So maybe I do not believe.
Yet there remains a faith thread, perhaps a strand of my
evolutionary DNA, that vibrates with uncertainty just as I want to cast my lot
full in with Christopher Hitchens, the recently deceased writer and
provocateur, who even in the hold of inoperable brain cancer with all around
him advising otherwise, held to his belief that since God does not wait on the
other side. Hitchens saw no reason to change what he believed, or said, or
wrote and made that abundantly and repeatedly clear in his last months.
From a distance, I applauded his courageous and rational mind.
For the rational me, the thread of faith stretches to its
maximum tension when I consider the scope of our known universe the near
impossibility that our galaxy among the millions holds the theological secrets
to every human, let alone every living creature across all the universes. The
concept that the three “great” religions all sprung from a small scrap of our
world and from that corner of desert wars have been waged for nearly all of
recorded human history does not translate to me in any way as something aspirational.
To the contrary, it is the history of human narcissism and of course
failure.
They says ashes to ashes and dust to dust, and I think, yes, I
know, we are all made of the same dust, and when we die we will all go back to
that same state. And then, from that same dust, the scraps of our existence, a
new person will rise. So on the surface of it, the teachings of my youth, the
repeated dogma, in the suffocating and suffocated church no longer hold any
power over my intellect or my heart. Sometimes, I think for all our human
progress as creatures of this earth we are just such complete failures, and
religion and religious pursuit is often at the top of our misguided efforts,
Dr. King, and Mohandas Gandhi notwithstanding. All too often we act out of a sense
of fear rather than one of love, and when fear rules the heart humans can
rationalize almost anything. It has been said so often that has reached the
point of extreme cliché, but the Jesus of the bible would not recognize the
hateful distortions in his name, now 2,000 years later.
There are some that would call these views cynical, but I will
tell you that I have grappled with this DNA for all my years. I was raised
after all by a mother, who believed in the Almighty and “his” ability to
transform lives. She took it as her mission to love her brother and sister as
herself. That is part of who I am also. That is an example that sometimes
shames me and my resurgent and often darkly held views. Too often I know that
hope is barely alive, and optimism is only tentatively held in my psychic
grasp. I know that shame offers nothing to build on, nothing really to hold or
nurture, and optimism some days may be all you got to carry to tomorrow.
So here I sit on the razors edge of certainty, almost sure that there is
a beginning, a middle, and an absolute end, almost sure that my rational mind
can no longer connect to or understand faith in the spiritual sense. Like a
dandelion seed on the wind I am almost cut loose to a narrative that is all
more logical, and comprehensible, and random.
But alas, my seed has yet to sail. It is the one lone white stem
still connected to this particular stalk. Perhaps there is an inevitability in
the final result, but perhaps not. Maybe I hang on still to that thread of my
DNA, because there are others around me, people who mean so much to me and who
I am, who without guile or pretense talk of what they believe to be “good,
fair, just, and Godly”. It makes me think. It made me think. It meant a lot to
me in quiet times this weekend.
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