mess-ay essay
Here i am treading dangerous ground: but what the hell. I have always had a problem with religion... Attending Catholic schools was difficult, because i was instructed to unblinkingly believe and accept everything i was being taught. I was never that kind of child. I asked for explanation over and over again until someone got irritated with me asking, and then i would go and try to find out myself until i could grasp whatever puzzle i had found myself in. Blind faith is not my talent. It is the oil to my water, in fact; i am faithphobic. A weakness perhaps, but that's that. I am trying to decide whether i really believe in God, or whether i believe in absence thereof. The absence of God is a scary thought for anyone who is aware of his or her own mortality.
I don't have a lot of knowledge of any one religion and it's doctrines - just a general tour from what i happen to pick up and read. Catholicism (and Christianity in general) all have great traditions and legends according to their beliefs. So do Muslims. So do Hindus. So do Buddhists. So did ancient practicioners of the old Norse, Greek, or Egyptian religions. I have never studied the Christian Bible. I find it "reeks of trollish self-satisfaction." (Grieg) I don't make a practice of reading that which i don't want to read. Even for school. That is why when i find a book that has religious or spiritual content, that i can swallow, i try to glean all i can from it. Books such as Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, or even Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The latter two don't necessarily have a religious content, but do deal with spiritual archetypes and ask spiritual questions. Even the poetry of the Sufi, Jelaluddin Rumi, which is mostly religious, i find fascinating: so full of passion. Personal experiences and opinions, abstracted for the purpose of story or lesson, from each of these authors are beautiful, i'll admit, but what do they mean?
I have learned that religion is not necessarily indicitive of spiritual knowledge like a square being a rectangle, but a rectangle not always being a square. However they aren't mutually exclusive either. I suppose, logically speaking of course, if one doctrine is true they all must be... at least, in essence. That would imply that the Christians as well as the Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists (and also including old Norse, Greek, and Egyptian) faiths must all be right. Statistically speaking i have a difficult time believing that six billion people could be wrong. Though millions were categorically wrong when they 'knew' that the world was flat. It matters how you explain your environment to yourself. From The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer the question: "What story are you telling yourself?" comes to mind. Your human being story: it's not just what happens to you, but how you relive it... how it lives within you. When you first kissed someone and felt that love there. It's so much more than a biochemical reaction causing increased blood flow to the face. Every person will feel those lips differently. And the memory thereof likewise will be different. That, in part, could explain how so many religions (some at war with one another over there supposed truths) could all have truth within them. A grand case of point of view.
All my life, something just felt wrong... Going to church, reading the Bible, maintaining doctrines ordained by a man 4300 miles away... It always felt fake. From my feeble understanding God, or whatever you call it, is in everything, is everywhere. All matter. All energy. All laws of physical reality are God. Why, then, would it be necessary to eat a wafer and sip at weak wine once a week. Why would that be the most important part? I don't guess my problem, then, was with God... Just with those believers. Love, which is portented as the point of it all, is rarely in the business of conversion. How are they so sure they have the infallible truth? Faith is one thing, but the church's level of smug is too much like blissful ignorance for my comfort. If i chose a religion, how could i then live with the faithful? I'm not like that. I would rather choose not to know rather than allowing myself to be placated with something i know nothing about. I have very little trust in my fellow man. Maybe because my fellow man has so often disappointed. History can be depressing. Do we never learn from our mistakes - i know how i hate it when i disappoint myself.
Perhaps i envy the ease at which people can accept the words of others as wrote. Maybe i have too much ego for a deity to make him/herself known to me... Why would i matter in the cosmos anyhow? Just pragmatically speaking of course. Then again, maybe they can see something i can't. I could accept that. Though that would mean my immediate work toward gaining ability to see.
Alas, time to go to bed again. The puzzles of the universe will still be gnashing at me in the morning.
I don't have a lot of knowledge of any one religion and it's doctrines - just a general tour from what i happen to pick up and read. Catholicism (and Christianity in general) all have great traditions and legends according to their beliefs. So do Muslims. So do Hindus. So do Buddhists. So did ancient practicioners of the old Norse, Greek, or Egyptian religions. I have never studied the Christian Bible. I find it "reeks of trollish self-satisfaction." (Grieg) I don't make a practice of reading that which i don't want to read. Even for school. That is why when i find a book that has religious or spiritual content, that i can swallow, i try to glean all i can from it. Books such as Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, or even Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The latter two don't necessarily have a religious content, but do deal with spiritual archetypes and ask spiritual questions. Even the poetry of the Sufi, Jelaluddin Rumi, which is mostly religious, i find fascinating: so full of passion. Personal experiences and opinions, abstracted for the purpose of story or lesson, from each of these authors are beautiful, i'll admit, but what do they mean?
I have learned that religion is not necessarily indicitive of spiritual knowledge like a square being a rectangle, but a rectangle not always being a square. However they aren't mutually exclusive either. I suppose, logically speaking of course, if one doctrine is true they all must be... at least, in essence. That would imply that the Christians as well as the Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists (and also including old Norse, Greek, and Egyptian) faiths must all be right. Statistically speaking i have a difficult time believing that six billion people could be wrong. Though millions were categorically wrong when they 'knew' that the world was flat. It matters how you explain your environment to yourself. From The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer the question: "What story are you telling yourself?" comes to mind. Your human being story: it's not just what happens to you, but how you relive it... how it lives within you. When you first kissed someone and felt that love there. It's so much more than a biochemical reaction causing increased blood flow to the face. Every person will feel those lips differently. And the memory thereof likewise will be different. That, in part, could explain how so many religions (some at war with one another over there supposed truths) could all have truth within them. A grand case of point of view.
All my life, something just felt wrong... Going to church, reading the Bible, maintaining doctrines ordained by a man 4300 miles away... It always felt fake. From my feeble understanding God, or whatever you call it, is in everything, is everywhere. All matter. All energy. All laws of physical reality are God. Why, then, would it be necessary to eat a wafer and sip at weak wine once a week. Why would that be the most important part? I don't guess my problem, then, was with God... Just with those believers. Love, which is portented as the point of it all, is rarely in the business of conversion. How are they so sure they have the infallible truth? Faith is one thing, but the church's level of smug is too much like blissful ignorance for my comfort. If i chose a religion, how could i then live with the faithful? I'm not like that. I would rather choose not to know rather than allowing myself to be placated with something i know nothing about. I have very little trust in my fellow man. Maybe because my fellow man has so often disappointed. History can be depressing. Do we never learn from our mistakes - i know how i hate it when i disappoint myself.
Perhaps i envy the ease at which people can accept the words of others as wrote. Maybe i have too much ego for a deity to make him/herself known to me... Why would i matter in the cosmos anyhow? Just pragmatically speaking of course. Then again, maybe they can see something i can't. I could accept that. Though that would mean my immediate work toward gaining ability to see.
Alas, time to go to bed again. The puzzles of the universe will still be gnashing at me in the morning.