Why I Love St. Paul’s Cathedral

During this Easter and Passover season, I would like to explain how I, as a Jew and Agnostic, enjoy spending time in Worcester’s St. Paul’s Cathedral.
I like to sit at St. Paul’s and feel the presence of the Spirit of God, but only if I’m alone: no congregation, no liturgy, no formalized prayed or instruction. The same is true when I sit in a synagogue. Spiritual moments for me are always more intimate and spontaneous than ritualistic or orchestrated.
With the closing of so many Catholic Churches in Worcester due to a dramatic drop in church attendance in certain parishes, perhaps it is time to ask ourselves about the place of religion in American life, especially here in the northeastern part of the United States and especially among people between the ages of 15 through 50.
It is unquestionably true that an inspirational force helps to guide one’s ethical behavior along a more connected, righteous path. The belief in God makes us all better people. However, traditional religions seem far behind their lay people in recognizing a different view of God. There is an increasing recognition, outside the reach of most traditional religions and their leaders, that there is a spiritual connectedness between people and within ourselves, not tied to any particular religion’s traditional view of “God above,” but instead, to the Spirit of God and Goodness all around us.”
But just what is this spirit of goodness all around us, which one may call Godliness? And how does one who lives in the modern world, where what is “real” is what can be proven, accept the existence of a spiritual universe?
The belief in God and spirituality requires a rejection of rational, deductive reasoning as the starting and ending point of belief. Modern people fail to even ask ourselves if we should use rationality exclusively as a basis of living, but this is the choice our historical period and we ourselves both seem to make. Hence, modern thinkers have a very difficult time believing in a spiritual world. Yet, in the end it is up to each individual to decide if and how much we want rationality to exclusively control our belief system.
Most thoughtful modern people will admit, however, that the truly interesting and deep questions of life have no answers and that what we know pales in comparison to what we do not know. Why then should we limit our understanding and acceptance of the unknown and unproven only to what we can rationally deduce as individuals?
This is the essential dilemma of our time. How do we live in an age of rationality and reason while retaining our belief and participation in a spiritual existence? The best way, perhaps, is to re-define what God is, in a way more consistent with the age in which we live. In this way God can exist, but not in a way most people and traditional religions explain God.
Perhaps God is not anything like a person in its form or its ability to communicate with humans, dictate or lend us assistance in our individual lives. Because God is not the incarnation of a person, only larger and more powerful than anyone or anything else we know, God cannot then watch over us like a parent, because God is not a person. God cannot then dispense punishment and reward during our lifetime or after, nor bestow grace or blessing. God does not then stand in judgment, in the sense of deciding if one’s soul goes to heaven or hell. As the existence of life after death is uncertain, we might instead view the way our soul continues on after death as an extension of our spiritual contribution and effort to improve the world here on earth, especially in our children or other people we have contributed goodness to and helped form.
What then could God be? Perhaps, God is more like a spiritual force that connects the goodness within and between us, a force of Universal Harmony which we interact with by understanding the difference between good and bad and by doing good deeds.
Perhaps our religious institutions need a different view of God and the spiritual world for us to better incorporate spirituality into our lives. Then more of our churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples might be looked to throughout our entire lives, not just when we want help educating and rearing our children, meeting other people or accepting death. Speaking of which, at the end of my own time here on earth, I wish that the rabbi from my synagogue can officiate my own passing at a ceremony held at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
This is Randy Feldman on WCRN’s midday report. Visit my blog bigmouthmanifesto.com

The following excerpt was left off the radio rant in the interest of saving time on the radio and my “job”:
But how then do we feel God’s presence? Often the communication comes in the form of our own voice, from deep within. It comes from the relationship between ourselves and the spiritual force that connects us to each other and to life. Much of the time we are too busy to feel this spiritual connection. For many of us, it is only at certain moments of solitude that we feel spiritually connected to a force greater than our own. Others feel spiritually connected with nature or in the presence of historical moments or monuments. However, when we feel this spirituality and hear our own voice deep inside, we may be connecting with the spiritual world around us or we may, to the contrary, be conversing with our own psychological fears and hopes. It’s hard to know. But the quest itself is what can bring us a spiritual life.
If God is the connectedness between us all, why do organized religions so often try to personify God to be like a father (or son) figure? Is this a childhood explanation to enable us to understand and “see” that which has no form? Is it that we ourselves have never learned the adult version of what God is? Or is the personification of God by many traditional religions simply misguided?