Tenderfoot Diaries

I’m not a fan of organized religion.  I don’t go to church unless forced to do so by circumstances.  There have been times when I was pretty certain God didn’t exist, and there are days, even now, when the jury is still out on that.  I know there are a lot of people who find solace in organized religion, and I know that there churches and pastors and religious laypeople out there who do a lot of good, but it has just never worked for me.  I don’t know if I’m too cynical, or too skeptical, or if I’ve been burned too often by people who claimed to speak religion but really spoke hypocrite.  I just don’t buy the whole organized religion thing.  For me, it just doesn’t work.

Given that I’m not much of a fan of anything connected with religion except, in some cases, their architecture, you’d probably imagine that  I’m quite spiritually impoverished and drifting without any moorings.  If that is your thought, you couldn’t be further from the truth.  Although I don’t have a brick and mortar church, and I don’t speak to a flesh and blood pastor, I do have a cathedral of sorts, and I do talk to someone or something. Sometimes, not often, I think someone or something talks back.

I first found my cathedral in the worst year of my life, the one I still call “the dark year”.  When I was 24 I entered a dark tunnel called clinical depression.  I didn’t care about anything.  I lost my job, there were days when I didn’t eat, and I probably would have killed myself, except I couldn’t be motivated to care enough to do it.  After years of dealing with a variety of issues, I’d had it, I was done.  The darkness was pulling me under and I didn’t care enough to raise my hand for help.

During that time, one of the things I did often was spend hours sitting at the window of the small apartment in which I lived, watching what I called my “Monet Trees”.  Through the screen on my window the trees across the park from my apartment looked pixelated and rather like a Monet painting.  As the year went on and I sank deeper, the trees grew and changed color, then lost their leaves and drew stark lines against the sky.  I’d walk by the trees on my way to the library, which was the one place I did go, and scuff my shoes in their leaves, and see that things could grow and change.  In a strange way, at a time when it all seemed hopeless, the trees gave me hope.  They were still striving and growing and living.   If they were doing it, maybe I could too.

It took a lot of work and some help but eventually I did get better and I started living again.  I moved to Northern Michigan, and I found solace in the lakes and the rivers and the beautiful scenery.  I’d walk along the beach of Lake Michigan and think about how small my problems seemed against the immensity of the lake.  On occasion I’d write my problems in the sand and let the lake wash them away.  I’d drive along the winding roads in the Fall and let the beauty of the leaves feed my soul.   I’d scamper around in the snow with the dogs because my Mom who was standing at the window had cancer, and me being a cold and wet idiot made her laugh.  The outdoors soothed a part of me that nothing else could quite reach.  I didn’t even have to experience the beauty first hand.  Just seeing it through a window was enough.

The outdoors became the place where I went to ask the big questions.  “Why me?” when I had to have heart surgery.  “Why her?” when the hospice nurse told us my mother only had days to live.  “What next” when I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go with my life.   I sought guidance, and even if it came only from my own brain and my own heart, I got it.  Maybe it was just that being in the outdoors quieted the chatter of my mind and my heart and let me hear the still, small voice that spoke the truth, but I found the sharpest clarity in the moments when I contemplated the outdoors.

I’m not a religious person.

I’m not entirely certain I believe in the conventional idea of God.

I do, however, get the moment that motivates people to say Thank You when they’ve seen a particularly beautiful sunrise.  I understand why hunters often say a prayer or thank the animal they’ve just taken for its sacrifice.  I identify with those who love the cool, crisp stillness of an autumn morning or the smooth, unblemished whiteness of an early morning snow.

I’m not religious.

But I do have religion.

Can I get an Amen?