Not Going To Church

YESTERDAY, SUNDAY, I did not attnd church, which was and is fine. I'm happy either way. I'm also happy whatever church I attend, and really don't much care. They're all fine. I am quite content to be a person who is not religious in any formal sense, but who respects religion and understands its purpose. Its purpose is to inspire and comfort. Another purpose can be and often is to control people and force conformity, but there are many ways to express religious belief and resist control, especially these days. Every Monday morning, including today,I look forward to gospel singing at the senior center. I like to sing loud, and nobody seems to mind. My religiosity is admiration of nature, pure and simple. Perhaps some future verions of th bible will glorify and espouse the virtues of protons, electrons, and neutrons. A future religions based entirely on scientific reality. I am perfectly wiling to sig gospel music in church, or anywhere. My religiosity consists in admiration of nature, and of nature's god, as Jefferson put it, in the Declaration of Independence. All the thousands of religions and religious ceremonies in the world have have vaule and purpose, including mine. Ultimately, everyone has a unique religious perspective. Basically, I am a "pantheist",a "follower" of Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth century Dutch philosopher, generally considered to be the father of modern pantheism. God is omnipresent. God is nature. I like going to church to learn something, and to meet people. I plan to continue doing it. I still would like to visit many more churches, including as many non Christian as possible, to broaden my perspective. Every century for the past twenty ahve seen a different, evolved version of Christianity, as is to be expected. As human society evolves, so do its religions. Future religiosity will certainly be much different from today's. Perhaps there will be some future religion which venerates and worships the four forces of nature; gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Maybe twenty second century Christianity will run full circle, and return to its distant roots, as an offshoot of a near Eastern style fertility cult, seeking to placate and motivate a powerful being in the skies to provide a good harvest, and integrate the knowledge of modern science and all the spiritual knowledge accumulated during thousands of years of human religiosity and spiritual evolution and advancement. Whatever future religions are like, they will doubtless be a good deal different from today's religions, with most people far more educated concerning the scientific realities of nature and the universe than we are today. I consider myself prepared to change my religious beliefs at any time, for any good reason. The idea of choosing one's religion early in life and refusing to consider altering,improving, or changing under any circumstanes I reject. Shouldn't our spiritual and religious evolution be precisely that, evolution? Shouldn't we change as we learn and grow? Whether we attend or what chucrh we attend if assuredly less important than the attitude we maintain about life, our life,and its creator. Life is a miracle. But, so is everything else. We are a miracle, beholding a miracle. In a sense, to the extent that we spend every moment of our lives fully aware of life's miraculous nature, we live in a perpetual state of worshipful, humble admiration.