Cave
I've never been religious, but it's kind of funny how religions have played their own part in my life in such a large way.
I used to go to Sunday School as a kid, I guess that was my first test as far as faith and spirituality is concerned. But you know, when you're that young, you don't really think about things, you just accept them. It was pretty much the same as regular school to a younger me. I never got any spiritual high off of it. I liked hanging out with the kids there, that was about it.
I wasn't very popular growing up, though. I didn't have any real friends at school other than Steve and Kris, and looking back I didn't really have any at the Sunday School either. And that's why I decided to try going to the United Church youth group meetings, to socialize. Try and fit in with people on some level, because others way had failed. Being young, all that mattered was that other people liked me, which is a strange inverse to how I feel now.
The youth groups were fun in their own little way. I met Bochon and Matt there. And these things eventually evolved into the church camps on Gambier Island and at the Naramata Centre. Places I would come to love despite a lack of religious faith inside. These two camps became homes away from home that I waited for all year. Every visit would be so condensed into so many little life lessons and so many wonderful experiences with a truckload of magical people. People like Tara, Saxon, Joe, Victoria, Fiona, Leigh, and countless others. Most of these people I no longer talk to but I will always hold them close to my heart for the time we spent together.
But I grew out of the United Church. Maybe it wasn't ever meant to be my place. I never had spirituality in me while having that as a part of my life.
Now there's a spirituality within myself that won't fade. It took a lot of turns down an Earth-long road to reach it but it's there. Something I never imagined having...I didn't think of myself as that sort of person. Back then I was living in a very black and white world where there was a lot of pain, and a lot of bad decisions on both my part and others. And years of feeding into that only turned up the contrast.
I don't see myself ever being religious. I can't believe in a god. I can believe in the energy I feel but I would never follow a practice that is outside my own life in meaning because when it comes down to it, the only gods in this universe are the ones we bring out in ourselves. We are the controllers of our own life, we create our own heavens and hells, and we can decide to either make our fickle mortal time worth the most it can be, nothing at all, or something in between.
I believe that love and true happiness is the most powerful instrument that man has every had placed in his hands. Too often we forget the power it holds and sometimes we get rocked out of shape by it. But it is forever a gift.
And that's all my spirituality really boils down to, believing in inner love and embracing one's soul for the true beauty it holds, in its own little godlike way.
I used to go to Sunday School as a kid, I guess that was my first test as far as faith and spirituality is concerned. But you know, when you're that young, you don't really think about things, you just accept them. It was pretty much the same as regular school to a younger me. I never got any spiritual high off of it. I liked hanging out with the kids there, that was about it.
I wasn't very popular growing up, though. I didn't have any real friends at school other than Steve and Kris, and looking back I didn't really have any at the Sunday School either. And that's why I decided to try going to the United Church youth group meetings, to socialize. Try and fit in with people on some level, because others way had failed. Being young, all that mattered was that other people liked me, which is a strange inverse to how I feel now.
The youth groups were fun in their own little way. I met Bochon and Matt there. And these things eventually evolved into the church camps on Gambier Island and at the Naramata Centre. Places I would come to love despite a lack of religious faith inside. These two camps became homes away from home that I waited for all year. Every visit would be so condensed into so many little life lessons and so many wonderful experiences with a truckload of magical people. People like Tara, Saxon, Joe, Victoria, Fiona, Leigh, and countless others. Most of these people I no longer talk to but I will always hold them close to my heart for the time we spent together.
But I grew out of the United Church. Maybe it wasn't ever meant to be my place. I never had spirituality in me while having that as a part of my life.
Now there's a spirituality within myself that won't fade. It took a lot of turns down an Earth-long road to reach it but it's there. Something I never imagined having...I didn't think of myself as that sort of person. Back then I was living in a very black and white world where there was a lot of pain, and a lot of bad decisions on both my part and others. And years of feeding into that only turned up the contrast.
I don't see myself ever being religious. I can't believe in a god. I can believe in the energy I feel but I would never follow a practice that is outside my own life in meaning because when it comes down to it, the only gods in this universe are the ones we bring out in ourselves. We are the controllers of our own life, we create our own heavens and hells, and we can decide to either make our fickle mortal time worth the most it can be, nothing at all, or something in between.
I believe that love and true happiness is the most powerful instrument that man has every had placed in his hands. Too often we forget the power it holds and sometimes we get rocked out of shape by it. But it is forever a gift.
And that's all my spirituality really boils down to, believing in inner love and embracing one's soul for the true beauty it holds, in its own little godlike way.