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lately, i have been having an odd feeling. i am a third generation atheist. i was raised with no faith, and also no feelings about faith. it’s just sort of a blank space for me. but as i’ve been watching what’s happened in minnesota, i’ve had this stirring feeling: we are going to heaven.

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so i still don’t quite know what faith is or what it feels like, but i feel just an inkling of it. faith that we will be rewarded for the work that feels hard, in some way bigger than this moment.

On the off chance that you haven’t run into it yet, what you’re saying here reminds me of the idea of a “beloved community.” It’s a vision of a future that’s different where people have achieved togetherness and have unity against prejudice. A more just world with the potential to be wonderful.

i’ve watched empathy and compassion and fellowship and i have seen cruelty and injustice. and i just feel so certain that if there is some sort of afterlife, we are on the right side of things. and that the other side…that the need some sort of retribution that is bigger than this lifetime

For me, I believe in the afterlife, it just doesn’t include me! 🙃🤣 And I have faith that what I do now impacts what happens then. As for the great unknown “why?” I don’t need know nor do I embrace any version of a deity or afterlife involving me.

i still don’t feel any kind of divinity except the sort of humanist idea of the divinity of us, collectively it’s feeling/seeing what i imagine community could look like, in a just world. a slight bend towards that world. a small shift. while also seeing the worst. the classic good and evil.

maybe “we are going to heaven” means “we are making heaven” or “finally this feels more right” but it is such a certainty this is the way. this is the path of the good and righteous. the other side is lost in the darkness. they have lost their humanity. given it away, maybe. had it taken?

there is also something so horrific about being actively oppressed in the name of a religion whose messiah taught so much about compassion to see the people who really most live out his teachings be torn down as sinners, you know? i can’t imagine how this feels to good people of faith

Someone said we are God’s hands in this world. If that’s true, what I’ve witnessed is God working through people to show love and kindness and striving to make this a better world. Protestors, legal observers, people delivering groceries, donating food and funds… That’s heavenly work.

In scripture, don’t remember exactly where, Jesus says a few times that “the kingdom of God is at hand.” Many read that as the promise of Jesus’ “return,” but a biblical scholar I heard once said it could be read “if you do what we do together here, the kingdom of God is right here in our midst.”

I’m a sort of half-assed mystic, who’s done contemplative (meditative) practice with a few different traditions, mostly Buddhist and Christian. A former priest once told a group I was in that he was an a-theist, which stunned some people. He said the word just meant not believing in a deity,

… meaning a sort of divine person or being. But he added that it didn’t mean not believing in the “divine,” which frankly isn’t that hard to have experiences of with some practice in whichever tradition. So the message was, don’t discount that direct experience over an idea that doesn’t fit it.

Practicing goodness and courage and gratitude for each other helps us experience a timeless “dimension” of wholeness and connection. That’s my idea of how we make our heaven here within Mother Earth in this life, individually and collectively, inwardly and materially. ❤️❤️‍🩹❤️