Thoughts for the season, and all that
Dec. 21st, 2005 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbI 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?
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?
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Date: 2005-12-22 01:39 am (UTC)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. :-)