Something I can't say on #facebook without repercussions from family and friends: faith is dead, long live faith. I left the #lds church after about 40 years (Exodus joke here). The main reason was that I just stopped believing all the doctrine. Every "spiritual experience" I'd ever had could finally be explained much more easily by basic things I understood about humans and myself than by religious concepts. And since then I have those "spiritual experiences" over and over. I feel what I would have once identified as The Spirit when I read about refugees or people who overcame great odds; when I hear moving music or watch an emotional scene in a movie. The past few days I've been having spiritual experiences every time I feel a glimmer of hope for the continued existence of my democracy, or when I read about ways of helping vulnerable populations survive this administration. I said "long life #faith" but that's not quite right. I don't have the kind of faith I had as a religious Mormon person. I am working on whether faith is a relevant concept anymore, for me. Hope, however--hope is something I understand and need. #hope #spiritual #mormon #exmormon #nullhypothesis