I am not a religious person.

In fact, depending on my emotional state and my level of agitation with the world I vacillate between indifferent, rejecting, accepting, and everythinginbetweenallatonce.

I was raised stiflingly Catholic and I never had a personal relationship with what was being pushed on me by the well-meaning. This was especially frustrating because I was, and have always been, and still am a deeply spiritual cat. I feel things on an empathic level and I’m acutely aware of the underlying connection of… everything. So you can imagine my ambivalence when presented with sacred rites that seemed as inspiringly profound as an episode of Heehaw. add to that the contradictions, the preterite and the elect, the many roads leading to the same truths, the hypocrisy of narrow-minded clergy and stuffy church-folk and you can see that how I, to borrow from George Carlin, left the church when I reached the age of reason.

Even now it’s hard not to take the easy, snarky cheap shot at the religion of my upbringing. But I also know that it’s not healthy to do so. Not for me, and not for the many people I love and respect who find comfort and joy in what just didn’t work for me. It really is that simple. So many paths lead to enlightenment and communion with our true nature. For some it’s the Catholic church and that is a beautiful thing for them. For me, it had to be something else.

So now that I’ve traveled full-circle and have learned to at least come to a civil-albeit-slightly-strained relationship with past dogma, I can look at some of the ideas from Christianity with the same objective wonder as the words of Siddhartha, or Lao Tse.

Give us this day our daily bread.

It is too easy to let my mind spin outward projecting into an unknown future extrapolating from data into an unknown analyzing patterns and assessing outcomes. My father has aggressive prostate cancer, my brother-in-law is recovering from a severe brain-aneurysm and while he’s progressing, the process is tentative, unsure… it is easy to get lost in these projections and suffocate under their weight when I get too far away from my center and they collapse on me.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Consider the lilies.

Protect us from all anxiety.

I don’t honestly know (or care really) if Jesus of Nazareth really existed. The same way I don’t honestly know or care if Siddhartha Gautama, Lao Tse, or any other great figure truly existed. Someone with these ideas did. Even if there wasn’t a healing of the sick, sight-to-blind, water-to-wine, raise-Lazarus-from-the-dead, someone dreamed this all up. Whether through tales or through acts. Someone was inspired to show us our true nature.

So give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.

Deliver us from evil.

Protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of a glorious revolution of empathy where the only rule is golden and we do unto each other as we would have done…

One can, and will, dream. Perchance to sleep more soundly.