Some key values of a New Agnosticism
1. Embracing the freedom of not-knowing / uncertainty
2. Life long learning – there is always more to learn.
3. Listening to self, body, others and the whole of creation.
4. Being integrated with body and relearning the beauty and need of touch
5. Embracing sensuality (reject non-sense) – reconnecting with feelings and our six senses and learn to trust our emotional intelligence.
6. Enjoy and embrace playing (eros) creation and make room for wonder.
7. Move from dryness to moistness
8. Accepting and celebrating the joy and sacredness of sex
9. Live a life of thankfulness, grace and gratitude
10. Embrace holistic humanity, honoring the feminine and masculine
11. Move from asceticism to aestheticism
12. Move from belief and dogma to be-attitudes
13. Respect and embrace wisdom and the knowledge that comes through it
14. Respect both being and doing
15. Move from separation to inclusion
16. Live justly even though it may not bring peace.
17. Question everything / accept everyone
18. Learn to love self, others and all creation – be who you are!
Being an agnostic can be lonely, being a religious agnostic can be isolating, as yet there is no agnostic church. Perhaps it is time for the new agnostics to gather together, to create community or an agnostic church.
My son expects me to know everything, he said to me the other night, “you always say you don’t know”
In reality – I don’t always say I don’t know – but as a little boy he expects me the bigger person to know everything and is surprised and sometimes annoyed that I don’t.
But I am glad he has noticed this ability to say, I don’t know, as I hope to model a not-knowing way of being to him. It can however be seen as lazy response, a sitting on the fence – but sitting on the fence is eventually quite painful. I see not-knowing as being responsible. It is a considered response to life’s choices and life’s circumstances. I believe it is an authentic response which offers freedom and liberation.
Being agnostic is natural – why fight it!