Thoughts for the season, and all that

[hawkwing_lb]

I debated whether or not to post this at all. To friendslock it, or post it under a cut. On reflection, I decided to do none of these things. I warn you it contains ramblings on faith and religion, and the nature of mine own.

I've been wishing people Merry Christmas all week. Not unusual, you might say, considering the season. Except for one thing: I'm not a Christian, not anymore. Is it, then, hypocritical of me to wish people joy of something I don't myself believe in?

I don't usually talk much about why I'm no longer either Catholic or Christian, though I was brought up as both, or what I believe in now. It's not something I dwell on, but now, at the close of the year, displays of faith and religion in the Christian mode surround me. I find myself thinking more and more about my choices, and my own beliefs.

I stopped being a Catholic the year I turned fourteen. I had been a lapsed one for some time before, since my Confirmation - under protest - at the age of eleven, but it was that year I ceased to profess the tenets of a faith in which I could no longer honestly believe. Christianity, out of guilt and habit, lasted a little longer, but by the time I was fifteen I had decided that I could no longer honestly claim to believe in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, either*.

For the next year I vacillated, wavering between atheism and agnosticism. Then, the year I turned sixteen, the year of my Junior Cert exams, I had what one might describe as a personal religious experience. Although the unkind might choose to call it a delusional episode instead.

That year was a horrible one for me. I had what was later diagnosed as an underactive thyroid, complicated by the pressure of preparing for exams. At the time, all I knew was that I was exhausted all the time, and things which had once been simple for me were growing difficult. I started blanking in tests. I was getting more and more tired all the time, but with no obvious physical cause I put it down to my imagination. I started distrusting my own assessment of my mental and physical health - in short, I was sick, and depressed, and felt that I couldn't go on.

There are no atheists in foxholes. At the point where I was falling in the door and into bed immediately after school, if I made it in to school at all, I prayed.

Not to a Christian god. I didn't believe, after all. No, simply to any Being that might have been Out There. And I didn't pray for anything that I didn't believe I already possessed. I just wanted help finding that extra bit of wisdom, of strength, of will-to-go-on that I'd allowed fear and worry and distress to bury.

I believe I was answered. For in the moment when the voices of fear and worry, of the everyday, had fallen silent in my mind, I felt something that I don't believe was me. I was given grace, and for a moment my tiredness lifted. For a moment, I could look beyond my immediate future and see that I could go on.**

I believe that moment saved my sanity, if not my life.

In all other things than atheism, now, I suspect the word existentialist fits me best- though the better read may correct me. I believe in no absolute morality; 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' is the whole of my moral code. I believe in no hereafter, no heaven or hell, nor reincarnation neither. You find your salvation or damnation in this life, because it's the only one you have, and when we die we cease to be.

I remain, contradictively, an agnostic. The universe is vast, an infinity beyond human comprehension. So too the nature of the divine. It pleases me to think that perhaps the Universe is God, and that everything that exists is part of it, part of the body of divinity, growing and evolving in ways too complex for human consciousness to compass***. An immense energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed. Energy, of which matter is merely a denser form.**** We are merely denser bodies of energy, grown in some manner conscious of ourselves. And perhaps It is conscious, with the consciousness of aeons and of stars, vast and infinite; I do not claim to know.

I do not think It has much care for what we do or fail to do, we tiny specks of matter.

I do think that in the silence of our minds when our own selfish voices are made still, we can hear it, that vast, slow heartbeat of existence.

We are motes of dust in a sunbeam. Accountable, not to the Infinite, but to ourselves, with the double-edged razor of our own morality. To save ourselves, or to damn.

Today is the shortest day of the northern hemisphere's year. The shortest day, and the longest night. Whatever you believe, may it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out. [1]

Peace be with you.

-------------------------------
*I don't claim to disbelieve the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth. I simply cannot suspend my disbelief in his divinity as attested to in the gospels. Yes, I'm a godless heretic/blasphemer/infidel. Whatever. A theological question for the faithful of whatever stripe: Do you believe your God answers unbelievers' prayers?

**You can always go on. I know that now. It took me a bit of time realising it.

*** It has always seemed to me to be the highest arrogance to believe that any human mind can compass the nature of the Ultimate. Yet so many people seem to think that words in a book can explain It, when those words, if they compass it at all, can only give us Its faintest, most diluted reflection. (I apologise to anyone this might offend, but this is what I believe)

****My physics is rather rusty, but I remember the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy.

[1]Yes, precious, we are a LOTR fan. How did the hobbitses guess?

Comments

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Amen, sister. As one existentialist to another, well-said. You can choose to roll that rock up the hill for all eternity, or you can choose not to, but your choices give your life meaning.

Keep that flame in your heart, and you will never lack for light.

Oh, and that song happens to be my favorite of all Clannad songs.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

your choices give your life meaning

Oh, yeah. I was an existentialist before I knew there was a word for what it was, I think. (I still want to hit bloody Sartre, the one existentialist writer I've ever read, but that's another rant). Choices give your life meaning, or lack thereof, and there are always choices. Not necessarily pleasant ones, but always choices. (And why am I compelled to state the obvious?)

At this time of year, 'round here, you'd never think that there were people who weren't following the tune of the majority. Time of year when the churches fill up with the lapsed Catholics, and I start thinking too much on the nature of belief. The believers standing up and giving witness for their faith... It's only fair that others do them same, right? :-)

that song happens to be my favorite of all Clannad songs

I like it too, though I think I prefer Óró, perhaps, or Memories. Óró would be pushing for my favorite Irish-language song, at least. :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

I like it too, though I think I prefer Óró, perhaps, or Memories. Óró would be pushing for my favorite Irish-language song, at least. :-)

I love the bass line in Ri na Cruinne. The song's too short, otherwise. Most of their stuff is my favorite music, and A Gentle Place is my all-time favorite piece. If that's not redundant. :-D

As for the churches filling with Catholics of all stripes, you can only choose what fits you best. Over the years, being raised in the Jewish faith more than the Catholic faith, I've never really felt "at home" in church. All the christian holidays are things I've grown up with, but not holidays that have any more meaning to me. However, when I was young, the only holidays that were observed in the school calendar were the christian ones, so I was used to being overlooked. Still, there's no harm in wishing anyone a pleasant Christmas or a Happy Hannukah. It's just words to me, but they bring nice feelings to those who believe. ;-) If I don't believe, is it hypocrisy? Or is it just good manners? ;-)

Off to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra tonight. Ta.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Don't think I've ever heard A Gentle Place. Which album is it on, can you tell me? :-)

If I don't believe, is it hypocrisy? Or is it just good manners?

The question I struggle with :-). In the end, I come down on the side of good manners, but, y'know, it's kind of weird :-). Conform to the societal norms! (Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.)

:-):-P:-)

Enjoy the orchestra :-)!

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Just off the top of my head (not to be confused with the top of the morning at all), A Gentle Place is the last song on Anam...or it could be the last song on Banba. It's an instrumental piece, but I had a powerful evoked vision when I first listened to it. Anytime I want a good cry, I put that one on.

Good manners win out over all, in the end. :-) Besides, you can be ever so much more subversive from within the enemy, and one day those societal norms will be changed [insert evil laugh] -- and there'll be nothing anyone can do about it! Ahem. There's some as can be guerillas and provocateurs, and work for change from without. They are the angry ones. I prefer not to be angry (at least, not anymore), so it's the quiet subversive, from-within changes that I'll work on.

The orchestra was, um, excessive in a rock sort of way. Which is a good way. It was a spectacular, with fog machines, lasers and lights coordinated to the music, and it was loud. Even with all that, my ten-year old son managed to fall asleep for a short bit. Poor child, it was past his bedtime.

It's not the kind of music I'd listen to every day, but it was a fun thing to do for the holiday. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

"I asked this God a question, to which the firm reply,
He's not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday."
Jethro Tull, Wind up, Aqualung.

(Smile) You sound more like a gnostic than an agnostic.

There are certain element of that -- particularly the idea that it is the human spirit within each individual that is God that does appeal to me. I also find plausible the idea that evil really does exist (we can argue about where, or what or whether it too is part of the human spirit). (Some of the rest of that is crazy as an emu on acid).

I had a discussion with my one of my sons about clothes and fashion. The point I was trying to get across was that pants remain pants no matter whether you call them bell-bottoms or Oxford bags. Fashions -which minorly affect the shape of pants (but not as much as the fact that we have two legs does) is just code letting various 'sets' know you would like to belong. I wonder if you are not confusing the two things here too. All religions are basically philosophical constructs. The forms, the rote, the faith, beliefs of afterlife... the rituals and the beliefs are 'fashions'. They change with time. Sometimes they even screw around with the underlying philosophy. In many minds they become more important. But the 'pants' of the philosophy remain intact, shape dictated to some extent by the humans that have to occupy them.

I come from a Calvinist Christian family and while I can (and do) pick holes in the forms thereof (to the point where no church would welcome me), I cannot fault the philosophy. (I also can't fault the attitude that came with it: grant unearned deference to no man unless it is earned, and even God only gets a grudging pass;-)). It was this philosophy that made my parents oppose apartheid. "Because all men are equal in the sight of God." Whether God is looking or is merely an aspect of myself, is actually irrelevant. It's a great philosophy, and one I will live and die by. Like the 'do unto others' that you quoted, it is a moral and philophical code (not in the silly, literal dumb-ass fundamentalist sense) which shaped western liberalism. I've yet to find flaws in this underlying philosophy (which the established church deviates hugely from).

Questions such as resurrection and heaven or purgatory, or the myriad trivia that theologians have wasted time arguing about are actually things I find irrelevant to my philosophical loyalty. The social and philosophical concepts in Christianity - as originally espoused - established the ideals and values I try to live by. Not the bribery side (be a good boy and we'll let you into heaven) I came to terms with my own mortality a long time back (I have a family history of lung problems which probably have affected my heart, and tends to make us die young. I enjoy doing danger-sports. Shrug. I passed my sellby date a few years back. If there is a God, and an afterlife, well, I'll let him decide. I'll be dead and not doing doing much about it by then. As for the church... Shrug. They can excommincate me or call me Christian. If going to church or having respect for the infalibility pronouncements of bishops and archbishops (or popes), is going to have me reborn as a brahmin, or in puragatory, or (shudder) with 70 white virgins (with see-through flesh)... I'd as soon stay out. (Also if there is a 'no dogs' sign.) All I can say is that I try to live by my ideals and my moral code, which are close to what I percieve as base-line Christian philosophy. (the family motto is 'Aim ton Frere') If that was not good enough, well, I was reasonably happy with the way I lived. Could have done better. And I will rage against the dying of light, but I will catch and sing the sun in flight until the last.

So if people want to say merry christmas... It's a prechristian celebration, probably from the dawn of european colonisation that got hijacked. And you can bet it got hijacked dozens of times along the way, and has now been hijacked by the the new religion, shopping. It's a good excuse for a party. To spoil my kids, to let them know how much I love them, to reaffirm bonds in clan.

But always worth remembering (as JethroTull also said) That "Christmas Spirit... is not what you drink. (Smile) Pass the bottle, Santa.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

My vast and unquenchable irritation with religious literalists leaks out again in the season of joy and goodwill :-).

we can argue

Let's not :-). A reasonable discussion is ever so much more enjoyable :-).

Emus on acid? :-) I suspect they're not half as crazy as former-Catholic-default-skeptic-convinced- (mysticist? Is that a word?) -wannabe-writers.

(Embrace insanity! Mad is the new normal!)

Ah, any excuse for a party. Nollaig shona dhuit, a chara.

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

Grin. As Ginger can tell you after many years of seeing my posts on the bar: Argue for me translates as 'debate without heat'. I'm not known to get nasty unless I see someone bullying someone else.

And I refuse to undertake anything (even insanity) to make me normal. Normality is for other people (smile)

I hit my own chrisis of faith in the army, having decided I was an athiest before that (Chruch school effect!) It was very grim at times (I was 17 when I went in). There were times I prayed too. For myself and for and with the kids who were dying. I've also been out in the cold, dark and mist in the mountains looking for a lost kid (about D-J's age, Ginger) I prayed that night (as you say to anyone who was listening) (And I found him, wet, cold, miserable and alive). Some of the praying I did... well, they died. And some did not. It's not that I was answered or not. It was that I asked. And in extremis, I know that I would again again. I'd be a hypocrite to say I was an athiest, wouldn't I?

And being 'crazy' as a "former-Catholic-default-skeptic-convinced- (mysticist? Is that a word?) -wannabe-writers". All that says is you have thought about it and applied your own moral judgements. Good call, IMO. Writers put part of themselves on public display, to be judged -- at least by the perceptive. How can you do that if you are just following prescribed rote? And I have to agree with Ginger, Good manners (and kindness too) win.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Yep, yep - this is his idea of an argument. Quite pleasant, actually. ;-)

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

(grin) on a tangent (forgive me, Hawkwing)Paddy - my oldest boy - came home in about 6th grade and asked B and I to please have a fight. He was DEPRIVED. His class had had a big discussion and out-top each other's stories with tales of family rows, and he was VERY LEFT OUT. And there Barbs and I (and we have argued, and even let it get quite illogical once or twice, although, because we talk to each other such a lot we fill in each other's sentences and don't misunderstand each other as much as some folk) had thought we were moderately good parents in this respect. Grin. Don't think you can win.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Tangents are what we're here for. :-)

In my family, we consider things to be downright odd if we don't have at least one blow-up-screaming-bitter-silences-for-at-least-a-day, ahem, argument, in a year.

(We don't call 'em fights. Fights are what you do with an enemy. This is family.)

And oh, Dave? Go ahead and call me Liz. hawkwing's a reasonable tag, but it's not a name. :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

You can't win, Dave. :-) No matter what you do, there will be something you didn't do. Or didn't do just right. It's ok; if you've succeeded as well as I suspect you have, your boys will one day let you know that.

When DJ first came to live with us, I suddenly realized just how un-original I had been as a child. No wonder they always knew! I was mortified. I called up the parental units and apologized. For everything. They laughed. :-D Now I watch DJ do the same things that each generation has done, and I laugh too. ;-)

Tangents away!

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Ah, Dave..not one for checking those little ticky boxes, are we? ;-)

I was once religious myself, of the mainly Jewish sort of religious, but around the time my grandfather died I had a "crisis of faith" and became more anti-religious. I dislike organized religions of all types.

I may have dabbled slightly in gnosticism (which my mother is), but then settled firmly in existentialism. I don't believe in any supreme being. :-) Be that as it may, I'm still Jewish enough to split hairs (in hebrew, "pilpul") finely, so that while I do not believe in a supreme being, the fact that others do so means that I don't deny the possibility that a supreme being exists -- for other people. In my universe alone, there is nothing but the vast unknowable infinities. I take comfort in knowing that by choosing, and particularly by choosing to impose order upon chaos, I am holding back the inevitable entropy and eventual heat death of the universe. Ever so slightly. ;-)

I still dislike organized religions, as they try very hard to stop you from thinking and instead want you to mindlessly parrot the words they've decided are meaningful. There's people on the Bar that I won't acknowledge again, for their bigotry which is based mindlessly on their religion. [If I'm going to hate someone, it won't be because the bible says so..;-)]

Here's to prechristian holidays and the spirit of the season!

Passing the bottle, Fear Darrig. ;-)

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

Chuckle. No, I don't like to tick boxes (or fit neatly into them) in any sense. Existentialist. Nope. I don't like labels, because that makes the assumption I'd fit in the box with that label. Well... you can label me Fir Darrig (I quite like being the rat-boy) or disreputable monkey. I will accept those cheerfully. And I also have very little time for organised religion (which seems to benifit the organisers, strangely) -- or any other kind of 'uniform' which does away with the need to be responsible for and think about your own ethical and moral decisions. Did you ever read C.S Lewis's LAST BATTLE, in which he rather savages 'organised religion' and makes the point it is how you have lived, not the form of religion you followed that god would judge you on? If there is an omnipotent being, surely he could hardly do anything else? Shrug. I have little trouble in telling the 'good' people from ring-pieces, and it's not the basis of the religion they profess. (I can think of Eric for eg, who is a an athiest, but is more 'christian' in what he does than most 'christian' people I know) It'd be a pretty feeble second rate discount deity who couldn't do a better job than me.

Actually if there is one christian hymn I really like it's that "And the creed and colour and the name won't matter, where you there?" That always seemed a better measure of someone's worth than strict observance of not working on a Sunday.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Boxes are good for shipping things in, and not for holding one's philosophy, eh? ;-)

One of the reasons I dislike organized anything, other than sports, is the responsibility for making decisions goes from your head to someone else -- and thus you don't have to bear the burden of being wrong. "I was just following orders" is not an excuse in my book. Whether it is a priest or an officer, a bureaucrat or an elected official, it's just wrong. "It says so in the bible" is just another version of that. Using labels or uniforms to avoid responsibility is rather contrary to the original intent of the "rules", if you will. People tend to become lazy thinkers and settle into comfortable not-thought if given the slightest chance. It's probably just another version of entropy, come to think of it.

I've known many a good person, regardless of the religion he or she professes. In fact, the better ones (IMHO) are the ones who keep their religions to themselves. My boss, forex, is a deacon in his church; his faith is strong and yet he never talks about religion or the church. He doesn't have any emblem of his faith on his desk or his person, except for his penchance for wearing ties with Noah's Ark on them. We've got some personnel who feel the need to have a bible out on the desk, or biblical quotations displayed prominently around the workspace. Those are the ones for whom it's an outer shell of religiosity, and not a deeper faith. Those are the ones I don't trust. They're not the kind of people who have deeper thoughts either.

Naturally, I've been discussing that with DJ. I can only hope that the seeds I plant will grow into a tree with roots that will push aside all the hypocrisy of organized religion. I've told him that the important bits (to me) are the rules to live by, the ethical considerations being taught however imprecisely. We can make an argument (ok, hawkwing, a reasoned debate) for rules being important to society, both the written and the unwritten rules. We need some sort of framework within which to communicate and with which to formulate expectations of behavior. Otherwise, entropy would win after all.

If DJ were lost in the mountains, though, I know I'd be hoping intensely that someone would find him. One might even think of it as prayer, although I don't direct such thoughts to (or at) any supreme being. Since he is the kind of boy who would easily put himself into that kind of situation, I can only work hard at teaching him how to take care of himself before he gets lost. I can't erase that blithe spirit, so I've got to make sure we keep him on the path to self-sufficiency and hope he eventually learns to think just before he leaps. Some of that's going to involve bruises and other injuries along the way. [He just slid in the snow down our lawn into the front tire (tyre) of the car..luckily, it was the tire, and not something harder. Did we tell him beforehand not to slide there? You bet we did. Will he do it again? Hard to say. He might not slide in that spot again, but he'll slide into something else -- of that, I have no doubt. :-)]

Mother Nature or Life has her ways of telling us to not make this mistake again. I try to pay attention to that. ;-) Older and wiser, eh?

Hey, pass that bottle back here..

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

People tend to become lazy thinkers and settle into comfortable not-thought if given the slightest chance

Oh. Oh. You've just hit exactly the reason I distrust organised religion. It's just so open to manipulation, to being used to encourage people into not-thought.

Not that I think all organised religion does that. I do think, though, that some people abuse the structures of organised religion to do precisely that.

the important bits (to me) are the rules to live by

We could have a reasoned debate on whose version of those rules we should accept... if we wanted to open that can of worms. :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Some people do the manipulation, because others let them. If I don't want to think, and there's Reverend So-and-so over there giving me ideas, then maybe I'll just let him do the thinking for me, eh? And so it begins, but then the laziness spreads and we don't teach the kids to think either, and before you know it, generations have gone by without anyone learning to think. Meanwhile, as Dave mentioned, the ones doing the "thinking" get the power and the money and the nice houses. I think in the end, it all becomes about power, of one sort or another. Power over people, and power over the bureaucracy that is the Church, and power of "god" and so on. Power corrupts the weak and the willing.


What's wrong with worms? Other than the kind you don't want inside you, of course. [Trivial point: when studying internal parasites, do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, dine on pasta. Especially the spaghetti kind.]

"Those rules we should accept" is a good area for debate. I'll propose one, based on what we teach the little ones: "Share nicely". In grownups, that translates to sharing such things as the road, public transportation, taxes, medicines and suchlike. All those areas where we're supposed to think of others as well as ourselves could probably be boiled down to sharing nicely. Whaddaya think?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Sharing nicely is a good rule... But, where do you draw the line between too much sharing and too little? Communist Russia took 'sharing' to violent extremes. At the other end of the scale are oligarchic regimes where there's no sharing, not really. So, where do you draw the line?

(Russia is the most extreme example I can think of. Also, I'm not saying that Russia didn't end up an oligarchy - but it started out with communist ideology)

/devil's advocate.

I propose 'Do unto others as you'd want them to do unto you' as a semantic refinement of your proposal :-).

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Hm. In communist Russia (the Soviet Union, tovarisch! Spasibo.), the sharing was imposed from without, and there was no "ownership" allowed. Without ownership, you lose responsibility. Without responsibility, it becomes someone else's problem and "I'll just use this without any regard for whomever else might need it", which becomes not-good sharing. IMHO.

But you have a good point. When we simplify the rules too much, they become more malleable. Exploitable.

The Golden Rule, in its many forms. The problem with this --well, there's two: one, that you have a difference of opinion on what should be done (i.e., I'm a masochist..)
and two, the unscrupulous will exploit this as they have for centuries. It gets twisted into "Do unto others, then split".

Back to you, o advocate diabolique.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, oh dear... This discussion really needs a post all to its own.

I'll get back to you. Eventually. I think. :-)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Nyet problema, malchick. (Keeping on with Russian theme)

I can post somewhat of my own, after all. I do have an LJ somewhere around here.