What will be

I’ve spent the last few days processing the emotions I felt when I heard on NPR Friday morning that Al Gore (and friends) won the Nobel Peace Prize. I think my feelings have been bubbling under the surface of my consciousness ever since I saw An Inconvenient Truth.

I’ve had a very hard time with the friction between the faith I am trying very hard to live and the emotional turmoil that I and many others have experienced as a result of the political choices our federal government has made since December 12, 2000 (when the SCOTUS issued Bush v. Gore). I want to have faith that the universe knows what it’s doing and that everything will be as it is supposed to be, but I also see thousands dead, tens of thousands injured, rollbacks of civil liberties and civil rights, and politicians more concerned with power than with people. 

And all of a sudden in that 15 second headline before they cut to haranguing me about donating money to public radio, my dilemma unraveled. Faith won. I hate the direction our country has taken in the Bush administration, and my blood boils and my eyes well up when I walk down to the ground floor of my building and see the dozen-or-so portraits of beautiful young people who gave their lives to enrich the pockets and the egos of powerful men.

But in that moment, I knew that the universe knew what it was doing. The world needed Al Gore to spread the good word about climate change and human impact more than we needed him to be the president.

Over the weekend, I also mused through my own spiritual inspirations, and I kept coming back to the first Noble Truth of the Buddha — life is suffering. As much as I want to make everyone happy and hear birds chirping and see Dick Cheney skipping hand-in-hand with little children of all races and classes who are all reading above grade-level, that isn’t life.

What will be will be. The universe knows what it’s doing, and I have to make the best decisions that I can to do good in the world and to keep my spiritual bucket full enough that I can feel that doing good in the world is worth it. Have to remember to put my oxygen mask on first, so to speak.

Ultimately, this is the faith of Unitarian Universalists, I think. Faith that working for peace, justice and equality is worth it and that things have a way of working themselves out on the side of good. You don’t need a god to have this faith.