Moronacity Cycling Journal » Lifestyle
Getting Back to My Spirituality
By Diane Ursu
Most of you are quite aware that I am Catholic. I am a cradle Catholic and I’ve alternated periods of church with no church. Since Christmas, I have experienced a no church period. This gets to be a little difficult, especially when it seems like I am surrounded by atheists and agnostics. That’s fine, until they start knocking Christianity in front of me.
Please, people, I have not asked you to think like me, to go to church, to live your lives a certain way, etc., but I do ask you to refrain from snide remarks about God and Church in front of me. This is simply something you do for a friend out of respect for that friend. Respect – an art lost on the mainstream American culture.
My mom is part of the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) team at the church where I grew up. I like to go to the weekly RCIA classes with her when I visit. They offer support, fellowship, and insight into scripture. These meetings have helped me when I was going through some pretty hard times.
As many of you know, the last year has been quite hard on me. I just couldn’t get my head screwed on straight. Recently, even though things are quite uncertain, I’ve begun to become the fun, mountain biking Di that some people came to love, and others to tolerate. 
I’ve also realized that it is time to go back to God after a nine-month hiatus.
Di,
I completely understand how you feel about people and their remarks about God. I too have never forced my beliefs onto other people. I truly believe that people are whom they are, and they will believe what they want….when they want. It is just unfortunate that people feel the need to express their beliefs with non-conforming friends. What I mean is that when an atheist is around I do not talk about God, and I would expect them to not speak of their beliefs.
By the way….welcome back Di!
Thanks, Sean.
I have no problem with people being who they are. If you don’t believe in God, then that is part of who you are. However, if you do believe in God, then God will probably come up because that is who you are.
I do not believe in bashing the beliefs of the other guy, though. There is a gray area (jokes and such), but I’ve been experiencing outright bashing from lots of people. Why would you just randomly start bashing someone?
Hi di,
Just thought I’d check out your killer squirrel post, then thought the spirituality blog looked good. I didn’t know you had a hard year, but I am glad things are looking better for you. I was raised Catholic also, and I think to some extent you can take the catholic out of the boy but not the boy out of the catholic…
I guess when people bash God it just sounds ignorant. It doesn’t really bother me. It bothered me when the other day I heard people on NPR renouncing God and the HOly Spirit. It really kind of shocked me. It seems to me that people who don’t believe in a God are being disengenuous when they renounce God altogether. disengenuous and ignorant. Someone once pointed out to me that not believing in something is still believing. It’s just believing in the ‘not God’.
glad you’re having fun in the lower Pee…and take care of yourself!
Bill (:
Thanks, Bill. It’s nice to hear from you, as always.