Spiritual Journeys

On May 15, 2015, three members of the HUU Fellowship shared their own spiritual journey with us.

Eileen Dight

I apologize in advance to anyone who is offended by my comments and I regret that so many aspects of my Spiritual Journey have been negative and controversial.

Growing up in a Catholic family, the nuns at school told us we were lucky to have been born in the One True Faith, and I enjoyed this certainty, but in my teens I was already uncomfortable about rigid dogma. Papal Infallibility did not fit with the history of the Borgias, and the Inquisition. When I was 15, it was announced that St Mary had ascended bodily into Heaven. I thought it inappropriate to require every Catholic to accept this. Fortunately, frank discussion was encouraged at home by my Father who was raised a Wesleyan.

My Mother, third generation from Irish Catholic immigrants, was taught in school that “For ever and ever your soul will burn in hell if you don’t go to Mass on Sundays.” I didn’t believe this was a Mortal Sin. Neither did I believe in Original Sin. We have enough sins of our own without inheriting them.

More tussles with faith arose in my twenties. In 1957 I discovered while employed as nanny to her daughters by a Duchess in Spain, that she bought an Indulgence from a priest which allowed me to eat meat on Fridays. She explained that Spaniards were granted this dispensation as reward for supporting the pope in a mediaeval battle. It only cost 25 Pesetas but I objected to paying for redemption.

In Spain in that era poverty-stricken peasants gave their meagre coins to the church to bedeck the statue of St. Mary with precious jewels, carried in religious parades. I thought it would be better to improve their diet of bread and olives.

Later I saw on TV an Hispanic woman interviewed in her mud floored hut, saying “Yes, we had twelve children, but God is good because four of them died.”

During my twenties the Pope’s Encyclical interfered with family planning. Some priests tried to help their parishioners ease their conscience, but I argued with one who called me arrogant, when I refused to follow the church’s teaching on contraception. I’d been Three years married, I was about to give birth to my second child. I didn’t want to lose my Catholic faith, but logic, justice, and humanity forced it to slip through my fingers over the decade, coinciding with my fourth pregnancy and the birth of twins.

In Catholic teaching, if a choice is necessary in childbirth, the baby must be saved rather than the mother. The night before my twins were born I told the doctor, “I know I’ve put ‘RC’ as my religion, but if you have to choose between me or the babies, save me because I have three more at home who depend on me.”

That was the final straw for my Catholic faith. Religiously adrift in my early thirties, I explored other avenues to God, and found the Church of England too Establishment, and the Methodists too self-effacing to my taste. I liked it that women read the lesson, but while singing a hymn about being ‘lowlier than a worm’ I rebelled, thinking “I am not lowlier than a worm. I’m doing my best.” I’ve never grasped the finer points of Episcopalian, Presbyterian, etc. and I hadn’t heard of UU. I stayed at home on Sundays.

To improve my earning power I went to university at 42, when the boys were 8 to 16. I was seeking the means to leave an unhappy marriage. In a Sociology seminar the Professor posed the question, “Why is it that in every society, man seeks Religion?” No one spoke. We didn’t understand the question. When he repeated it I said, “Perhaps there’s something in it.”

He was apoplectic. “Because man seeks to make sense of his world!” he bellowed, still ridiculing me as the seminar ended. Realizing I’d made an enemy of the head of department, I switched to studying International Politics.

Around this time a marriage guidance counselor told me about the Quaker group he belonged to and gave me a slim booklet entitled “Advices and Queries”. I was amazed that Quaker tenets could be encapsulated in so few pages and there was nothing I disagreed with. And nothing I was obliged to believe in order to join the Society of Friends. I started attending Quaker meetings in 1982 and continued with some breaks for over 30 years.

I realize in retrospect that I was always seeking a group of people with whom to share faith. Why did I feel it necessary to join a religious group at all? I always believed in Jesus’ teaching even when I couldn’t picture God. I can’t imagine God, since I stopped seeing Him as a benevolent grandfather. God doesn’t need gender and isn’t limited to our image. When my children were small, not wishing to mislead them in any way, I told them “I think there is a God but I can’t promise you. I just want you always to keep an open mind and to think for yourself.” The irony is that in middle age one of my sons is a vehement atheist, saying science and religion are incompatible, with which I disagree, and the only one of my sons who goes to church accompanies his Irish wife to Mass. When I cautioned him gently about Catholics believing all they are required to believe he just said, “It’s a way of life, Mum.” So I have four Catholic grandchildren.

I feel I’ve failed to encourage them to be faithful. I raised my family to be moral as I understood it. They are honest, truthful, don’t steal or covet their neighbors’ goods. They’re compassionate, socially responsible and kind. But you can have all those qualities as a Humanist.

I believe that all religions, not just Christians, are on a path to their version of the same God: many paths to one destination, some of them rocky, and we have no right to judge others’ beliefs or to feel our own superior. However, I also see religion as a means of social control and responsible for many wars.

I think there is a life hereafter. I’ve read about near death experiences and seen some convincing mediums. Reincarnation is a concept I don’t understand but after forty years of research at UVA, Reincarnation is considered proven.

Last year two friends in the UU community encouraged me to join in Sunday worship. I’d been attending the Quaker meeting at Dayton for nine years, since I came to America. But I live alone and the Quaker silence at meetings had become oppressive. I need the interchange of ideas and my head, forever busy, is hard to quiet in a vacuum. I welcome the opportunity for debate in the congregation. The hour we share on Sundays goes quickly and leaves me spiritually refreshed.

I’ve often felt lost on my spiritual journey but have always kept walking, and I still don’t know where the road will go.

Damian Bud Dirscherl

My talk was ad lib except for some specific props, but here is what I was reading at the very end — which is what I wrote in 2003, describing my view of the potential we all have.

Power Personified — Compassionately

Recently I remembered a profound statement that I attribute to Don Mayer: “The essence of the Bible story is the use and abuse of power.”  Power appears to be a never-ending issue in society, in our relationships: family, workplace, politics, church, our individual minds and hearts!  Perhaps we could better recognize, appreciate and utilize power — of God, others and ourselves. 

We are innately, individually gifted, empowered spiritually and physically.  Through education, osmosis, serendipity and self-examination we find our particular power, sustain it and use it.  But we can (seemingly) find and lose our power (or control), in an instant.  Hopefully, life’s experiences moderate our power philosophies, so that we wield power compassionately or seek the power of others as the situation warrants.  At home, when we have an electrical outage, we appreciate the power which temporarily disappears.  We do depend on others and the work of others.

Spiritually, we seek to balance God’s will and our will-power, enabling us to make significant contributions to the world.  Physically, the challenge is also daunting.  Strong spiritual character is not necessarily accompanied by strong physical character.

We are whole and powerful, when we coordinate the spiritual and the physical.  The physical character, via discipline and strength, gained through exercise is a self-renewal process.  We become genuine instruments of God’s creation.  We improve the quality and length of our earthly journey, the beginnings of a heavenly trip.  We renew our power base: again and again, week after week, year after year, even transforming it to a higher level.  Accept the power, use the power, share the power – of God, our brethren, ourselves.

THE PLACE TO IMPROVE THE WORLD IS FIRST IN ONE’S OWN HEART AND HEAD AND HANDS, AND THEN WORK OUTWARD FROM THERE.