Living in Relationship with Mystery … and the Religious

by

our land

Today I am honored to be featured on the Our Land Series!

Do you know Kristi of Finding Ninee? You should! She is funny and deep and insightful, usually all in the same post! Her blog is about, among many other things, raising her son who has developmental delays. She started the Our Land Series to celebrate our differences and quirks and to create what she calls a “land of empathy and wonder.”

Today I am sharing my story, which I wrote after being inspired by the book Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious by Chris Stedman. In this book, Stedman writes of his journey from atheism, to fundamentalism, to militant atheism, and finally to a place of acceptance and engagement with the religious {which other atheists derogatorily called being a “Faitheist.”}

I have found myself on a similar journey, and I am honored to share with you my personal journey through atheism, Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, spiritual-but-not-religious-and-still-atheist-ism, and how my attitudes toward the religious have transformed over the years.

Here’s an excerpt from my story:

“I realized I had become just as intolerant of the religious as many of the religious had been of me. In Faitheist, Stedman describes how he came to a similar understanding of his hostile anti-theism ~ he was painting the religious with as broad a brush as the religious had painted atheists. He writes, ‘It was clear that I needed to change my attitude toward religious people; it was holding me back in my relationships, in my work, and in my personal development.’ I was the same way. If I found out someone was deeply religious, I assumed we wouldn’t be able to be friends.

As I have embarked upon my own spiritual journey over the last decade, I had to confront my assumptions about religion, and about the religious.”

You can read the rest of my story, “We Are All Living in Relationship with Mystery,” over at Finding Ninee.

Namaste.

Sarah Rudell Beach
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