God is contentious. Believers, atheists, agnostics and all the in betweeners– every person somehow is in a relationship with God. Every type of idea towards God, is in fact a relationship with God.

So why am I going all capital G on the big Guy? Do I think God’s a man, a woman, or some androgynous being best suited to Calvin Klein ad campaigns? For one thing, someone who attracts so much attention, debate, thought and action deserves my respect, existent or non-existent. Secondly, having had wars fought for, curses rained upon, murders committed in the name of, glory and praise sung about, God deserves at least a pronoun. To me, God isn’t a gender, God’s an idea.

Which brings me to my own beliefs. Coming from a mixed ethnic background, born in India to a Zoroastrian mother and a Hindu father, I was already somehow in the front running to be a-religious. In comparison to the burgeoning pantheon of Hindu Gods of all shapes and sizes with multiple heads and powers, Zarathustra espoused a monotheistic cause, good on one side, evil on the other, and us mortals in between, fated to perpetual confusion.

Jammed into that colourful Hindustani mix were all types of Christianity, all kinds of Islam, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism and not unlike the rest of the world we live in – the odd Jew. This fantastic concoction, much like a complex, flavoursome curry, lead me to deeply believe no religion (or God) was any different from the other. Sure there were angry Gods, there were benevolent Gods, there were Gods with powers of all the Marvel and DC superheroes encapsulated in one being and there were Gods lower down the mightiest of mighties, one or two fun things they could do, at best. But they were all the same, different labels. But they were not the same, different wars.

Beyond Karl Marx expounding that religion was an opiate and Max Weber writing that sociologically belief in a religion lead to salvation, as I grew up, I started to understand that the idea of religion was constantly evolving, but somehow God had stayed the same. Religion went from being essential to daily life – anthropologically a magic and deeply spirited part of the ancient way of living, informing civilizations about the rules of conducting themselves with kindness and mercy – to the Machiavellian realm of megalomaniac politicians intent on ruling by divisive ideology. However the G dude was still Omni-present and pretty much ok with how the world was carrying on. God remained God – up in heaven, still meting out brains, beauty, disabilities and talents in strangely unjust ways. God continued to cause tsunamis and rainbows in equal measure, an oyster still as beautiful inside, the hideousness of the human brain by contrast, being able to murder innocent children in minutes through bombs. It was all God. Just as it had been since always and forever. The struggle for humans remained how to reconcile this unfair God with the all forgiving God of their religion.

Studying the socialization of children of mixed faiths during my post-graduate year, my research theorized that most children born to mixed faiths were not religious (they didn’t lean towards one preferred religion of a parent) but they did believe in “something”. When asked to define that “something” most said it was a universal consciousness. Which is where I come in, again. I believe in the UC. The cloth of the UC is draped over us all, connected as we are as living beings, intent on getting on to the best of our capacities, through love, through hate, through happiness, through fate.

The UC is sensitive. A strong pinch to it would send ripples to different parts of the many threads to which it connects. Our ribbons to the UC mean our own actions have equal reactions. If we bear forth generosity and gratitude, the lucky recipients of those warm actions will perhaps pass it along. On the other hand, anger begets anger, and then dictatorships, greed and war follow. The UC proves Isaac Newton was irrefutably right. Yet, the distribution of the world’s resources and personal human capacities will stay imbalanced, and we must learn to accept that, doing what we can through our own actions, to change the world order in the best way forward. Besides all the more noble and tangible actions such as philanthropy, volunteering, teaching, creating awareness through service and propaganda, is prayer.

Prayer to me is not about God. Prayer has never been about God. Prayer has always been about us and our relationship to each other. When we pray we pray for more love, more healing, more forgiveness. We pray for more strength, more of everything we desperately need, more of what we realize even as we pray, we could never control. In our prayers is our wisdom. Our wisdom makes us patient and benevolent, tolerant and non-judgmental of each other. Religion doesn’t do that for us, God doesn’t do that for us. We do it for ourselves.

Dubai, 1 Feb 2015

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hello! I’m Peri Desai

I’m Peri, welcome to my space. In it you will find stuff that moves me, maddens me, captures my attention, makes me question its truth. You will read what makes me curious, annoyed, energized, joyful, vulnerable.