Funerals are always a sobering event. Even if they're not necessarily sad, they bring about emotions you rarely experience and make you think about things you'd sometimes rather not think about.

My great aunt Margie passed away last weekend. The funeral was yesterday. I don't remember much about her, aside from the fact that she was always nice. She'd been extremely ill in the past few years, so her passing came about no so much as a day of sorrow but more as a day of relief that she was finally free from her suffering.

It's amazing how selfish losing someone can make you. I've been lucky to have only lost one person who was close to me. You think about all the things you still had to do with that person, all the things you'll miss about them, all the things they took away from you when they left. It's hard to tell yourself that they're in a better place. It's hard to think of death as a good thing.

I'm not a particularly religious person. That's not to say that I don't believe in anything. How can you not look at everything in this world and not believe there's something out there that's bigger than you are? There's too much beauty and goodness for that not to be true.

I believe in God, but I don't believe in the church or rather the institution that is the church. I believe my relationship with God is something that's strictly between the two of us. And I'm not so quick to write off other religions, whether that religion is that of the Buddhists, Islams, or even the multiple gods of ancient times. I believe that this something bigger is in everything around us and that we would be foolish to try to limit it to just one being.

For me, spirituality is about hope. If I didn't believe in something, what would there be for me to be hopeful about? And a world without hope would be a sad one indeed.

At the funeral yesterday, one of the ministers said something that truly spoke to me. He said, "We are not a people without hope. We have the greatest hope of all." That's what religion should be about, whether you're a Catholic, Baptist, Buddhist monk, a worshiper of Allah, or someone like me who believes in the spirit of things.