When I was 12, I refused to go to church anymore. My mother was dismayed, and my father couldn't bully or intimidate me (even though he didn't attend himself) I REFUSED! I didn't believe all that stuff - the streets of Heaven were paved with gold, God watching us, punishing us, and distributing bicycles and helping football players win over their opponent.
I talked to many ministers of every denominations, and read for the next 50 years about Bah'ai, Zen, Sufi wisdom, new age. I bought every guru's book - ancient gurus and new age. In the midst of my darkest moment (sick, dazed, and homeless) I got a book from the library - "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama. From that beginning, I have found my spiritual home in Zen Buddhism. There is no dogma, nothing you have to believe. In fact it is the opposite. You have to find out the Truth for yourself. This can be a long process. I recommend a qualified teacher to guide you. And it is not about reading and discussing and arguing. It is about living it.
I have posted this poem before, but just in case you missed it.....
The Seven Spiritual Ages of Mrs. Marmaduke Moore
by Ogden Nash
Mrs. Marmaduke Moore, at the age of ten(Her name was Jemima Jevons then),
Was the quaintest of little country maids.
Her pigtails slapped on her shoulderblades ;
She fed the chickens, and told the truth
And could spit like a boy through a broken tooth.
She could climb a tree to the topmost perch,
And she used to pray in the Methodist church.
At the age of twenty her heart was pure,
And she caught the fancy of Mr. Moore.
He broke his troth (to a girl named Alice),
And carried her off to his city palace,
Where she soon forgot her childhood piety
And joined the orgies of high society.
Her voice grew English, or , say, Australian,
And she studied to be an Episcopalian.
At thirty our lives are still before us,
But Mr. Moore had a friend in the chorus.
Connubial bliss was overthrown
And Mrs. Moore now slumbered alone.
Hers was a nature that craved affection;
She gave herself up to introspection;
Then finding theosophy rather dry,
Found peace in the sweet Bahai and Bahai.
Forty! and still an abandoned wife,
She felt old urges stirring to life,
She dipped her locks in a bowl of henna
And booked a passage through to Vienna.
She paid a professor a huge emolument
To demonstrate what his ponderous volumes meant.
Returning she preached to the unemployed
The gospel according to St. Freud.
Fifty! she haunted museums and galleries,
And pleased young men by augmenting their salaries .
Oh, it shouldn't occur, but it does occur,
That poets are made by fools like her.
Her salon was full of frangipani,
Roumanian, Russian and Hindustani,
And she conquered par as well as bogey
By reading a book and going Yogi.
Sixty! and time was on her hands----
Maybe remorse and maybe glands.
She felt a need for free confession
To publish each youthful indiscretion,
And before she was gathered to her mothers,
To compare her sinlets with those of others,
Mrs. Moore gave a joyous whoop,
And immersed herself in the Oxford group.
That is the story of Mrs. Moore,
As far as it goes. But of this I'm sure ---
When seventy stares her in the face
She'll have found some other state of grace.
Mohammed may be her lord and master,
Or Zeus, or Mithros, or Zoroaster,
For when a lady is badly sexed
God knows what God is coming next.
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buddhism
July 2009 
mimi
Access: Public
and at eighty
I would hope
that all this dope
will be way too weighty.
I hope I can live to be eighty
And that my body isn’t too weighty
I’ll stretch out in my lazyboy and snore and nod
And watch TV and not think of god.
What do I hope God will say to me when I reach Heaven?
“What took you so long?…”