," but it doesn't necessarily make them "wrong."

In general, orthodoxy seems to be interpreted as "right belief for everyone."

[Froborr]

I seem to be a bit of an oddity amongst the atheists I know in that I *have* had experiences I would describe as . . . numinous, I suppose; moments of heightened sensibility and connection with a greater whole. I just don't understand them as divine in nature or origin - for me it seems to be more about briefly feeling like I *understand* the enormousness and wonder of the universe and my existence in it.

This atheist has also had such experiences, the most powerful being watching the sunrise from atop Mt. Masada while listening to "The Beginning and the End" by Yasunori Mitsuda.

It's hardly unusual among atheists--Dawkins talks about getting the feeling when he contemplates his place in the history of life on Earth, Sagan has his speech about starstuff...

[Mmy]

@This Wicked Day: I seem to be a bit of an oddity amongst the atheists I know in that I *have* had experiences I would describe as . . . numinous, I suppose; moments of heightened sensibility and connection with a greater whole.

As Froborr already mentioned both Dawkins and Sagan have talked about something similar. Froborr and I (both atheists) have experienced it.

It may be a matter more of natures of the subset of atheists you have discussed this with than anything -- I have known many atheists and, if anything, the scientists among them have been particularly likely to have had a (or many) numinous experience(s).

[Ross]

I seem to be a bit of an oddity amongst the atheists I know in that I *have* had experiences I would describe as . . . numinous, I suppose; moments of heightened sensibility and connection with a greater whole.

Freud mentions this too -- in the prologue to the book he wrote immediately after the book where he declares God to not exist (It was apparently his response to a friend who'd pointed out something he hadn't thought of. He hadn't experienced it himself, but, in his very typically Freud way, he asserted that he was absolutely sure what it was even though there is no way he could possibly have known that.

According to Freud, it's a flash of memory of what it felt like in your mind before your ego split off from your id and developed into its own independent bit of consciousness. In his view, that numinous sensation -- he described it as "oceanic" -- was a memory of what it was like to not have a fully-developed sense of where you ended and the outside world began.

[kisekileia]

One of the biggest reasons I jumped ship from liberal Christianity to evangelicalism as an adolescent was that ritual didn't have meaning for me. I'm now in a very high-church (much more so than the church I grew up in) Anglican church, and I appreciate ritual much more as an adult. Not all of it has tremendous meaning for me, and I don't have the profound experience of God that I had in evangelical worship as a teenager (pre-abuse), but I now find it a refreshing contrast to evangelical worship.

[Lampdevil]

Dav, I've always felt the reverse from you. I grew up Catholic, so all the pretty candles and stained glass and incense and stuff and such define the idea of "church" for me. When I started looking at the wider world, and was introduced to the idea of Megacurches and evangelical churches in general, it wouldn't click. It seemed wrong, darn it! They weren't curching right!

Which is a totally foolish thing to think. I've gotten over it. (But I still have a soft spot for the trappings and comfort of Mass, even though I've got a list of Issues With The Curch a mile long and haven't really settled on what I believe...)

[Sixwing]

...a memory of what it was like to not have a fully-developed sense of where you ended and the outside world began.

I define that numinous feeling in pretty much the same way, except it's not a memory, it's an experience.

It's the realization that I -am- made of starstuff (I love that speech) and that my molecules (I call them 'mine' because they are currently part of my body; I have no further claim on them) are older than I can imagine. It's the realization that my body is an open system and so is my mind, so is my soul; the feeling that here is all of this and I am a tiny part of it, integral and fluid as everything else around me, temporal and fading as a flower but made of substances as eternal as stars; or more so, because the iron in my blood has outlived the stellar furnace that made it. Beyond that, it is the glorification of the Creator behind all that - the hand that shaped the stars, the mind that designed the laws.

It is insignificant, in a way, but also joyous, because I can lift up my head and laugh at the sheer absurdity of a tiny, tiny piece of all of this glorying in its own existence, and then I can laugh because I am laughing and that is all I need.

[Lampdevil]

That was beautiful, Sixwing. I've got tears in my eyes. Can I label myself an "ecstatic agnostic?" I've always loved the "starstuff" speech, too. The Symphony of Science music, autotuned snips and bits of resonant stuff like that, are as comforting to me as hymn might be to someone else.

This universe is incredible. The simple fact of our existance, all the things that came into play to make it happen, is amazing and beautiful. I don't need a promise of later or what comes after. The incredible possibility of now is enough for me.

[Lonespark]

The simple fact of our existance, all the things that came into play to make it happen, is amazing and beautiful.

Yes, this.

And I feel like anything that lets people get in touch with those feelings is good, full stop.

[hapax]

This universe is incredible. The simple fact of our existance, all the things that came into play to make it happen, is amazing and beautiful. I don't need a promise of later or what comes after. The incredible possibility of now is enough for me.

May this thoroughly conventional Christian offer an enthusiastic "Amen"?

As I never tire of tub-thumping, the original, essential "good news" of the Gospels is "The Kingdom of Heaven is in the midst of you!"

(And the corollary: "So go out and act like it, mmmkay?")

[Brin (not Meir)]

I'm rather jealous of all these numinous experiences people are talking about. The closest I've ever gotten is the feeling I get when I look at a waterfall, of being somehow prevented from really appreciating it. Whenever I look at beauty, I become uncomfortably aware of my sobriety (as opposed to being knurd), but unable to shed it, even for a moment.

[sarah]

@Deird: It's funny how we're on opposite sides of the world and *still* have had similar experiences.

I disagree with my parents about certain things, but, yes, they do definitely rock.

[syfr]

I left the Catholic Church, and found my home in the (High Church) Episcopal Church. It was a relief to find ritual with a female priest, with gay people fully accepted in the pews next to me.

I went to a few UCC services, but found the leavened bread and the unfamiliarity of the ritual bothered me enough that I didn't settle there.

[Ross]

I've had maybe four or five of those numinous experiences that I remember. Three of them took place in a church (one of them was at my wedding, so, awesome.). The others were during fits of sleep paralysis. A big part of the reason I so rarely go to church is that I am incredibly disappointed when I go and it doesn't happen.

[Jarred]

@Ross: A big part of the reason I so rarely go to church is that I am incredibly disappointed when I go and it doesn't happen.

I can certainly understand that.

[Froborr]

@Brin: I have a similar resistance, but can sometimes shut it down with physical exhaustion and exhilaration. That Mt. Masada experience came after climbing a (admittedly, fairly short) mountain, which came after getting up at 4 a.m. after going to sleep near midnight.

Since waterfalls come close for you, have you tried thoroughly exhausting yourself en route to a waterfall?

[Jamoche]

I always secretly envied Catholics, who I imagined as always having stained glass or something pretty to entertain them.

Yes, we do.

OK, it's not originally Catholic (even though we are) - it's Stanford Memorial Church, inspired by Jane Stanford's tour of the great cathedrals of Europe. But it's beautiful, the acoustics are fantastic - and if you zoom in on that wikipedia picture, I'm in it :)

[Brin (not Meir)]

>have you tried thoroughly exhausting yourself en route to a waterfall?<

Maybe I'll try that someday. I live a couple hours' drive from Niagara Falls; I could go for a long hike along the river. Not yet, though: I'm young enough that I'd have to convince my family to go with me, and I don't think either of my parents would agree to it. (Little brother, possibly, but that's not helpful.)

[Mmy]

@Brin: Maybe I'll try that someday. I live a couple hours' drive from Niagara Falls

Insert very painful "joke."

How 'bout those Leafs then?

[Dav]

Jamoche, that is lovely, but can you compare it to this?

(Pretty ritzy by Baptist standards - my church would never have gone for that shade on the walls, or that picture.)