A world no longer divided by religion

Hi Reader,

A reminder: my vision for the future is “a world no longer divided by religion.” That is the context from which I wrote everything below.

I was looking at your name just now, trying to bring you to mind while writing this email.

It reminded me of something from Won’t You Be My Neighbor, that movie about the life and work of Mr. Rogers.

In it, François, one of the actors from his show, was reminiscing. He said:

This is so moving to me. I try to emulate it in my emails to you. I don’t know how well I succeed, but I want you to know the intention is there.

Because I’m talking to you, singular, it makes it a little strange to refer to you, plural. But sometimes I have to. So:

I heard from a number of you (plural) in response to my last email. About how religion has divided your life. Or not. Or that you think about it differently than that.

I’m grateful for each and every conversation, and I learned a lot from you.

I learned that some people go through life thinking, “nothing matters.” That might sound negative or fatalistic, but for some people it’s completely liberating because it means they can just be in this moment in a way I often struggle with due to how up-in-my-head I am trying to figure out some greater meaning or truth.

I learned that some people believe that, apart from their religion or conception of God or anything, that there’s some kind of greater plan at work in reality, far, far beyond anything we could possibly comprehend.

I learned that some people connect to what they think of as “Source” (by which I understand them to be saying the place or being or thing from which reality proceeds) through psychedelic substances, and that while this may not give them an articulatable descriptions of that source, it gives them great certainty that it exists—and perhaps even a measure of comfort.

I learned that some people only had a certain kind of “religious experience” later in life, which suddenly enabled them to understand what religious belief might look like from the perspective of those who hold to it. As if there might be certain experiences or kinds of experiences that “activate” religious belief—or at least the potential for it.

I learned that some people differentiate between religion and spirituality, and that even those words mean different things to different people. (I still have a couple conversations to schedule about this topic.)

I learned all that, and I still have so much more to learn. I expect there’s a lifetime full of conversations to be had here. Which is, for me, a joyful idea.

I hope I can bring a small measure of that joy forth into the world at large. Maybe a bit like Fred Rogers did.

Now I’ll share a few things. I mentioned last time that I’d tell you a bit about my journey to this vision. So let’s do that very briefly.

After a great deal of work reading, thinking, talking, and trying my best to pay Attention to my own experience of being, it seems to me that the most likely set of circumstances for reality is that everything is meaningless.

This is not the same as saying there is no meaning. No, we human beings create meaning everywhere we go, look, and think. We’re meaning-making machines.

I just mean to say there is no meaning inherent to reality.

That’s what I think, anyway.

What I believe, or at least what I want to believe—or at the very least what I hope for—is that there is some kind of design or plan baked into reality.

Clearly that belief/hope is at odds with what I think. In other words, there’s a conflict in me—a divide, if you will—between what I think and what I feel, between my head and my heart.

Now, where did that division come from? Well, where else could it have come from but the world around me? The environment I was raised in? The ideas I’ve encountered over the course of my life?

The division exists within me because it exists in the world. I am simply attuned to it, for whatever reason. The same way each of you I spoke with over the last two weeks are attuned to the way the world occurs to you.

OR…

…am I, once again, making meaning where there is none? Is it all simply randomness and happenstance that I’m picking one of infinite patterns out of and calling it the Way Things Are?

Well, I don’t know. You see the verysmall circles I run myself in. It’s rather absurd.

What’s not absurd is that I genuinely feel this conflict within me. As long as it is there, it seems inevitable that when I look at the world and the people in it, I will not see it clearly. I will see it only through the conflict.

In fact, this is where this vision came from. I was surprised by it when it first showed up, but in retrospect it’s understandable given my own internal division—this conflict between my head and my heart.

And so, whether or not you also see a world divided by religion, I hope you can see why it would look that way to me.

One of my friends I spoke with in the last two weeks told me that my vision was just so big. Like wishing for world peace. What’s the point? We can’t make a meaningful dent in the world being divided by religion.

I might agree. But it’s worth considering what it would mean if I didn’t. Because if I didn’t agree, there’s a possibility that I could make a meaningful dent.

And what I’m suggesting here as the first step is to get myself to the point where I have a chance to see the world clearly. Not through my own inner conflict. So as far as I can see, that first step is to cultivate within myself a heart of peace. And that seems not so big, right? I can do that much, at least.

And as part of my commitment to take that first step, I’m simply inviting you to take it as well.

Last time I mentioned one other thing I wanted to discuss in this email: how you can support this vision of a world no longer divided by religion.

Unfortunately (or I suppose perhaps fortunately, depending on your perspective), I’ve run out of time to describe that in a way I’d be happy with. So it will have to wait for the next email.

So for this week, I will leave you with these two questions:

What would it be like if you had a heart at peace? What do you see might be possible in your life?