You gotta have faith.

Yesterday, my dear friend Derrick asked a question that I've been battling with in stages for the past six years.

In a discussion on religion and faith, I told Derrick that I considered myself more spiritual than religious. It's been the safer answer for me coming from a family that has been Christian and remains so. Not because I question if there is a God. I've actually got a pretty firm understanding of my beliefs in that regard. I am not an atheist. I don't judge those who are, but for me, living without the belief that there is a divine meaning and order to my existence would suck the wind out of my writing, my art and all the places my mind travels while I am still.

I do believe in God. More specifically, I believe in a divine influence and a malevolent one. As a child growing up with Episcopalian & Baptist parents while attending a Catholic school, I got more Jesus than you could shake a stick at. And elements of each were unspeakably beautiful to me. Wandering the mysterious, solemn halls of the sisters convent at Cecilian Academy back in Philadelphia, I learned restraint. I understood charity. I learned fear. I was immersed in tradition and the overwhelming sensation of being in the presence of something bigger than all of us.

In the quiet of my mother's childhood Episcopalian church as a very little girl, I fell in love with a Pastor I called, "Church." And years later I still adore that Pastor with all my heart and feel a twinge of anxiety when I face the fact that I am no longer willing to accept everything that falls from his lips as infallibly correct.

In my Grandmother's home, in her serene grace and quiet reverence, I learned forgiveness, tolerance and endurance.

So how do I find myself today looking back on the dogma of all those subsets of the Christian faith and embracing a term that is a little more nebulous than the more stringent "religious?"

Religion = Church. And let's be clear. I don't have any issues with God. I do, however, have issues with organized religion. Lots of them. Too many of them for me to include in a solitary post. But even as a child, the one thing that stood out to me in bible study, in mass, in christian summer camp and in the pew...was this book, our Bible, no matter the version, was God's word interpreted by the very fallible, the very flawed and the very power starved human. How many times have we all "misperceived" something in the favor of our preferences? Our needs? Our desires? Our biases?

When I was 16, my Uncle committed suicide. He had just entered the full blown stage of AIDS. And he was a gay male with a homophobic father. While my mother received the news, I was sitting on the couch in the livingroom, listening to her wails of heartache echoing down from the bedroom above my head. My grandfather entered the house about twenty minutes later, sat beside me and took my hand. I've always been an extremely private mourner and even with that, I have an odd acceptance of death - even when it is horrific and unexpected. Still, I was shaken and trying to process what came next all while wanting desperately to go to my mother and console her. My grandfather looked me over, reserved and solemn as he asked me if I was okay. I nodded.

My grandfather then patted my hand and remarked, "I know it's upsetting to you, but you know your Uncle has gone to hell, right?"

I still hear it in my ears today. And it still sounds as wrong as it did then. I didn't answer him in that moment and though I adored my grandfather for all that he was, I still was well aware of all he was not. To my grandfather, my Uncle was going to hell for three reasons. He was a gay man, he was a practicing Buddhist and he had ended his life. All sins, according to what my grandfather learned. All sins, according to his religion. That moment reminded me of all the other moments when the topic of God felt religious...but not at all spiritual.

Spirituality = Aspiring to Enlightenment. In a variety of beliefs, I see the themes of divinity that speak to me. The notion of Gaia. Of an earthen mother who loves us, nurtures us and requires in return only our care for this gifts she has bestowed. I adore the notion of Earth as a single, living organism. The concept of karma as deeds that all warrant a subsequent action based on the intention of the originating act. I love conceptional representations of faith that do not use emotional manipulation, fear or shame to drive positive behavior. I don't want to be "good" because I'm going to go to hell if I don't. I don't want to give, to avoid being frowned upon by those I respect.  I don't seek forgiveness with hopes I will collect golden crowns in heaven. I want only to live my life with a purpose that speaks to love, light and goodness because it feels better than nursing anger or living in darkness.

There is no big bad wolf with spirituality - no threat beyond the repurcussions of your own actions and the understanding that in all things there is balance.  There is only the raw ugliness of the human spirit that we see everyday in the face of war, greed and even apathy. Religion uses fear to control, largely because it fails to have faith in its own kind. It suspects what it asks of us is simply too much (or too ridiculous) for us to possibly embrace, so we are instead ruled by fear, fire and brimstone. Religion is the scarecrow to our murder.

I celebrate the neopaganistic appreciation for the changing of the seasons and the transitions they bring all of us. I love the idea of life and spirit being alive in the trees, in every blooming flower. I love frankincense and sage and smudging myself and my home to cleanse my spiritual palate and prepare me for meditation.  I love the deep, hynotising patience of the Hindus, the reverence to gods feels similar to the notion of saints. I love the tenets of the Buddhist faith and it's commitment to spiritual evolution.

I love spirituality. And I consider myself to be deeply spiritual. But religious?

I'm afraid not.