Twenty years ago this week, I scribbled on the 25th page of my journal:
"I've been thinking a lot about God lately. I don't really feel that God is there. What does 'believe' literally mean? What am I supposed to feel?"
1450-plus pages and two decades later, I'm at exactly that same square on the gameboard.
Insanity, they say, is repeatedly doing the same thing and hoping for different results.
I guess that says exactly what's wrong with me. I'm obviously insane.
Perhaps I just need a calming pinprick, ala Pink Floyd.
"That'll keep you going for the show, cmon, it's time to go."
If religion were just something weird, obscure and apparently unimportant, like sleeping in an oxygen chamber to stay young or insisting that salamanders have the power to pass through fire unharmed, I could let it alone, let it drift away like my childhood beliefs in Santa Claus.
But it is a Very Big Thing, important enough to motivate millions of people.
If only wild-haired people with obvious mental disorders, or rural villagers with most of their teeth missing, took it seriously, I might be able to dismiss it.
But sane, rational, intelligent people, including some close friends of mine, are on record with clear descriptions of their spiritual experiences.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The definition of insanity
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3 comments:
Life is a journey. Sometimes we end up going over the same familiar paths. Sometimes we take new ones only to discover that we have gone the wrong way. Sometime we just coast with ease.
I think that spirituality is something that some people don’t even explore. If you chose to, I think that you will find the road full of back roads, pit stops, obstacles, and construction sites. But don’t worry life is about the journey not the destination.
Oh my eastcoastdweller, don’t get me started on this subject again! Why do your posts often come back to this lingering question of yours about God? No one can give you the answer my Friend, this you know. Perhaps, it is either in you or it is not. Not everyone likes pumpkin pies nor care to know the ingredients or whence the seeds developed from. Yet here you are persistently trying to dissect the essence. Is this any harder to understand than life itself? For surely not only God and various religions have not been the only cores of civilization. Art in visual form or poetic or music has served as a foundation for society for eons. However; this is not to everyone’s desire. Education remains the ultimate organized phenomena ever. In fact; laws have been enacted to guarantee the assiduous existence of basic education in society. While numerous other institutions thrive to further enhance learning. However; not everyone is climbing up the scholarship ladder. So my Friend, let those you know and others believe what they will and why they want to. Let all pick from their own pumpkin patch and carve their pumpkin according to their liken. Or if some rather shake a banana tree, let them. For surely, any true answers one seeks will not be found in books or by follow the pack… as these are meant as guides not absolutes. So perhaps all one really needs to do is merely look inside their own self. But does anyone truly dare to do such?
If I keep going back over this subject, it's because it's very important to me.
Some people never have a crisis of faith. I'm happy for them.
Other people have no desire to believe. They've managed to find meaning in a god-free life. I don't understand that. I do have the desire to believe, because I can't see any meaning in life if we're just accidental animals on a galactic dustball, eating, sleeping,reproducing, aging and then closing our eyes into oblivion.
Trying to coast along and hope for faith to take root hasn't worked for me. Seeking a confirmatory spiritual experience hasn't worked either.
So what recourse do I have but to try to "analyze the pumpkin seeds," as it were, to find my way back via logic? Lewis seems to have done so and that's why I've been reading him.
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