Agnostic feels a tug after Sunday in church
<http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-
lopez11-2008may11,0,1862499.column>
May 11, 2008
Steve Lopez
I'm coming up on 40 years of slogging through life without any
religious affiliation, and for the most part, I have no regrets. Last
Sunday, though, I was standing before a couple hundred members of All
Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena and found myself envious.
I had been asked to talk about my three-year friend****p with a
musician who slept on the streets of skid row when we first met.
In describing the journey, the soul-searching and the rewards of
giving, I used the words "spirituality" and "grace." As I did, I saw
people nodding as if I belonged in that room with them.
But wait. I'm an agnostic, and quite content.
So why did I feel such a connection? Could my stubborn resistance to
faith be slipping?
I spoke about all of this with my wife, whose beliefs and non-beliefs
are similar to mine. She mentioned that our daughter, just shy of 5,
had asked a couple of questions lately about people who practice
different faiths and what it all means.
Maybe it wouldn't hurt, my wife and I agreed, if we were to show our
daughter that our values are im****tant enough to us to clear time and
to celebrate and honor them in a ritualistic way.
I don't know that either of us is ready to make a decision about all
of this, but I did go back to All Saints a few days after my
appearance at the Rector's Forum to mull things over with the Rev. J.
Edwin Bacon Jr.
Bacon said he has been both an atheist and an agnostic at various
times in his life, but neither discipline explained what he felt in
his soul.
I'm going to think about all of this, along with my wife.
"There are Jews, Muslims, Hindus and atheists here almost every
Sunday," Bacon said, as if to put my mind at ease.
During his battles with the IRS, an atheist sent him a check and said:
"I don't believe in God. But if I did, I would want to come to your
church."
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