What's the big deal, anyway?

I like to joke, on frustrating, maddening, difficult days, that I'm lucky I have got religion. As a favorite gospel song of mine says, "I've got good religion and I'm not afraid!"

Unfortunately, what most people in our modern world are afraid of IS religion. What's surprised me recently is learning how many people are also wary of the word spiritual. Yet, spirituality is an inescapable fact of our existence. Spirituality is the way we make meaning out of our lives. For that matter, religion is too. It's not that most of us lack religion or spirituality, it's that we don't think of our perceptions that way, but truth be told, most of us DO follow a religion. It may be as simple as "Don't leave home without eating breakfast," or as complicated as "God doesn't exist." Whatever the belief may be, we cling to it. We may even fight for it; we certainly think we are right about it.

This is, probably, the human condition, this clinging and supporting of a belief system. So why not choose a life-giving, harmonious, peace-enhancing belief? Since we've been blessed with the ability to choose, why not choose a "religion," or a spirituality that serves the good?

As I studied recently about the Love of God, or more accurately the Love that is God--the God that is Love--I had a moment of anxiety. What if I'm wrong? I thought to myself. What if God isn't really love? What if all those humanists are right and I am wrong?

My conclusion: I don't care if I'm wrong! The religion I practice, the spirituality that I strive to live, creates harmony in my life in true, tangible, practical, real-time ways. I'm not sitting around hoping that heaven is better than this challenging place called earth, I am actively finding that focusing my thoughts and learning about Divine Love brings healing, hope, power and strength to me IN THIS MOMENT.

I may well be wrong, but believing improves my life. I hope my belief improves the lives of all those around me. And when I'm as grumpy, cranky and irritated as I am on a day like today (snow on my crocuses! baby up all night crying! no time for myself! a misunderstanding with friends!), I'm grateful I've got "good religion." If I couldn't make a postive, life-giving meaning from this mess, well, I'd be stuck in it! But the faith in something greater pulls me up out of the muck and mire, like the first flowers of spring press through the cold, hard, stony ground, to great the warmth, compassion and kindness of the sun!