Sorry your open-ended question elicited no remarks, but it's both challenging and highly personal. I confess, after more than four decades of exploring various belief systems and practices, that nothing "works" for me as a spiritual path as much as hiking and kayaking. It can be very uplifting to be in the midst of agreeable companions singing hymns, etc.; or more often in secular settings working in groups devoted to harmonious collaboration towards worthy goals. And intermittently, I've devoted time to various solitary meditation practices. But feeling harmonious with the people around me, or with humanity as a whole, or with some cosmic emptiness-fullness-abstraction... is a pale reflection of the pure joy of feeling one with ALL LIFE in the outdoors. If someone would create the "Church of Rivers and Trails" I'd be first in line to join.

Modern life provides us with plenty of opportunities to be in the midst of other people, or to be all alone. But to deliberately put oneself in the midst of wildlife is not so easy for many of us. I can go years without visiting a church, but even a week without time on a trail, and I experience withdrawal symptoms.

And you're right, it's not an easy question for the reasons you mentioned. I would have shared something first myself, but I feel like I'm always in flux, spiritually. That's a big reason why I'm a UU: so I don't have to leave when my beliefs change.

Maybe that is why I feel more at home among them than in any other "faith community." Still, every time I see yet another post saying "all religions are equally bad" it gets a rise out of me re the UUs and Quakers, Buddhists and Jains... etc. However, the only conceivable result of raising those issues in DU outside this safe haven would be to get UUs and Quakers, Buddhists and Jains viciously attacked by obscurantist hatemongers.

Fortunately, we are all more than our opinions on religion.

For those of us whose opinions on religion are very tentative, angry and self-righteous fanaticism is equally frightening and discouraging no matter what the source. In the real world, most of the people I know in secular organizations have never discussed their belief or unbelief and these fault lines never become issues. But the kind of furious dogmatic groupthink behavior that I've seen online from religionists (in the past) and anti-religionists (lately) scares me into wondering what evil lurks in the hearts of all the nice people I know. Time for another LONG vacation from DU I guess.

I was just away for a couple of months myself. Enjoy!

But i think it comes from laziness.

But as I said I am lazy.

I didn't know Episcopalians also called it a mass.
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What helps you keep the faith, if not those things?

I do go to mass but not as often as I should. I need to pray more often than I do. I always feel at peace when I pray but I just felk out of the habbit of doing it every day.

Sooner or later somebody will come by walking the same path.