Send in the Cavalry!

For as long as we know, religion has been energized by fear and hope. Fear of the threatening chaos that surrounds us. Hope that we can placate those forces for our benefit.

These attitudes have changed as we learned about planetary orbits and the dynamics of a thunderhead and how a virus can multiply and spread. And yet we still hear a close escape attributed to an answered prayer. And we still hear misfortune attributed to sin or lack of faith. Even liberal Christians—as they turn away from the ideas of God as a harsh judge and the prospect of eternal damnation—still stress a love and hope that promise the ultimate triumph of good and God’s never-ending protection for the soul.

The idea of personal spirituality presented here is not part of this tradition based on some external force or design in the universe. It does not deny those possibilities. But, because it does not claim them, it is more limited in what it can say about fear and hope.

What we do know is that we have a choice about how we respect and nurture the gift of the Human Spirit given to us, and to all others. The profound fear that we invoke is the possibility of a wasted gift. The profound hope is that each day is a new opportunity to honor this gift. What we also know is that we cannot undo the past. Self-examination requires that we look honestly at how we’ve lived. But the purpose of considering our mistakes is not to pass judgment, but to learn for the future. We are not answering to some judge; we are taking control of our choices.

Ultimately, the question is not whether or not we fell short of perfection. The question is: Are we making the effort to respect the gift? And the wonderful thing about that question is the possibility of saying “yes” in the new day—and the possibility of helping others to say “yes” as well. That is the source of our hope for our future, and for the future beyond us. We don’t expect an external deity to condemn us, or to send the holy cavalry to our rescue. We are the cavalry!