The first time in my life when I had to choose in my beliefs was in the army in the Netherlands. Around June of 1958.

Facilities were available to spend your free time according to your beliefs. They were Protestant, Catholic and Humanistic and having to choose was very odd to me. The facilities I choose was Humanistic because I was not catholic and not really protestant. Humans and Humanity made sense to me in a place where you drink a cup of coffee or play cards with your friends.

For the next 50 years I did not attend a church except for a wedding, and at times just to accompany some friends.

My schooling was in Christian based schools so I learned a lot about the popular bible stories but also the frictions between church goers and my parents on that subject. My mind was pretty well made up in the army and I resolved the beliefs of the existence of God in my mind to be the infinite process of nature. Simply a three letter word given to that process a long time ago. God or nature is the almighty power that goes with that and to make it comprehensible or tangible to others it became referred to as a personalized Father in heaven or a holy Lord on a throne. The understanding I acquired made me feel humble, cautious and enlightened. As if the responsibility for myself fell in my own lap.  I accepted my situation, I had everything going for me and I was going to enjoy myself and appreciate my parents for ever getting me this far. This was 1958.

I read the conclusion about God, made by Baruch Spinoza in the 1600. I read about Roterodames Erasmus because we had a statue of him in Rotterdam.

I had decided to know what God/nature is and left it at that for a life time. My understanding about God/nature never clashed with anyone and I felt that, deep down, everyone feels the same way. The subject of religion was avoided and I did not want to spend time to discuss religions.  Recently, in my way of thinking there had to be  people with similar beliefs and by checking it out with beliefnet I soon found a person that said too that God is not a personality that doles out good or bad. God has no gender so God is IT and has no other meaning than being nature.

Atheist deny the existance of God but not nature. An Atheist does deny the person in God with the gender of male and so do I. GOD/nature can only mean one understanding through Joy, Love, Acceptance, Blessing and Gratefulness.

To be blessed and to feel grateful is a state of mind of course. If my body is in one piece I should  feel blessed. If my body is less than complete that would be unfortunate but I can still feel blessed and grateful for what is left of me. Those feeling blessed and grateful reach out with love and joy and is there for the taking. No membership fees are involved and any book of wisdom can be read again to gain new wisdom.

The object of joining or being part of a group is for social reasons and usually there is a fee attached in the form of memberships but feeling blessed and grateful is still up to the individual.  

Beliefnet is one of the tools and a means to acquire an attitude of love and joy and pass it on.

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