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?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-25 08:20 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 09:41 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 07:34 pm (UTC)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. :-)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 04:02 am (UTC)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!