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divination faith religion streetfinds walking

No Really, The Answers Aren’t Down There

I’ve been on a strong atheistic kick lately. I’ve really lost most of my patience for my impulsive defensiveness about this too. I’m here now and pretty happy.

I got caught on a funny loop on a walk the other day. Being wholly atheistic makes me love people more. People are mostly theistic. I become more tolerant of religions thereby. But wait, if I care about people I should care that they believe in the truth. That last step is escaping me no matter how many frothy, militant atheists I listen to, but it is a conclusion I take, but not to heart.

Confused, I look down and saw this. It’s hardly dropped from heaven, or satori, or whatever, as there’s a temple across the street that has been the source of fantastic litter in the past. Nonetheless, my own absurd religion caused me to contemplate its possible meaning for an hour or so.

Categories
faith family personal

I Now Know Five Things

I used to know four things.

I mean really, really, know, for certain, in a shut-up-you-can’t-tell-me-otherwise. Because it’s important to feel this way about something, and dangerous to feel this way about the wrong things, I revisit the List of Things I Believe often. This time, I made a dramatic addition to the list while my son fell asleep on me. I’d like to make this into a “you know, my son taught me something today” type of tear-jerker, but it can’t be. My son was falling asleep on me, in the same rocking chair in which my mother rocked me to sleep, and I was thinking about cold certainty.

The list used to be:

  1. I am.
  2. I sense.
  3. I want.
  4. I don’t always sense what I want.

I’ve always been uneasy about that last one. It assumes something, and perhaps a great deal, about time. The last bit doesn’t count at all when I’m completely satisfied. But HA!, I don’t care about the list when I’m completely satisfied anyway, so it doesn’t matter. I’ve come up with other cheap tricks to get around that uneasiness, but nothing’s stuck for long. Here’s the next trick.

  1. I am.
  2. I sense.
  3. I want.
  4. Now is a moment different from others I can remember or imagine.
  5. At different moments my sensations correlate with my desires to different degrees.
  6. I need to work on the wording quite a bit, but that’s the list for now. In the end, this list gets me to a point where I can guess that other things exist. Why I would bother with this while a warm bundle is spreading a drool spot on my shoulder is another issue entirely.