Meetings make me think weird stuff

One of the things we talked about in a meeting today was about people being guided by their relationship with the divine. Not that there's anything wrong with that, this being a religious school, but given the history of civilization, it seems like the type of issue that is unlikely to be workable when you are talking about about a group of more than, well, one.

A big question in this debate is, how do you incorporate atheists into this discussion? What is an atheist's relationship to the divine? I'm not exactly an atheist, but I'm not a true believer either. So what's my relationship with the divine?

I am embarrassed to admit that the best encapsulation of my religious belief is what they call The Force in Star Wars. I'm not talking about "May the Force be with you," which is just a pseudo-mystical way of saying "Have a nice day." I'm talking about the way the Force is initially described, as an energy field created by all living things, that surrounds and penetrates living beings and binds the galaxy together. George Lucas said he got the idea of the Force from another futuristic film, where it was roughly equated with God.

So it appears that I have a relationship with a roughly equated with the divine-like thing, I suppose, and I daresay that that goes for many of us who don't think of God as an old man in the sky. What's important in the original statement is being guided by that relationship, not the relationship itself. I guess that's kind of what I do, given that I try to live by a simple moral code. Since that code (and moral codes in general) revolves around my relationships with other people, rather than the divine, I can honestly say that I am guided by a sense of being part of something bigger, something that exists only because we will it to exist as living creatures.

Yes, I am aware that this makes only partial sense. I'm not very good at that spiritual philosophical logical argument construction stuff. What I am better at though is treating people the way I'd want to be treated, and trying to leave each situation I encounter better than I found it. And I can settle for that.