Respectfully Declining Grace

Those of you who've followed this know I'm an agnostic. I'm not willing to say there is a God. I'm also not willing to say if there were such a thing that we humans would be close to able to understand such a being. There are many mysteries yet in this universe - or however many universes they've theorized lately that there are. Humans are pretty good at finding ways to fill in the blanks, for all kinds of purposes. It's been said that even if there were no God, humans would have invented one. Humans have invented thousands.

I'm still waiting to find out. I have a hunch that something is out there. But I might be wrong. Where I do have firm opinions, concerning religions, is that I fully respect those who try to live by the highest principles of the religion they believe in. Most religions teach good behavior to their followers, respecting or loving their fellows. They teach that selfishness in bad, stealing is bad, murder is really bad, and sacrifice to help others is good. I have great respect for people who live their religion that way. If God is a part of the package, that is not mine to choose for them. Nor take from them, even though the rest of the package does not require a belief in a God as the basis for living a good life.

I also have firm opinions, and not good ones, about those who use religion to use others for their own selfish purpose, who claim religion teaches selfishness, or cruelty, or whatever they need to claim in order to gain power over others. I hate hypocrisy, people who do evil in the alleged name of good. Of a God.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of getting to better know a woman who lives her religion and does it with love and sacrifice both. I enjoy talking with her, listening to her, working next to her in small ways. Our lives are very different and yet very similar. I knew that Grace was said around the supper table, and gave the family the respect of bowing my head during the process, as I do anywhere. My personal beliefs never came up for discussion. It was never the place or time to do so.

The last night I was asked if I wished to say the Grace. As I paused, she offered to me the grace of being able to decline to say it, which I respectfully did. I grew up in a family which said it on irregular occasions, so I know the rite. But I wasn't comfortable being what I considered my self as being if I said it: a hypocrite. A prayer should be earnest if it is to be offered with respect, and I find just saying whatever formula of words used as a Grace, without belief, to be a travesty, a disrespect of what it means to those who do believe and are sincere in that belief. 

It wasn't the time to explain all that. The duty got passed to another, and the meal and conversations went on. Other stuff happened, discussions traveled down different roads, and it never became the time - or necessary - to give that explanation. It may never be that time. Or that place.

Or both may be here. And now.