Why I Talk So Much About Religion

I have been asked this question often by bewildered American intellectual friends and readers. "What is all this God stuff?", "We didn't know you thought so much about spiritual matters!".

Looking back through history, it appears to me that just about everything everywhere has been driven by religious beliefs. And it seems to me that great changes politically, artistically, socially, architecturally, culturally, intellectually have dramatically followed new religious impulses.It makes a kind of sense that the inner experiences come first and then the outward manifestations follow.That's sort of pathetically obvious. But is it obvious when one is in the middle of it? Does it take hundreds of years of perspective to look back and say "Those Greeks must have had some powerful mojo going with their gods to build those temples. They made gorgeous bodies and glorious wars and great theater to honor and please their gods."

History is overflowing with religious wars. Every area of the planet that has achieved a grand civilization has great monuments to the gods that inspired. Traditional music from many places developed to cause states of ecstasy or forgetting or having heightened awareness or even crowd control.

In my country today there is a blur of spiritual trends. We are clearly unfocussed as a culture. The intellectual class which for years eschewed religion is practicing yoga and meditation and sufism and other flashes from the past. The born again thing is growing wildly. Many echoes of puritanism resonate from within the cultural life of the Jesus people, such as submissive wives. Materialism has god-like status, giving us iconic figures like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Sports arenas and crowds look a lot like, what? The Romans come to mind. Our iconic buildings; The World Trade Center, The White House, and the Pentagon are known all over the world and clearly symbolize, at least to outsiders, the essence of the United States. Power, money, worship? I read that Islam is the fastest growing religion on the planet. What does that mean?

Sometimes I am sad that both Judaism and Islam don't go in for great statues and paintings and music. But, clearly, war, territory, the rights to practice their traditions of worship are worth fighting for. And for us there seems to be an inherent threat in any tribal spiritual culture that causes us to want to eradicate it. Think of our history with Native Americans. Think of our genocide of the Mayans in Guatemala. What exactly is so threatening about people who value tradition over property, for instance. I would say ...lots is threatening.

My constant reference to God, religions and spirituality is both an effort to see and understand what is going on in my world and also an effort to find my own place in the world I live in. I keep coming back to the notion that I am somewhat mystically inclined and the mystics of all religion and all known time seem to sound pretty much the same.