At Peace With God

I found this the other day and loved it:

Priest: "Have you made your peace with God?"

Voltaire (on his deathbed): "I didn't know we were at war."

I'm at peace with God. I am not at peace with the church. But I'm not exactly at war with it either. There are many things I hate about it. There are some things about it that I think are good. I'm not grinding any axes against the church or institutional religion. Okay, maybe a couple of small hatchets. 

I've shaken off my addict-like dependency on the church for my sense of peace and joy in life. I embrace my skepticism, revel in honest intellectual inquiry and find a kind of exuberance in the notion that most questions don't have tidy answers and some questions may have no answer at all. I fear far more for my salvation when I fail to follow sound logic and good human sense than when I choose not to "follow the prophet" who has no more and no less access to the divine than do I when it comes to personal matters.

Most importantly, I'm enjoying the fellowship I have with the circle of people around me who I love, who I care about, who challenge me, who support me and who enliven my spirituality and emotional health. Among my most strongly-felt hopes is that I'm able to give that in return because those relationships are an expression of the divine. That authentic camaraderie is peace to me.

What are your thoughts and feelings about being at peace? How do you go about creating and finding peace in your life?