Growing up with a mother diagnosed with a schizotypal personality disorder, I was exposed to every fanatical religion out there; pentecostal, baptist, born again... She followed them all, spoke in tongues, laying of hands, the whole nine yards. Well, at a very early age I realized this was not for me. Being confronted with the superstitious side of religion on a daily basis, I quickly began to question the whole religious intstitution. As soon as I was old enough to actually start "labeling" my beliefs, I called myself an atheist, but was more anti-religion than anti-deity. The older I got, and the more educated I became, the more I discarded any belief or hope for the existence of a god.
Even with my mothers disorder, she was an incredably loving and intelligent woman. Much of my "love for all creatures" came from her. I have two older sister, and the three of us graduated first, second and third in our highschool classes respectively, and we all went on to college. I guess there really is some truth to the old saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". I really believe I owe the strength of my ideals to my early life.
I didn't follow any religion, or even see any need to, until just recently. I am now married, with a 13 month old son, and want to be able to offer him a religion other than christianity. I want him to see the same beauty I see in the natural world, and I don't want him encumbered by outdated superstitions. I stumbled onto Paul's page one day while searching AltaVista with +nature +religion, and said "Wow, there are people out there with the same exact beliefs I have!" Reading the summary of "what is a pantheist", I was amazed to see my exact beleifs about life, death and nature written down by someone elses hand. I shot off an email to Paul before I even finshed reading the page, and well, here I am.
I haven't even touched on the development of my love for nature; I do believe that would be a book unto itself. I guess my past posts "Late Night Run" and "Being in Nature" pretty well sum up my current state of existence within the natural world. (No, I didn't save the posts, I am sure someone else is probably archiving the emails). As for how that love of nature developed, I guess the short version is that having a really stressful childhood, and having no religion to turn to, I spent alot of timing just romping around in nature, away from people. I grew up in Ipswich, MA, which has beautifull forests, marshlands, beaches, ocean views and wooded river trails to enjoy. That's really all it took.