Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

I can­not think of any­one whom I have not wronged in this life, and for that I'm whole­heart­ed­ly sor­ry.Giv­en what I know of hu­man na­ture, though, even my apol­o­gy would not suf­fice for some. So, hav­ing apol­o­gised, I take so­lace in the one place I'm as­sured for­give­ness: God.That is my faith, that there is a supreme be­ing who of­fers me for­give­ness even when I'm un­able to ex­on­er­ate my­self from wrong­do­ing. Of course, this is based on the Bible as the scrip­ture which has gov­erned my be­lief from child­hood.

Fol­low­ing my Ro­man Catholic up­bring­ing and school­ing, I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the prac­tices of a few oth­er re­li­gions and be­lief sys­tems. I went to a Bap­tist sec­ondary school, joined a Pen­te­costal church, and then in the USA I joined a south­ern Amer­i­can Bap­tist church, and fi­nal­ly was bap­tised (again) in the Boston (In­ter­na­tion­al) Church of Christ (IC­OC).

I re­turned to T&T and hav­ing been "dis­fel­low­shipped" from the Port-of-Spain as­sem­bly of IC­OC for "giv­ing in to my im­moral na­ture," I found faith with the Orisas. Lat­er I would spend time on mourn­ing ground as part of a pe­ri­od of cleans­ing from fore­told spir­i­tu­al wicked­ness.An­oth­er failed at­tempt at for­mal re­li­gion saw me re­peat­ing my jour­ney in­to the IC­OC and "falling away" af­ter be­ing "re­stored to the faith" and still giv­ing in to my sin­ful na­ture. This time I left more out of the em­bar­rass­ment caused by a church sis­ter send­ing an e-mail to the church in Ja­maica telling sis­ters there of my im­moral­i­ty. That let­ter ar­rived be­fore me and was be­ing ex­changed dis­creet­ly in my pres­ence on my ar­rival in Ja­maica.

I re­turned from Ja­maica a dis­il­lu­sioned Chris­t­ian. The church to me be­haved worse than the world in ex­pos­ing my pri­va­cies, where it should have been cov­er­ing my mul­ti­tude of sins (and theirs), in­stead of pre­tend­ing to be for God while hurt­ful­ly gos­sip­ing.That in­ci­dent rad­i­cal­ly changed my view of church peo­ple but, with an in­grown un­der­stand­ing of the co­ex­is­tence of God and church, I still sought fel­low­ship else­where. It didn't last.Much hap­pened for which space here does not pro­vide ac­com­mo­da­tion, but all of these ex­pe­ri­ences, and more, have con­gealed to give me a com­fort­able place with God and my spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

Spir­i­tu­al con­scious­ness, I find, acts as an an­chor for me in my dark­ness. There is great com­fort in find­ing a su­pe­ri­or be­ing to which I can ap­ply and sup­pli­cate. What­ev­er you be­lieve about God, church, and re­li­gion I guar­an­tee you spir­i­tu­al­i­ty places you in a bet­ter place to treat with life's chal­lenges. Re­cent­ly the New York Times pub­lished an ar­ti­cle sup­port­ing church­go­ing. The au­thor said: "One of the most strik­ing sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies about re­li­gion in re­cent years is that go­ing to church week­ly is good for you. Re­li­gious at­ten­dance–at least, re­li­gios­i­ty–boosts the im­mune sys­tem and de­creas­es blood pres­sure. It may add as much as two to three years to your life. The rea­son for this is not en­tire­ly clear."

The ar­ti­cle was in­ter­est­ing, but the com­men­tary fol­low­ing was the re­al at­trac­tion for me. One com­men­ta­tor wrote: "God is imag­i­nary. Please let's be adults. There are many oth­er ways to im­prove your life oth­er than be­liev­ing in myth­i­cal crea­tures and ir­ra­tional ideas such as heav­en and hell and the 'Trin­i­ty.' Re­li­gion is on­ly one way to or­gan­ise your life and it is dan­ger­ous and I would say one of the least ef­fec­tive. One way to im­prove is just to get a so­cial life and in­ter­act with oth­ers; that is in­cred­i­ble if it is done with in­tel­li­gent peo­ple and imag­ine if it was done at a col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty!"

An­oth­er said: "In my life these good ef­fects are what I have main­ly ob­served among re­li­gious be­liev­ers who are ac­tive church­go­ers. "Those whose ex­po­sure to church­go­ing on­ly in­cludes hor­ror sto­ries about child abuse, stake-burn­ing, and in­tol­er­ance will view the ar­ti­cle with cyn­i­cism and even dis­gust, and that is un­der­stand­able. I am grate­ful, though, for this piece on the pow­er of ac­tive re­li­gios­i­ty to bring suc­cour and sal­va­tion to so many who need it."The views on the im­pact of re­li­gion, Chris­tian­i­ty and/or church are as di­verse and the two sides may nev­er meet, but re­search shows re­li­gious peo­ple are more op­ti­mistic, and op­ti­mism is vi­tal for cop­ing with any ill­ness.

In ex­am­in­ing the ques­tion, catho­licex­change.com agrees that re­li­gion pro­vides hope and mean­ing in the most dif­fi­cult of life cir­cum­stances. It says: "This does not mean that deeply re­li­gious per­sons nev­er suf­fer from de­pres­sion or get bet­ter more quick­ly than oth­ers. It on­ly means that every­thing else be­ing equal (which it sel­dom is), those with a strong re­li­gious faith who are par­tic­i­pat­ing in a re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ty have more cop­ing re­sources at their dis­pos­al to help fight de­pres­sion."There are many ways of see­ing God, church, re­li­gion, and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Each be­lief sys­tem of­fers hope for those who sub­scribe.