Wincing, wistfulness, wishy-washyness, and words.

After much farting around the subject, I finally ordered Godless for God's Sake and read nearly all of it. I am savouring the last few chapters. What a wonderful little book. I had all sorts of reactions to the thoughtful sharing of the 26 authors. The biggest one was joy. I felt a loosening and a relief to read these words from other people who have wrestled as I have, and who have each, in their own way, found a way to affirm their presence in the Society of Friends. I was recalled back the emotions I had almost a decade ago when I first realised that Quakerism was "a real thing." A sense of warmth, and hope, and home.

I also felt a little sad, unexpectedly. I won't dwell on the "lost years" of the nearly half decade that elapsed between my drifting away from Friends and finally beginning to feel my way back. But I did feel a pang. Several contributors to the book were from the meeting where I lived and worked and worshipped and fell apart in my early twenties, and I was never in a place to have the conversations with them that I'd like to have now. Well, I wasn't ready for those conversations. I was able to visit some of my very favourite f/Friends in Boston just before Christmas and I felt a similar wistfulness. I was so caught up in myself and in so many things back then, I thought. I have missed so much. I would appreciate them better now.

Last night I signed up to the non-theist Friends mailing list, finally. Funny, wonderful, strange, to look read back and recognise names, patterns of debate, support, disagreement, growth, frustration, mutual discovery, commitment to a deep way of being in the world. The whole thing. Quakers! Theist or non-theist, being together is always messy, always limited by our current states. Almost always worth it.

A Friend I knew from the old days of blogging appeared on the list to welcome me: "more than a little surprised that you're identifying as an atheist now... (and then again, not all THAT surprised!)" 

In spite of the genuine warmth and friendliness of her tone, I winced. The years where I silently, spitefully, painfully called myself an atheist were painful. The years where I didn't, where I was writing in this blog regularly, sometimes ecstatically, were also painful. I  also winced a little in shame: I'm so changeable. I am a little embarrassed about some aspects my early presence here. I am a bit embarrassed by my later absence. A little sheepish about my re-emergence.

Another moment that brought its own flinch: looking at a brochure of Quaker events in the UK, I find myself now a year too old for YAF status, officially, in terms of fees. Silly, but I winced. Not because of fears of aging, but a sense of loss, of waste. All those years. I thought. That special energy of YAFs that I wasted being so confused, so intense about the wrong things, so self-obsessed, and then, so gone.

But I only flinched for a moment. That kind of dreary regret doesn't do me any good. I was who I was. I am who I am. I keep circling. I keep changing. The quieter I am, the calmer I feel about the questions that used to torture me. It is overwhelmingly a wonderful thing.

At first, my atheism was not a graceful acceptance of reason. It was a reaction of pain and despair and frustration and confusion and generally being burnt out. No matter what I did, it seemed, I was stuck being me. When I reached outside of myself to my invisible God, I couldn't rely on his answers or aid, because more and more I suspected that those things were just me, and that they weren't enough. I was right, and I was wrong. I was so caught up in my own emotional turmoil, I tantrumed so violently over the dilemma, I was exhausted. Well, I thought, **** this.

A lack of faithfulness (to the community, to my path)? Perhaps. But I just don't find it helpful to think of it that way. I wasn't ready. I needed a break. I had other work to do. I went and did it. It was messy. I missed a lot. But here I am.

It's still hard, in a way, to attach the label "non-theist Friend" to myself, but mostly, I feel a sense of relief and peace. It's easy because it's true. It's hard because of the baggage I still carry which I've spent years putting down piece by piece. Finally, in the generosity, integrity, and courage of these non-theist Friends, I feel restored.

A part of me feels as if a lot of the pain and a lot of the missing-out could have been avoided if I could have relaxed a little, not been so desperately black and white in my thinking, explored the option of non-theism quietly and gently. I didn't lack the opportunity. I lacked courage and confidence. I didn't want to alienate anyone. I was embarrassed to be so wishy-washy. I was confused by the intersections of language and truth. In spite of years of reading Joseph Campbell I couldn't grasp the idea of mythological truth in a way that could comfort me. A thing was true or it wasn't true. I was terrified that if there wasn't literally a God, (in some sense, no matter how fluffy,) then all of this was a lie, and that was that. I was afraid that if I lost my ability to talk about God with my f/Friends in the way we always had, I would lose my special connection with them. I know now how little justice I did to my Friends (theist and non-theist alike) in all of this. In spite of the love and support that surrounded me, I felt isolated within myself. It was easier just to move away and disengage.

I had a lot of reasons. None of them good, but all of them valid for who I was at the time. And I still feel that slight wince when I think of old f/Friends on both sides of the theism fence being "surprised" to hear me identify as non-theist. In the past the fear of that flinch was enough to make me excommunicate myself. I couldn't reconcile it all in my mind with any integrity, and in the end I was too tired and confused and distracted by the idea of a Whole New Life in Ireland to even try.

I made it to meeting in Belfast last weekend. The messages were about community, in a homely and specific way that moved me deeply. I thought of love, and integrity, those two words that are so central to everything I understand about being human. How it's impossible to have one without the other. I thought about the definition of integrity which means "whole, entire". How to love someone properly you must be able to see them, whole. The integrity required. The wholeness of community. The intense challenge of all of those things. All quite difficult to express in a way which doesn't become reduced to cliche in the expression, but I felt them and understood them with a burning sense of truth which felt every bit as great and transcendent as it had back in the days when I named it God, but without the doubt and conflict.

This post is messy. I'm aware that I'm rambling, conscious that I may be repeating myself. None of this is new, and yet all of it is new. I am carefully and joyfully holding the sense that nothing is lost. The passion and ecstasy and longing for truth and community I felt in my early days here are all still real and reachable. In fact, the things I was most afraid to lose in giving up God are finally available to me with a solidity and peacefulness I couldn't access before. I don't have to look to the supernatural to find the transcendent. I wouldn't have expected it. I feel more able and ready and focused now. The brave and truthful words of the non-theist friends I've finally encountered have helped me to re-open my heart to the possibility of a loving community, and a shared search for meaning within Quakerism. I'm grateful.