"Don't be so quick to dismiss it," Jean said. Jean is a wonderful lesbian about my age. I would say her outstanding qualities are her wiry, muscular frame and her hoarse shouting enthusiasm for unpopular causes like animal rights and unshaven armpits (ugh!). "You might really get something out of it."
She was referring to a local attraction that defies simple categorization. It's a campsite, it's an aging hippie hangout, it's a lesbian retreat, it's a pagan holy ground... Of course, it's really just a great big chunk of woods on the edge of nowhere special. Still, if you're into living primitive, walking around naked, having giant bonfire dedications to your pagan deity or just openly smoking dope with your hairy old armpits hanging out, it's the place to be. I'll call it the Wanderground, although that's not really its name.
"Religion," I mused. "Not just regular old Sunday morning churchgoing religion, but some nut-job bunch of made up gibberish that would make my mother roll over in her grave." I did the Big Woods anti-nod, bobbing my head from side to side as I thought it over. "Tempting."
"It's not made up!" she protested with good-natured astonishment - but with the suggestion that I'd better not tread any harder on her chosen beliefs. "Women (sorry, I mean womyn) have been worshipping the Goddess and the Horned One for thousands of years. Sure, some of the traditions have been lost or changed from being driven underground..."
"At least until a bunch of bored college students started reading Frazier's Golden Bough and thinking that it would be a great thing to do while tripping and that it might help them score chicks who were heavy into rebellion," I added. I try hard to be a good guy, but sometimes it's a little hard not to lay the irony and sarcasm on a tad thick.
She shook her head with an expression identical to my sister-in-law's when I questioned her interpretation of the bible: you can sort of hear the word blasphemy! rolling around somewhere in a big old empty space somewhere behind it.
"Bigg," she said, straining to be reasonable, as she laid one hand on my forearm. "It could help you if you let it. After all, everyone wants to believe."
This statement stuck with me long after her visit was over. The truth is that I don't believe that God's in his heaven or that all is right with the world or in the saints or the angels or the predestination of the elect or any of that happy crap. I don't think - hell, I sure I hope not! - that there's an afterlife. When I'm ready to lay it down I want it all to be over, no more anything, and that's all I have to say about that. Still, she's right: everybody does want to believe. Every salesman knows it; the customer sells himself, and it's always because he wants to believe. I'm no different. I want to believe in miracles. I wanna think that if I think right or eat right or dress right or feng shui the shit outta my living room that everything's gonna be okay. I wanna believe that Jesus can make my cancer go away and make my ex wife leave me alone and grant me disability and make the economy stable again.
But when you bring me right to the brink, to that line between intellectually considering a belief with all its philosophical implications and diving right in and really accepting it, making it your own, when you get me to that line I can't jump over. I can't accept it.
I just can't.
Title lyric from "Feel" by Robbie Williams.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
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3 comments:
Interesting, your "metaphor". Are you familiar with the writings of Paul Tillich? He is a theologian who uses an expression very close to your metaphor. He talks about "the leap of faith".
Ah, Bigg, you have your belief system. It's just not what everyone else espouses (or at least what they say they believe). ;) And I just want you to know that, at least from my point of view, that's okay.
TG:
as my old buddy Mark Twain used to say, "Nothing needs reforming so much as other people's habits."
Oddly enough, people who wouldn't dream of proselytizing for religion [that's SO tacky] feel no compunction about proselytizing for diet regimes, meditation, biodiesel, whatever makes THEM tick.
Me, I'll stick with the Naz. He's the one who said that no matter WHAT you imagine happening at the end, you are in for One Big Surprise. You can look it up [Matthew 25: 31-46].
The utterly convinced never read the bits that might make them THINK. Or cut someone else a little slack. And that in spite of His explicit declaration, repeated numerous times, that we will only be forgiven to the degree that we have forgiven others.
Scary stuff, my friend.
But you are absolutely right: it all happens here. Find me a single word about the afterlife in the New Testament, and I'll buy you an ice cream cone.
Hang in there, Biggo.
These are in fact the good times.
T@C
I'm really feeling you on this one, Bigg. I've been employed as a musician for many years in a church of which I'm not a member - I fake it really well and most parishioners could never tell I'm not of the faith. Every year I consider just going ahead and getting my membership card . . . and every year I realize that I don't buy one bit of that stuff. I respect it, I honor those who belong, I deeply love the musical culture of the Church, and I certainly like the money, but I'd be lying if I drank their Kool-Aid.
Don't know if you're inclined, but I'm a big fan of Neal Donald Walsh's Conversations With God.
One thing I know for sure, we all find our own way and no way is the wrong way.
Firethorne
P.S. Thanks for the advice!
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