Faith

I've been reading a little too much Anne Lamott today, so I apologize if I start to sound like her. She's one of my favorite writers and one of those authors I go to when I need a spiritual hit. While Lamott writes primarily about her born again Christian faith, she doesn't shove it down the reader's throat, which is a nice change of pace for most books about religion. She just tells you in the plainest language how she discovered faith, and how much that has shaped her life.

We have some interesting books at our house about faith or the lack of it. It's a wonder that Cute Husband and I can agree on anything, as I'm all about fairies and stardust and the magic of the Universe, and he isn't buying into any of it. None of it, not the Christians, the Jews, Islam--anything that has a figurehead at the helm and that promotes any kind of a religious following. Cute Husband, who is one of the most culturally curious and sensitive beings I know, cannot fathom why we would choose to put all of our personal stock and our power into believing in fairy tales. And while he respects that others have a strong sense of faith and belief, he likens believing in religion as believing in a magic purple elephant, or worship of The Artichoke, or anything similarly odd. He just doesn't believe that we being the rational and logical beings that we are would so willingly hand over all of our power to something that most probably doesn't exist, because really, how can it?

Clearly, we have some differences.

But I like that he still has a spiritual core despite loathing organized religion, and really, he's sort of a free spirit, tree-hugging natural guy, has an amazing heart, and is damn cute. I think I've reached the point where I don't care what people worship as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. While this is a lovely thing in the abstract, the problems arise when someone's religious beliefs butt heads with compassion, the rules of humanity, and personal freedoms. When religion begins to shape the laws that are being made, or when they color how people treat each other--then we've got some problems on our hands.