When I officially left the church six years ago, I thought there would never be a time when I would not have to untangle my future thoughts and experiences from the context of my church upbringing.
Certainly in the decade leading up to my exit, a large portion of my thoughts and emotions were dedicated to the unsettling and slow motion realization that I could not make the church work and remain true to myself. In the years immediately after leaving, I felt as if I were treading water with no land in sight.
I went to Arctic Alaska this month and for the entirety of the trip, I did not think about religion. I did not feel the need to wrestle with the meaning and implications of standing below the Aurora Borealis at 3 a.m., or standing on the back of a dog sled as the dogs charged through the powder toward a sun that never rose above us, but always stayed just ahead.
I did not really even think about spirituality, though the trip, by all accounts, certainly was some type of it. I didn’t really even think about consciously doing any of this until I came home and let the experiences settle in my heart. I found deep relief and lightness in allowing a life-altering view of a new world simply be a momentary prayer of gratitude toward being small in a vast universe.
It might be that so much of being in the Arctic is simply survival—wearing the right gear for sub-zero temperatures, peeing in the snow, gathering water from a hole broken in the ice of a frozen river, being with the 14 dogs who know nothing else. Our hosts, the humans who live year round 63 miles of the Arctic circle, were generous in allowing us to fully witness their lives and work, but none of us proselytized a correct way of living or being.
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