apulrang.blog

The following is a "spiritual autobiography" I wrote as the end project of a class called, "Build Your Own Theology," at my Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship.

I grew up in a world of warring dualities. Not between Good and Evil in the biblical sense. Not between Heaven and Hell. More like between Democrat and Republican. Left and Right. Commies and Nazis. Pinkos and Facists. And on, and on, and on.

I can’t say that this was a traumatic thing. In fact, it was quite energizing, and gave my world a surprising degree of structure, even when I was a little kid. In fact, despite all the changes I’ve gone through and the learning I’ve experienced, those dualities for the most part are still with me. They still make sense to me. Most of what happens in the world seems to confirm that my parents were onto something.

But there were other dualities. My father is a worrier ... a true child of the Depression. Luxury was frivolous, suspicious, decadent and a betrayal of liberal principles. My mother, who if anything was more radical in her politics than Dad, was, nevertheless, a great enjoyer of things. She was capable of appreciating the finer things ... expensive dinners out, a trip to England, two weeks at a summer cottage in the Thousand Islands ... without feeling that she was contradicting her principles. If, as many people have said, a sign of real genius is the ability to hold two contradictary thoughts simultaneously and believe them both, then Mom was the genius of the family. For her, there really wasn’t a contradiction. She believed that peoples’tendency to go for indulgence and wealth simply meant that an organized society set up must countermeasures. Mom knew she wasn’t the kindest, most generous person ... but that didn’t mean that others had to suffer for it. I feel the same way about myself.

Another influential person in my life was the librarian in my High School. Mr. Johnson was the happiest intelligent person I’d ever met. We had joyous conversations about politics, philosophy, history ... the whole sorry panorama ... in his office when I was supposed to be sorting back issues of Time. Best of all, he could enjoy the awfulness of politics without really being contemptuous or apathetic. Years later he suffered a nervous breakdown. That should be a warning to me. I haven’t heeded it.

My spiritual life has been pretty unremarkable. I could probably stuff the spiritual events of my life with loads of meaning, but that would be a put-on. The first third of my life, spirituality and religion were habits ... cultural attributes. In the second third, feeling with fingertipes for the unseen outlines of reality. Now, I’m just trying to sort through a lot of chaff in the hope ... no, the curiosity that there might really be some wheat after all.

The thing is, I’m still not sure what spirituality is for. Many of the questions we are all supposed to struggle with ... the ones that supposedly are why we have religion ... have never interested me. Why do we have to die? Why am I the way I am and not some other way? Why is there suffering? What is the purpose of life? Yawn. I might as well marvel at the fact that every time I keep my fingers crossed throughout an airplane flight, we don’t crash.

Actually, that last question is pretty interesting. That’s the one that keeps me going. What is the purpose of life? Is there a reason for the “human endeavor?” At the moment, I think that for individual humans, the idea is to stay interested in the world ... which is not the same thing as staying interested in yourself. For all of us? ... I don’t know. Devising a way we can all live together in a sustainable way that is still comfortable and still allows room for innovation, excitement, and fun. Leaving the Earth for other planets would be cool, too.

My greatest pleasure is finding oceans-deep wisdom laying about in puddles. You expect to find epiphanies in Dostoyevsky. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they really mean something.
posted by Andrew Pulrang at 10:25 PM

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