SpiritWalk

I contemplate the existence of God all of the time. I have asked myself the question over and over ‘How can I know that God exists?’ Friends and family have told me why they believe in God and why they do not believe in God, but it doesn’t matter to me what anyone else says (even the Pope). I have to believe for my own reasons. For a long time I waited for an epiphany. I wanted some miracle to happen that would prove to me that God exists. Finally, one day I was driving home from dinner with my husband and kids. It had just rained and where we live we have the most beautiful rainbows. As we were driving home one of these magnificent colored arcs appeared. Now, I have seen hundreds of rainbows in my life, but in that moment I thought to myself ‘Rainbows are proof of God’. To me rainbows are such a miracle, and I don’t care what the scientific explanation is for a rainbow. They are still a complete miracle to me. They are so breathtakingly beautiful. That moment started me thinking on what are other reasons I believe in God. So here are my top 10 reasons I believe in God.

10. The Sun – One of my favorite things to do in the morning is to walk outside on our deck and look at our lovely view and feel the Suns warmth on my face and shoulders. I tip my face towards the Sun and say ‘Thank you God!’. Just letting my mind relax and focus on the wonderful warm feeling from the Sun is so blissful. Without the Sun our world would not be what it is and to contemplate how our solar system works and how the planets revolve around the Sun and why they revolve around the Sun is just baffling to me. It is truly a miracle.

9. The Moon – The Sun lights up our day, but the Moon lights up our nights. There is something so magnificent about how the Moon goes through its cycles. There are times when I glance out and see the Moon and don’t even recognize it as the Moon. Once I came home and looked out the window and I thought there was some sort of celestial event happening. I saw this giant orange light in the sky, it almost looked like a fire in the sky. I just sat and stared trying to figure out what it was I was looking at. I called to my husband and as he entered the room I realized it was the moon. It had been distorted by some clouds passing over it. I had to laugh at myself for not recognizing the planet that I see almost every night. It’s interesting what a special relationship my kids have with the Moon. It was definitely one of both of their first words and they always point it out to me. When it is big and full it is such a joy for all of us to see. A complete miracle.

8. Flowers - Flowers are the Eart’hs decorations, each flower is a great masterpiece. The colors, the aromas and the shapes. Completely amazing, how different each flower is, yet how beautiful. People always ask ‘what’s your favorite flower?’. Well, for me, it depends on what’s blooming that particular week or where I am. When I see the first crocus of the year sticking their little heads out of the snow, I get completely giddy. The aroma of lilacs send me to Nirvana. The exotic shape of the iris would make you think that they are delicate, yet throw a clump in your backyard and they will take over. I even like dandelions, mostly because my kids get such a kick out of them. My daughter showed me a picture the other day of the praying mantis that looked just like a pink orchid. I could not believe it, so bizarre yet so beautiful.

9. Rainbows - Ahh rainbows…I love them. First of all, I love the rain, especially a summer rain that cools off a hot day. The rain is my main course and the rainbow is my dessert. Our house has great views to the east. We often see complete double rainbows. Yes, there is a very logical reason we see rainbows. Rainbows are seen when raindrops, falling in the distance, bend and bounce sunlight back towards your eye. Each color of sunlight is bent and bounced in a slightly different direction. The colors separate around the bright edge of the reflection. Here’s the miracle ‘each color of the sunlight’. Is that not a complete miracle that the color of sunlight is actually made up of all those different colors.

7. Laughter - There is nothing more contagious than laughter and there is nothing that makes you feel better. I can be in the darkest mood and sound of my children giggling pulls me right into the light. Try this experiment at your next gathering. Take one of your friends into another room and start laughing. I bet within 10 minutes every person will gravitate into that room, keep laughing and just watch everyones reaction. You will have everyone laughing and they won’t even know what they are laughing about, but no one will care because it just feels so great to be in a room full of laughing people. What a true gift from God.

6. Tears - It is so perplexing to me why we actually cry. I understand feelings of sorrow and grief, but why do we cry? Why does our body produce a watery substance from our eyes, when we feel sad or sometimes extremely happy? I think tears are like rain. They are a gift from heaven.

5. Music - Sweet, sweet music. Music can bring up so many emotions and so many memories. There are songs that I associate with different times in my life. When certain songs play on the car radio when I am driving, like Eric Clapton’s “Bell Bottom Blues”, I can not leave the car until the song is over. It brings up such feelings of nostalgia. Music is so healing. just listening to music can change your mood in a matter of minutes. I know when my kids are having a rough time all I have to do is start singing there favorite song and they forget all of their worries. Thank you God for music.

4. Eyes - Eyes, they view this beautiful world and they are beautiful to view. Each set is so unique and so wonderful to gaze at. You can pretty much tell what kind of life a person has led by looking deep into their eyes. The eyes are so telling of what a person is all about.

3. Birth - From conception to birth the whole process of creating a baby is so incredible. How those little bundles of love start from a couple of tiny cells is miraculous. How the women’s body does exactly what it needs to do to give the little create a place to grow and thrive is mind boggling. How could this happen by some freak of nature. How can anyone believe that this live just happens because of some random coincidence of chemical reactions. I just don’t buy it.

2. The Universe - Just thinking about the Universe hurts my head. There is so much we do not know about the Universe and I’m not sure we will ever now. It is a complete mystery. I love reading all the different theories of how the Universe was created and what is happening ‘out there’ today. Well here’s one of my theories. The Universe is God, the whole thing, including us. We are like tiny cells of God.

1. Love - And the number 1 reason I believe in God, is ‘LOVE’. The most wonderful thing that we humans have. I start my day every day thinking about how lucky I am, because of all the people in my life that I love and all the people that love me. I remember asking my Mother when I was a child if we were rich. She always answered, ‘Yes we are rich, rich in love’. She was right.

I’ve always been very interested in all religions but never felt I could commit. I really feel I know too little about the Christian religion and the Bible to say ‘Yes, this if for, me!’ or ‘No thank you’. I attended Bible study on Saturday’s in the summers when I was growing up. Neither of my parents are religious, but my Mother sent us to Bible study so we would have some knowledge of the most famous book in the world. I didn’t really know that we weren’t religious until I was twelve. My Mom always told me we were Protestants, that seemed reasonable to me. I went to church with one my friends on occasion. I definitely believed in God and believed Jesus was God’s son. I knew and loved a lot of the stories in the Bible. At twelve, I remember asking my Mother some question about the Bible and my Mother’s response was, ‘Oh Angie, I don’t know. I read the Bible once. It’s a nice fiction novel’. Well, that statement opened a whole new realm for me. Was the Bible fiction? My Mother was really a good Mother. Smart, loving, caring, hard working, fun, a good wife and just had a lot of common sense. So, for a long time I believed her. Interestingly, my Sister Amanda, who is six years older than me, started to go to church every Sunday with one of her friends when she was in high school in the late 70s. My parents seemed to be okay with that. I thought it was so unfair that the rest of us had to stay home and do yard work while Amanda went to church on Sundays. My parents said, ‘Do you want to go to church?’ and I said ‘Noooo’ and they said ‘Then get to work’. My Sister has continued to go to church and really thrives in life because of spirituality. She is very easy to talk to about religion and as adults we’ve had really great conversations about God and Christianity. She never judged me for not being religious, but she freely shared with me why her faith was so strong. Amanda has had many spiritual epiphanies. She feels God has spoken to her and I believe her. Here faith opened up the door for me to have ‘faith’, unfortunately my other Sister Amy’s faith slammed the door shut. My Sister Amy found God about 10 years ago. She started attending a Methodist Church, like my Sister Amanda. Amy definitely needed something in her life, so I thought it was a good thing for her. When I tried to have conversations with her, she wasn’t so open. When I suggested that possibly Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife and spiritual partner she said ‘absolutely not’. When I suggested that the passages chosen to be in the Bible were based on the politics of the time, she wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Her opinion seems to be that there is only one way to interpret the Bible and only one way to believe and if I did not believe in that same way my soul was at risk. Well, I became strongly interested in Buddhism after that.

After a while my interest in Christianity could not be kept at bay. I kept thinking how can a book that has been around for so long, read and worshiped by so many people, not contain some truth? On the other hand how could a book written thousands of years ago and interpreted and translated many time over, be taken so literally? Why is it that Christian’s say the Bible is the ‘one true book’? How could there be only one true book written in thousands of years? Especially, when that one true book has so much in common with a lot of other writings and oral stories that came before it? And why can’t I interpret the writing in my own way? Can’t God speak to me and tell me ‘My truths’ through his word?

I also have a lot of questions about one of the most beloved men of all time, Jesus. Jesus lived two thousand years ago, how is it that that his teaching still speak so strongly to people today? He must have been someone incredibly special. He was an amazing teach, his words are beautiful. He was like a rock star, loved by the young prophets looking for something different, looking for meaning in there lives, so hated by the grown ups that couldn’t imagine breaking from tradition. My friend Barb says ‘Jesus was aBuddhist’. From all that I read, it seems obvious to me he was a pacifist. Yet how is it that so many wars have been waged in Jesus’ name? It seems so ironic to me. I think Jesus just shakes his head in disbelief.

I know my Sister would be so comforted if I could just find Jesus. How do I tell her I think I may have found Jesus, just not the same Jesus she found.

My husband gave this website to me for my 40th birthday. He has several websites and I have been wanting to start my own, but working full time and having two kids didn’t leave me time to do the leg work to get started. I am very grateful to my husband for finding this website and getting everything set up for me. This particular website was owned by someone else and for some reason he decided to sell it, lucky me!

I’m not embarrassed to say that at age 40 I have just started to discover my own spirituality, in fact I am proud of myself for finally taking the plunge. I think, organized religion had completely scared me away from being a spiritual person. I thought that I
had to sign up with one particular religious sect in order to be a spiritual person. Finally, I have learned that this is not true,no matter what anyone else says. Spirituality is very personal and means many different things to many to different people. I am still learning what spirituality means to me and I probably will spend the rest of my life and beyond being a student in the spiritual classroom.

Over the last year I have read so many books and have watched many movies on different religions and spiritual quests. I have read books on Christianity Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and New Age concepts. I have to say, I have learned something good from each and every one of these sources. I hope, by starting this website, that I can learn and grow and help others to do the same. Please join me on this Spirit Walk. I
am so looking forward to this journey.