I Said the Word, or Being "Spiritual" In the Rooms

A few weeks ago, The Skeptical Novice had a post about saying, “I’m an Atheist,” in a context where one might not normally say that and how it felt to say that. I had a very similar (in some ways) experience right around then (in fact, I’m not sure whether I read this before or after, just that when I did, I may have actually said, “FUCK YES!!” out loud and then looked around innocently).  Except I said it at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. At my “home group” meeting. It’s a big meeting. There are a lot of people at that meeting. I love that meeting. I really really like a lot of the people at that meeting. Aaand a lot of them believe in the classical AA Higher Power, i.e. Jesus Christ. (No, I am absolutely not going to get into my very complicated and not un-conflicted relationship with AA – that’s a whole separate post – probably many whole separate posts.) The reading had been on spirituality. The topic was spirituality. People were saying a lot of things about God and prayer and what not.

I have not, in some ways, been terribly shy about being an atheist. I think it comes with the actor in me. On the other hand, that actor bit of me has always also been about being horrendously insecure, and being an out atheist is certainly no different there. One of the parts that I identified strongly with in TSN’s post was this statement, “First off, I did this without thinking too much about it. This is a huge step for me.  Looking back two years, there is no way in hell I would have said to a large group of mostly strangers that I identified as an atheist.” Now, I did think about it. But not too hard. It was unnatural for me to speak, but natural. I owed it to the other people that I knew goddamn well were in that room trying to stay sober without a god to say something, to let them know that they are not alone, that it’s okay to be an atheist. And a fucking drunk. At the same time. Especially then.

When the topic of conversation at AA meetings turns to spirituality, atheists often feel pushed out to the perimeter, and, yes, absolutely pressured to at least try to believe in a deity HP, however vague. We often feel as if it is absolutely taken for granted that we, because we are Atheists, have no spirituality. Which is complete horseshit[1]. It’s just that my spirituality doesn’t have any, you know, actual spirits in it.

My spirituality is other people. My spirituality is aloneness. My spirituality is trees. My spirituality is galaxies.

My spirituality is...

I love others, and I am loved; I care about them, they care about me, and I even care about myself (well, I try to anyway). That is spirituality. Being able to be comfortable alone with myself in a room, alone with myself in the forest, alone with myself in my head, in its dark-and-twistiness and its light-and-airiness, too. That is spirituality. The world around me, from the grass and leaves still before the rain to the universe and the universes beyond the universes flinging nothingness behind them. That is spirituality. Being able to live in the gray, in the tension and uncertainty between blacks and whites that don’t exist; slowly learning to carry my own emotions. That is spirituality. What need for a god in all that?

I didn’t say all of that, but I’ve had more time to think about it now. I didn’t think about it as much then. What I did say was enough, though, enough for them to get the gist that I really do have my own "spirituality" and some of what it means to me. And that I am so deeply grateful that AA (or at least, this AA, this meeting, this group, these warm people) has room for me, too, an Atheist.

(Afterword: It did make a difference. Right afterwards, the guy next to me, an artist that I have a HUGE amount of respect for and who came and picked me up and took me to meetings after I had relapsed once and was still detoxing too acutely to fathom driving, leaned over and said, “Well, you fucked me up!” and laughed. Maybe you had to be there, but that was a good thing. Several other people approached me afterwards to thank me for speaking up and said that they were Atheists, too.  One of them was the chair of the meeting.)

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[1] This is leaving aside for the moment my very real misgivings about language and words. Like, for instance, the whole God thing. So many times I question why, once one understands the concept of the God people are actually trying to defend, they insist on continuing to use that word when it so clearly does not correspond to the meaning that it implies when one actually says the word. (ç VERY EASILY DISTRACTED BY SHINY MIND-OBJECTS, THIS ONE.)