Swimming with the Tao - the way of water

I am a lapsed atheist. I used to think that religious people were somehow weak, cowardly or naive. I imagined that I had no need of a religious component in my life; that I was above that and that I was far too modern, far too rational for such childish hogwash.
But even in my darkest, most arrogant years of atheism, there was a doubt in my mind. Why did I ponder God for so much of my time? Clearly, I was agnostic.
I knew that my love of astronomy was more than just a scientific interest. Looking up, looking out, I was aware that I was part of something beyond my comprehension. I love the knowledge that I am made of the same stuff as everything else. I see a kind of romance in the idea that all we are is the product of cosmic explosions: a star whose life came to a violent end, but whose death gave rise to our own sun and everything that spins around it.
So, for a while, I wanted to be pagan. But there are negative connotations with that label, brought about by Wicca - a nonsense religion closer to Catholicism than Wiccans or Catholics would like to admit.
My personal theology is certainly pantheist. Interestingly, in his The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins dismisses pantheism as "sexed-up atheism". This is a rather whimsical argument designed to avoid the fact that Einstein, one of the dead scientists that Dawkins calls as witness, was clearly a pantheist.
And then I found Unitarianism. And I still consider myself a non-paying member of the global UU (Unitarian Universalist) community. The nearest Unitarian congregation, however, was still too distant for regular attendance, and my visits waned.

But then I stumbled across Taoism. I forget how. It doesn't really matter. I felt an immediate sense of, I dunno, belonging. Its basic tenets so completely matched my own theology that it seemed uncanny.
The Tao Te Ching is one of the most beautiful, and profound, things I have ever read. Full of oxymoronic poetry, it is a guide to life and leadership. And then I read Pure by Barefoot Doctor. And now I cannot get enough.

What is particularly interesting is that through the lens of Taosim, Christianity makes a kind of sense. "I am the Way" presents an interesting perspective. Now I want to be a part of my local church community, at the heart of this wonderful village in which I have lived for 7 years now. The only problem is, of course, that my local church is Anglican. But that's for another post, another time.

For now it's enough to say that I am a pagnostic Taoist Unitarian Universalist.