92 God, the Divine, my Mother and I

The concept of God and/or the awareness of the Divine was not given to me with my Mother’s milk. And I still don’t get it. My Mother raised me on a recipe of Social Justice and the intrinsic goodness of Human Beings. If people did bad things they were ‘misguided’. Another principle was that you had to do it now because there would be no ‘later’ and what you left by your deeds was your legacy to the future. Carrying on like that she could have started a religion, but she didn’t. Religion to her was an educational tool ‘we’ didn’t need. Her amazing example was the why and how of prayer before dinner. Prayer before and after meals was prevalent in religious households when I grew up. ‘Why?’ I asked my Mother when I came home from a friend’s house where I had witnessed this phenomenon. ‘Because it is good for the metabolism to sit down properly before you eat and take a few moments for your system to prepare for the onslaught of food.’ Knowing this, there was no prayer needed to whet the metabolism. I’m not an atheist, nor am I an unbeliever. Nobody has to ‘prove’ for me that God does not exist nor do they have to convince me of the opposite. God is something for others and I recognize the value it has for others. With the ‘Divine’ it is the same and spirituality is also wasted on me. But I won’t trash it either. Religion is a complex human effort that has defined our existence, moral judgement and place in the scheme of things since times immemorial. It fascinates me no end.