Spirituality

There is a saying:

Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.

I went to church regularly until age 15. I enjoyed it. After age 15, I started playing organ in church. So I have always been around church.

I also went to the Academy chapel in college, and went to church on-and-off until about age 24, at which point I got really fucking busy, and I didn’t go back for twelve years. When I went back, in South Carolina, I saw things that I didn’t see before. I saw people who wanted to be seen as being devout, rather than actually being devout. Politicking. And after sitting in Sunday morning services about six or seven times, the priest took me back to his office and told me that I had to give him 10 percent. Top line! Pre-tax! At the time, I was making about $350,000 a year, and there was no freaking way I was going to give this dude $35,000. So that about did it for church for me, and I haven’t been back.

Maybe I just haven’t gone to the right church. Maybe there is a church out there for me. Could be, but keep in mind that I am an Episcopalian, and the Episcopalian church today is not the white shoe Episcopalian church of George H. W. Bush. It is very far left, politically. At my mom’s behest, I accompanied her to an Episcopalian service about five or six years ago. It was all about how rich people are going to hell. Haven’t been back.

So I think it is good to separate religion from spirituality. You don’t need to sit in a building with a bunch of other people on Sunday morning to have a relationship with God. And before we go any further, I use the word “God” to refer to a higher power—you can substitute any word you like. I call him God for convenience. People go to church for all sorts of reasons. Some go for a sense of community. Some go to meet people. Some go for their kids. Some go because they’re afraid of some supernatural consequences down the line. It’s been my experience that only a small percentage of people who go to church do so to have a deeper relationship with God.

I don’t have the statistics at my command, but I suspect that smarter people tend to be disbelievers. They are skeptics. They spend their entire lives trying to prove the nonexistence of God, which, from a philosophical standpoint, is very difficult to do. I was one of those skeptics, and then I discovered that life is full of miracles, if your eyes are open. I have experienced many such miracles—the first was in 2006. My ass has been saved so many times in succession that it can’t possibly be a coincidence. For example: I was in New York City last week for meetings and media appearances. I was walking down Madison Avenue, and I tripped over a whammy stick, one of those construction barrier-things, that had been folded sideways across the road. I flew through the air and faceplanted—right in front of a car. I looked up and saw a tire two feet from my head. That is grace. I suggest you read some books about the study of near-death experiences if you are still skeptical. I’m not proselytizing—I’m just telling you that for a period of time, I considered myself to be an agnostic, and then I saw the proof.

When I was an agnostic, I believed in the power of my rational, scientific mind. So, a few things happened. First, I started to realize that even the most rational people are truly irrational—we are emotional beings, first and foremost. Then, I began to realize that the human mind, even at the upper reaches of IQ, is just not all that powerful. I believe there are phenomena which are unexplainable and beyond the comprehension of any human brain. I believe that there is a vast spiritual world within and beyond our material world, and I believe that what we do in our spiritual realm is far more important than that we will do materially. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t fight for the extra $50,000 in your bonus—that’s important, too—but it’s trivial compared to our preparation for all of eternity. All things in their place.

Some people see God in the intricacy of a spiderweb, or in the dusky hues of an evening sky, or in the rolling waves crashing on a beach. I see God in the spirit of my cats—I have Xenia cuddling up next to me as I write. I hear God in music—many people can attest to having a religious experience at a concert or in a nightclub. I see God in the achievements of man—skyscrapers, factories, or Amazon.com. I see God in the kaleidoscopic energy of capitalism. You don’t need to know how it works, only that it works, which applies to spirituality as well. Capitalism is an unexplainable phenomenon—you can’t prove why capitalism works. A superior system would be one constructed by man’s mind, right? As it turns out, that particular system unleashes the horrors of the worst of humanity.

What I’m talking about here is faith. Faith is belief without evidence. Well, some people need to see the evidence. Do you need the evidence that a microwave will cook your food when you push the start button? And if it doesn’t work, do you need evidence that someone qualified to fix it will show up to your house and fix it? We are dependent on our cars and microwaves and espresso makers, in much the same way that we are dependent on God. Most people don’t like to have a dependency on anything. They are independent, or so they think. When I am driving, I depend on other drivers not to swerve into my lane. I depend on the airline to ensure that the pilots are trained and the crew is present and the bags are loaded and the plane is cleaned and checked and inspected so it can take off on time, so I don’t miss my connection. We are all interconnected, and interdependent. It’s funny—one of my heroes during that 12-year period away from spirituality was Penn Jillette, who wrote an article on cnn.com about being a libertarian atheist. I don’t know what the hell I am these days, but I am not a libertarian, or a Republican, or a Democrat. Uncategorizable. My basic philosophy of life is that the hard way is usually the easy way, and the easy way is usually the hard way.

Which brings me to the subject of prayer. Some people say that you should leave your shoes under the bed so that you can hit your knees in the morning and pray. I don’t do this. I did this for a while, but it felt inauthentic, so I stopped. If prayer is a way of communicating with God, I do it on an ad hoc basis, like the other morning when I was in my home office and the deluge of all deluges poured down from the sky. That was a spiritual moment. I grab time with God in fits and starts, and it works for me. I do occasionally have those foxhole prayers: “Please, God, let me get out of this jam this one time, and I’ll never do it again.” I think everyone has those. As long as those aren’t your only prayers, I think you’re fine.

Up until this essay, I had been quiet, even taciturn about my spirituality. People get touchy about this stuff, and they don’t talk about it. Well, I am talking about it. I mentioned God in passing in my commencement speech at Coastal Carolina University in 2022, realizing fully that some people might be offended by it, but I didn’t care. What I said was that God has a bigger imagination than I do. When I got out of the psych ward in 2006, the only thing I asked from God is that I wouldn’t kill myself and maybe keep my job. Think of all the things that have happened since then. Successful businesses, teaching, speaking, DJing, five books, writing op-eds, and much more to come. The best I could have asked for in 2006 that I would continue to eke out a living at Lehman Brothers and pay my mortgage. God had a bigger imagination than I did, and he has a bigger imagination for you, too. God laughs at our plans, the utter futility of them, which is why I turn my will and my life over to his care without reservation.

These are words that I couldn’t not have imagined myself writing in 2001. How could 9/11 happen in God’s world, I thought? What I didn’t see was that grace was present on that day, too—even my own life was spared. I don’t have good memories of those twelve years. And it is one thing to believe in God, but another thing altogether to trust God. That is the next level in the game. God hasn’t given me anything I can’t handle, and he won’t with you, either.