As a child, spirituality was a saving grace. I believed that when the sun’s rays were blasting through the clouds, forming pillars on the earth, these were signs of the Holy Ghost. In awe, I would immediately pray, imagining these signs were for me and just me. These spiritual signs guided me through a difficult childhood.
As life moved on I went to college. I took three courses in religion and began to see patterns in ideology, organizational structure, and explanations for life’s events. I justified this by way of structuring my religious beliefs as natural world experiences.
When I started summer internships at a school for students with significant disabilities, I felt shaken. How could these families have been “selected” to “have a special child?” This was a frequent explanation provided by families throughout my career. I spent 45 years working with students with disabilities and their families, in many roles.
After watching some of these children die and their families riddled by divorce, my spirituality slowly seeped away. Many other life events around the world are better explained by natural events, vacuums in leadership, poverty, drugs, hatred, on and on.
Spirituality empowers believers to live their faith or to use it as a cloak of ignorance for their followers. I believe in those forces that create a better world.
Life Gets Better 