I'm bound

I've never liked the word 'religious'. It's usually applied to people by those who don't consider themselves religious, in a way that makes it clear the word isn't a compliment. Religious seems to have picked up a few negative connotations along the way - small minded, fundamentalist, boring, inhibited, outdated, judgemental. Not many people would queue up to be described like that.

But I think it's time that poor old religious shook off the dust and the dirt so we can see her at her brilliant, beautiful best.

Because hiding in the heart of religious is 'lig'. An ugly-duckling of a syllable, but we know what ugly-ducklings can become. Lig is what links religious to words like 'ligament' and 'ligature.' All three words are descendants of the latin word ligare, which means to tie, or bind together. Our ligaments tie our bones together and stop us falling apart.  Ligatures are used for tying and binding. And religion is about a kind of tying or binding.

It's a testament to the tattered reputation of religion, that when we see 'binding' at the heart of it, we shudder. Aha, we think, I knew it! Religion is a binding thing, to be got free of at all costs! For what human being would ever seek to be bound? We see prisoners being marched in line, humiliated and shackled. We see heroines tied to the train-tracks. It is not in our way to want to be bound.

But the binding is not ours, it is God's. It is not a cruel and unusual punishment meted out to unworthy sinners. The binding is of our lover's heart to our own.

There is a throbbing, pulsing, life-giving energy that courses through the universe. From the moment of the big bang, the universe has been growing. Life has been forming and evolving. Not a single sunrise has ever been repeated. The dew will never settle on the fir tree outside my kitchen window in the same way twice. The endlessly renewing creativity is astonishing. The Spirit of life is everywhere I look, everywhere I touch, everywhere I taste, everywhere I hear, everywhere I smell. And the Spirit of life is within me.

I am alive because the Spirit of life is endlessly creative, creating, breathing, giving. I have never been separate from whatever, or whoever, this Spirit is, because in the Spirit of life, I live, and move, and have my being. We are bound together, the Spirit and I, bound together in a dance-hold and a lovers' embrace. From my first cry, to my final breath, I am bound together in love to the endlessly giving Spirit of life. My lover would not leave me pinned to the train-tracks.

He and I are one. He and you are one. Ligare. Religion.