On a Crisis of Faith: Finding Peace

This is an old post from an inactive blog, which I find very moving. It is the sort of post that upon reading makes me want to seek out the writer wherever she lives, give her the best face-to-face Anna's presentation I can possible give, introduce her to all of the joys of Baha'i Community life that I have come to experience, and not just tell her to go look up the Baha'i Faith on the Internet. -gw

I'm having my annual crisis of faith again.


You'd think that I would have either figured out a palatable personal religion, faith, or God (or given up on the idea entirely) by now. Unfortunately this is not the case. I've come to many different conclusions in the past few years when I examine my inner turmoil about this issue. Most times I come to a solution, but it always is a short-term reliance on something that makes sense for the moment but quickly falls apart under different surroundings and circumstances.

It started bothering me a LOT starting about a year and a half ago. With ever-increasing frequency these faith crises have pushed themselves into my mind. I've been using several different mindless escape mechanisms to push the thoughts back out - obsessive video games and alcohol are my usuals when my mind gets quiet enough that the mental screaming kicks back in. I don't have a dependency on the vices so much as a dependence on being distracted from my thoughts on the subject.

It's like there's always some corner of my brain screaming "But Rachel, what about God?" and I'm blasting brain white noise to drown it out, because by now I've realized that I've tried everything and am no closer to an answer that placated my soul than I started with. Five years ago, I started as a disallusioned Christian-turned-atheist, and from there went evangelical, then Unitarian, then Buddhist, then Christian, then atheist again, then pagan, Unitarian again, and finally drowned into a sea of unsatisfiable religious yearning. Ever since it's been a torment. It's like a part of me is dead but instead of cutting it off and learning to live without a limb, I drag it with me and my body never heals.

It drives me crazy. I have a happy life, a wonderful husband and adorable cats and decent grades and a good future ahead of me. But I never find any lasting peace and I'm 100% certain that my spiritual state is the reason why.

{Photo: "turmoil," Uploaded on November 10, 2005 by Buttersweet on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic}