What does being Pantheist mean to us?
This question seems like a good place to start. Pantheism is a faith most people have never heard of before — we hadn’t either until a few months ago. For several years, though, my wife and I knew our relationship with religion wasn’t working. We went to church most Sundays, but for a lot of reasons it didn’t feel right for us. Then the pandemic hit. We didn’t go to a church service for almost 2 years.
If it wasn’t for our daughter, we might’ve gone back. That definitely would’ve been easier than this. But she’s four now, and asks a lot of questions! How could we talk to her about all those questions if we didn’t really believe our own answers?
That’s what led to us looking for a new faith. At this point, a lot of folks might consider themselves atheist. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we felt atheism was defined by the “negative” — a belief in nothing. We wanted something more affirmative to believe in. We were really looking for a few key things:
A set of traditions we could raise our daughter with, so that she still had a spiritual foundation.
A set of beliefs that fit our view of life and the world.
After looking at some other major religions, like Judaism or Buddhism, I found a website about Pantheism.
The key idea of Pantheism, I learned, is that God and the universe all around us are unified as one. God isn’t a divine, all-powerful being. We don’t believe that. Instead, we revere the universe as the source of all creation. After all, the universe and the natural world that made us are pretty spectacular things!
This set of beliefs finally felt right to my wife and I. But it took time for us to figure out what to do next. Over several weeks we talked about these ideas, and ultimately decided to become Pantheist. To “become Pantheist” is a bit misleading though. There’s no pantheist version of a church. It’s not an organized religion. Some folks even consider it to be closer to a school of philosophy than a faith. But we wanted to instill in our daughter a love of nature, and a deep understanding of her place in the world. We’ve come up with a few traditions as part of our approach to Pantheism to help with this:
Weekly “reflection times”, where we meditate together. We do this outside if the weather is nice.
Celebration of traditional pagan holidays, like the solstice and yule, but with a sole focus only on nature, not any pagan deities.
Family prayer, where we express our thanks for what we have, and our hopes for the future.
I’m planning to write more about each of these traditions we’ve started, and I’ll update this post with links when I do.
As we’ve done these things, it’s given me a chance to think deeper about what Pantheism means to me. It sounds simple enough to talk about the universe as a God, but that oversimplifies it. Every piece of the universe makes up its whole. This means that we all have a part of God in us, even if this God isn’t a conscious, thinking being like the gods of other faiths. If we are all part of this larger whole, though, it has some huge ramifications for how we treat each other, and think about ourselves.
🌎 First, we only have each other in this world, but that’s enough.
Pantheists realize there’s no supernatural deity ready to step in and save us. This probably sounds scary to a lot of folks, but to me it means that family, community and helping each other is more important than ever. This means too, that we have the strength within us and from those around us, to overcome any sort of adversity we encounter. We just have to find that strength (and we all can!).
🌌 Second, this life is the only one we’ve got, and that’s okay.
Our universe contains everything in it. There’s simply no factual basis for the idea that there is another world where we have a life after death. Maybe there could be, I won’t pretend to know for sure. And I won’t judge anyone for believing that themselves. But regardless of what you believe, you should never live through the motions of this life without being mindful of your place in the universe. For me, that’s a key part of Pantheism — understanding that we are only here for a moment, and appreciating the time and life that we have left.
Marcus Aurelius wrote about these ideas well. He was a roman emperor (the old one in Gladiator if you’ve seen that) who lived almost 2,000 years ago.
He kept a personal spiritual diary of sorts, now called “Meditations”, and wrote about his stoic philosophy, which is a pre-cursor of Pantheism. He writes about how even if we lived for centuries, we only have one life:
Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost.
— Meditations 2.14
It’s obvious from some of the other passages in Meditations that Marcus was as uncertain as any of us about the meaning of life, and what comes next. But in his writing, he’s trying to reassure himself that the best way to face the uncertainty of life is to be mindful of the time we do have.
That’s what I’m hoping to do for myself with this blog/newsletter thing. And everyone else is really just trying to do the same thing, too — Understand why we’re here and what it all means. I’m hoping that as our family goes on this Pantheist journey you’ll come along with us.