The Fork In The Road

My mother died recently. It became clear to me during this time that God held my heart in His hand and that He was with me, would be with me, throughout. I knew this in a way that is difficult to articulate, this "knowing" not of words, but of heart.

It made me think about my commitment to Christ. He was there to comfort me, protect me, and I had so often shied away from acknowledging Him to family and friends.

Most of my family and friends are not just "non-believers", but are actually hostile to Christianity. So it's one of those areas where we just "skirt" around the topic.

I couldn't quite do that this time. It was like a marriage, a unity, if you will, with Christ. He was protecting me, and I wanted to acknowledge and defend Him for that.

It was a watershed incident in many ways. It was a willingness to relinquish even family connections to acknowledge that Christ is real..... the metaphysical, metaphorical implications transcend the empirical world.

It was good. My heart is at peace. It became so distilled, so crystallized to me, Christ. A dream I had a few years ago began to take on new dimensions for me.

---Original Message-----
From: K Meyer
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 1:00 PM
To:
Subject: I forgot to tell you...

I forgot to tell you.

God visited me in my dreams last night. Transparent, disembodied, just a presence. I was standing on a hill, overlooking a chasm to the other side… and I thought, I want to get to the other side, even if it means trying to jump across knowing my chances are slim of making it. It was a brown hill, a California hill in summer like many of those we have hiked. In my dream, I decided to just do it…. To just jump and take whatever consequence came, for it was better than standing there in indecision. I could feel myself falling, could see the ground coming up and suspected I had not enough momentum to reach the other side, when I felt myself slowing down…. Felt my landing on the valley floor being buffeted to one that may leave me shaken, but generally unharmed. In my dream, I knew it was God who was protecting that fall, who slowed the descent. And when the danger had passed, I stood up and brushed myself off, looking around. He was gone. Injured, I was not certain I could make it out of the valley, for the paths ascended steeply, winding and twisting, and you know how I am about that. It was then I quickly chided myself, for who was I to question my own strengths and ability when He was watching and protecting. Even in my sleep.

It was a comforting dream. I try to hang onto that dream. I need to remember it. He came to me in my sleep.

I came to understand that climbing to the heights, walking those paths to the higher life, that at the root of it all lay a trust and belief in Christ, and the nurturing, safe valley floor has become to me a symbol of my church.

It's as my son said, which so few outside the Christian faith can understand. It's not that God asks you to give up and forfeit a way of life, or ideas, or sacrifice anyththing for Him. Simply, doing those things becomes the desire of your heart, an act of reciprocity, that we freely and joyfully choose to pursue.

The Atheist Emails

I'm beginning to think maybe I should rename this blog to the ATHEISTS ARCHIVES. 

 I've never been a Bible thumper or otherwise approached the subject with anyone uninvited. It's always been very personal. Recently, however, it seems that too often when I say something, it risks being dismissed as the result of my "affiliation" with a church. And by "say something" I mean say something entirely unrelated to religion. It could be politics, it could be about pornography, vulgar and crude language (yes, which I myself am guilty of, but at least I RECOGNIZE it for what it is), anything. If someone disagrees with me AND knows I attend church, my opinion is likely to be dismissed due to the latter. So with that in mind, I'd like to share a recent exchange of letters between me and an acquaintence. I'd like to emphasize that this is not the sole instance, but only the most recent. I chose it because it is also the most in-depth, representing what I feel to be the common objections to religion by the secular world.

It all started with a picture sent to me, of some handsome guy from an on-line dating service. An acquaintence corresponded with him and was about to meet him, then noticed that he was "Christian" and forwarded it on to me. 

 What follows is our exchange, somewhat redacted to protect the identity of individuals and places in an effort not to embarrass anyone. But I think it important for others to see and understand how a simple exchange came to turn on the singular point of religion.

THE EXCHANGE: My responses are in RED, my friends original statements in BLUE.

---- Original Message -----

Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 12:54 PM
Subject: too damn good to be true...damnit....

He's a &^%$#(*& Christian.....We were about to have lunch next week......NOT NOW....sonofa.....
6'6" tall and eyes/smile like that????!!!! Why can't I just pretend to believe!!!!??????

His name is xxxxx. You're single and of similar belief....go for it and tell me how he was....

At 06:28 PM 2/3/2006, you wrote:http://www.doesgodexist.org/AboutClayton/PastLife.html

You don't have to pretend. You don't have to believe. You just have to have an open mind. BTW, the above link is an article by a guy who owns a $27 million dollar construction company. It's posted on his website. He's featured in this months Fortune magazine. So, let me know how your date goes. :)

----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 7:17 PM
Subject: Re: too damn good to be true...damnit....

And furthermore....he's so ignorant that he purports there is only Christianity or Atheism.....nothing else. How closed-minded is that? How does he explain the millions who came before Christianity? Ancient civilizations? Other religions, past and present? He is SOOOO TYPICAL!!!

At 07:41 PM 2/3/2006, I wrote:Well, it's nice to know if he couldn't get your blood pumpin, I could... :)
Maybe something a bit more mild:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/vitz.txt

I love you too! Maybe we should meet him together..... I understand some guys like watchin girl fights??!?!?!?

----- Original Message ----
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 7:57 PM
Subject: Re: too damn good to be true...damnit....


Where do you get this stuff???


Well, so now you're saying I'm arrogant, intelligent, and from a non-existent dad. Correct on all accounts. But those were true at age 22 when I was a Christian...so.....


I think this article was amusing at best....weak, but amusing. I think the guy should spend more time figuring out why he flopped back and forth himself...spend a little more time ON the couch instead of beside it....


Can you find something similar in which someone tries to explain why people are theists????

At 08:39 PM 2/3/2006, I wrote:

You need only knock, and the door shall be opened...... :)))))))

Thesists - Biblically - Romans 2:15
Psychologically - Carl Jung
Scientifically --hmmm... Maybe some Einstein?

You've actually made me laugh :0

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 8:57 PM
Subject: don't waste surfing time

I finally had a chance to look over these and they do nothing to convince me of anything. I'm looking for a neurological, pysiological, or psychological (scientific) explanation for why human beings are theists. You can't quote the bible to prove ANYTHING!!! That's like me whipping out a book on Roman mythology and making a rational argument...????

At 11:30 PM 2/11/2006, I wrote:

You'll have to ask God. Strictly speaking, I can't prove even you exist, or other minds exist. Strictly speaking, science cannot prove anything either. It only documents what is, discovers what already exists, but does not even pretend to answer the why of existence.

But, nonetheless Grasshopper, let me try to point you on the path:

http://www.reasons.org/resources/fff/

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1324/

Ahhh.... Grasshopper, can you prove to me that love exists.... can you show me evidence from neuropsychology, physiology, or psychology what beauty is? Do you doubt it's existence because it cannot be proven by scientific methods? Can science say why one person should risk their life to save another, even a stranger?

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, things not seen. Physics is about probability, not certainty.

The power of belief, as documented by psychology, has profound effects. People who are told they are given hallucinogenics, in fact hallucinate, even given a placebo. People who are told they have been burned, blister. That is the power of belief. So, perhaps God does exist for those who believe, and will not for those that don't. Perhaps our projections become our reality, as demonstrated in these small, but significant studies. Pain, so acute and stored in as a chemical memory, can be felt in an amputed limb. Can science answer why this should be so?

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2006 8:29 AM
Subject: Re: don't waste surfing time

Exactly. The mind is a powerful thing. My brother speaks in "tongues" not because god exists and gifts him this...but because he works himself up into a tizzy. God "exists" for those who need it because they THINK he does...but that doesn't mean that when they die, a "soul" goes anywhere. It doesn't mean they're more than just atoms and energy that get recycled. Science is about reality as best we can perceive it. We just don't know all there is to know yet. Things people used to attribute to god or mysticism or the devil or whatever, have now been explained by science (think medicine, etc.). There are answers coming to all the rest you have listed below. Science can prove plenty, and they're working on the rest. As long as we hold onto archaic beliefs, progress continues at a slower pace. One of the things I hate most about religious people is how they hamper things like stem-cell research, etc. We'd have gotten a lot farther, a lot faster, without the crusades, the dark ages, etc. Religion has played a major part in the destruction of societies and progress. Look at these stupid Muslim cartoons now! We have to argue over respecting a religion because people get so easily offended. It's just so damn ignorant....all of it.

Have fun at church this morning and don't say a prayer for me! xoxoxox

At 10:38 AM 2/12/2006, I wrote:

I think you speak of religion at a most fundamental level, never getting past the outer skin of the onion. You are using a broad brush to paint all "religious" people into one corner. I'm religious, yet I'm democratic and support most of their positions. So I am a personal, empirical negation of how you want to paint all persons of religious faith. And there are others like me. To confuse the religious right with Christianity is precisely what Christ addressed. "many worship me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from me." Throwing off the oppressor at the risk of all is the story and history of Judaism. Doing so without throwing the baby out with the bath water is the story of Christ. The story is not restricted to 2000 years ago. It plays itself out in every generation.

It's a bit like me saying all those people who are atheists are communists, because communism was state adopted atheism. That politics sometimes hijacks religion to further it's ends does not invalidate religion as a practice. More persons in the world have been killed by totalitarian, fascist states where religion was abolished. Hitler killed 11-16 million Stalin is estimated to have killed 40 million. Mao Tse tung 72 million. So communists alone, who are atheist by constitution, have killed over 130 million. During the Crusades, somewhere around 30,000 people were killed. Fear, not religion, motivates most of the behaviors you talk about. Fear also drives people to religion, of course, as well as other coping mechanisms.... alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, intellectualism. Fear is one motivator for many things, as is power and greed. It drives people to adopt many different practices as coping mechanisms. But certianly not every ONE who drinks is a drunk, fearfull, or greedy. Certainly not every ONE who pursues education does so in a headlong rush from the inherent ambiguity of life. It has been those societies that allow the practice of religion that have advanced more ethical treatment of fellow humans, not the absence of it.

Anyway, I'm off to church. Don't worry about the prayer thing. It's up to God Himself to work upon your heart, not me, dear friend.

Xoxoxoxo

The next email contains both comment sent to me (Blue) and my responses (Red) sent back as part of the original text.

At 11:05 PM 2/12/2006, you wrote:
----- Original Message -----

Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2006 6:09 PM
Subject: Re: don't waste surfing time

Religion isn't the cause of everything evil or good. (Religion does not make the claim that it is the cause of evil or good). It's just simply mythology in my opinion.(All belief systems are mythology, even science, which BTW, every major discovery was an accident, and not intended. What was revealed is almost always, without exception, an unintended byproduct of what was originally sought) which I have no problem with....until we start making laws and punishments and policies based on it. (I don't know that this has been done. The separation of church and state has been fairly well maintained, despite this administration). That's when I have a problem with it. It's treated as sacred. To me, that's like taking the people who believe in the healing power of crystals in Sedona, Az and putting them in charge. Wack jobs. I do not believe churches or anything religious should be tax exempt. (Should non profits be tax exempt? Should any entity be tax exempt. What is the criteria for deciding. Religion is tax exempt, I believe, as are all non-profits, secular included. That is a judicial decision, not a religious one. and which belief systems would you tax?). There is no basis for it if you believe it's just a club of like-minded thinkers. Except it's a club that happens to rake in a lot of goddamn dough, then uses it to lobby politicians to screw up society. (Again, that religion, like any other organization, can be hijacked for political purposes, does not in and of itself negate it. All that says to me is that individuals, like Karl Rove, capitalize on it and manipulate it. I don't see it so much as religious entitities lobbying and winning over politicians, so much as politicians exploiting deeply held beliefs).

Everything good that religion "causes" can be done without religion. It does not take a belief in a god or a prophet to make people be kind to one another or do right by one another. A book of words is not needed for people to live an ethical life. (So then you subscribe to man as an inherently moral being? And the instances of immorality are what, an abberation? Christ himself made this claim when attacking the pharisees.... Mat 23:25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Our constitution, which does mediate and attempt to legislate morality, is nothing more than mere words. Atheism, the denouncement that there is a God, is mere words. Which BTW, I find curious in itself. To deny the existence of a God, you first have to formulate and propose its existence and what constitutes it, then determine that that is improbable or impossible, effectively negating your very own thoughts about a subject. In effect, what you are saying is this: "my thoughts are insufficient in understanding and comprehending the God you understand. Therefore, it does not exist." My thoughts and conceptions about God, or mythology in your world, is significantly different and more metaphysical and transcendental than words on a paper. That's like saying numbers on a paper have no real world correlate. Numbers are a mapping system, as are words. It's the best we have, albeit imperfect, to describe reality and abstractions. Non linear equations describe a world in terms that very few understand. That doesn't mean the mathematical mapping is inadequate in describing it. It means only that I may be inadequate in understanding it because I have never developed the tools to do so.

Atheism and communism are separate philosophies. (Whever you have communism, there is a concomitant endorsement/adoption of atheism. There is no Christianity or other form of religion."

My argument wasn't to lump all religious people into one group and accuse them of everything. My point was that it's a way of thinking that can interfere with progress. (It's a way of thinking peculiar to a subset of those practicing religion).

Besides quoting the bible or claiming faith....have you asked yourself why you use/need/believe in god, jesus, religion on the whole? If so, do you ask yourself about the millions who lived before you? Before Christ? The prehistoric human-like ancestors? The dinosaurs? The people today who happen to be following a different god or savior just because they were born on the other side of the planet? Christianity, like all other religions and mythologies, was dreamed up by men for certain purposes (power, fear, explaining natural phenomenon) at a specific point in time, that over time, became larger than life. Do you know that Mormonism was created in the early 1900's by a guy in Pennsylvania who was a scheister slick enough to sucker followers? Now it's a major religion all over the world. Recruitment. Hitler recruited. Religions recruit. Hell, Cxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx recruits. Tell me that's not dangerous......?????

(Txxxxxxx, at 52, educated magna cum laude in Philosophy/Psychology, do you really believe I have not asked these questions?

I grew up near Palmyra NY, where the Mormon Pageant is held at Hill Cumorah. I've studied Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, read physics, Quantum Reality, Heidinger, Shroeder, Keirkegard, Neitzche, Russell, Richard Fenyman, to name but a few. The Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, by the German philosopher Immanual Kant, is frequently a semester long study in Philosophy. It was Immanual Kant that was a turning point in my life, and in particular that specific treatise. My quest has been a lifelong endeavor. Colleges recruit, political parties recruit, religions recruit, drunks recruit, drug users recruit, pornographers recruit, cigarette companies recruit, Bill Gates recruits, everyone wants to be a member of "like minded" groups to some degree or another. Everyone loves a convert and everyone takes encouragement in having their belief system validated, be it religious or secular. Recruitment does not render a belief system invalid in and of itself. Think of it this way. You have a student who has failed math, or is near failing math, or believes they can't learn math because they have consistently had ineffective instructors, or instructors who could not see the obstacles they see, and the student feels that math is useless, ineffective garbage that no one, except mathameticians understand or find usefull. It's just a mythology these people use to describe and quantify objects in the world, but it really doesn't matter because in the end, we are born, we die, and mathematics can't tell us what all the inbetween stuff means. Certainly those prehistoric tribes you mentioned navigated their world without it. The danger is that one becomes so embedded in their own belief system, that they can no longer see that the other persons belief system has validity as well. That's as true of Atheism as it is of the religious right. The risk is that both become blinded by strict adherence to their own ideology. And Cxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, interestingly enough, does very little to recruit. That's the phenomena. It doesn't have to. It draws people to itself. I've attended for 4 years. No one's knocked on my door. I don't get flyers in the mail. There is no sermon that is directed at anything other than what kind of person you personally are and what is your relationship to Christ. It's more instructional, not indoctrinal. And believe, I would know, I am sensitive to that. Extremely sensitive to that. I've been out there on my own one very very very long time, without ever relinquishing or deferring to anyone or substituting one persons belief for my own.

I had god "in my heart" from kindergarten through college. I sought it all. I always found the same thing. And what, may I ask, enduring truth have you found in the secular world that is so comforting? Are there no hypocrites in the secular world? Do they not have lobbyists which contaminate the system for their own end? Does not their self interest get legislated into existence with pork barrell laws? The things you describe permeate both the secular and religious worlds and are not the exclusive domain of one or the other. It says only that some individuals will exploit, but whatever means they can, whatever sources they can, to gain their own end.

Oh Grasshopper, do not be like the student who condemns higher education because all his public school experience was left him wanting. Look beyond the teachers to the subject itself.

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 1:33 AM
Subject: Re: don't waste surfing time

If you can think this clearly and argue this adamantly, then I am even more puzzled why/how you can be caught up in a religion or believe in christ. Why not Muhammad?

I do not long for comfort in any world...secular or otherwise. I don't need a deeper meaning like that. Things are what they are...here...now. I'm very pragmatic and existential. I don't give a shit whether scientific findings are accidental or intended....the fact of the matter is drugs heal, genomes are being mapped, planets are being landed on, computers work, bridges stay up, volcanic eruptions can be predicted, industrial materials get improved, infertile couples can have babies, etc... Greeks believed all kinds of foolishness and Zeus never made the sick well. If you can equate science to mythology....there's no point in continuing these emails.

I think man is both innately good and bad....he has the capacity for both to varying degrees. Nurture, nature, exposure to chemicals, stress....many things incorporate to make a person who he is. We're just now starting to gain insight into the field of personalities. "God given talent or tits" will someday be easily explained through a combination of neurological and genetic factors. It's coming.

I've never been more recruited by anything in my life than by Christians. I've never had an athiest seek my fellowship....nor do I see an atheistic building or church on every goddamn corner of every goddamn city. A form of separation of church and state has existed for us for a couple hundred years...but look back further.....and look at the rest of the planet. (When I speak of my beliefs...I speak globally and historically. I'm not just talking about America now. We're a mere drop in a vast bucket.) We have to swear on a fucking bible in court for crying out loud. Our money mentions god. Our songs and pledges involve god. Funerals and weddings involve god. It's everywhere, and I'd prefer a lot more separation, thanks. Recruitment does not render a belief system invalid in and of itself. I never made this point. My point was that group-think is dangerous. Religious recruitment isn't about altruism, saving souls, and gaining soldiers for jesus...it's about validating the group and increasing its power and influence (not to mention its wallet).

No, no entities should be tax exempt unless there's a good argument. I'd have to hear the argument so don't ask. I'm not sure on the criteria. If churches are allowed to be tax free, why not my business? What's the church's claim for tax-exempt status?

Has religion been hijacked for political purposes, or have politics been hijacked for religious purposes? I guess I perceive the problem much differently than you.

Of course the abuse of deeply held beliefs does not negate religion. The nature of religion itself negates it. Nobody has to abuse it for me to think it's irrational, unnecessary, and ultimately dangerous. It serves no purpose that cannot be dealt with in a more healthy, effective, tangible way. If it were thought of as an experience, like say a musical concert, purely for enjoyment and stimulation, then ok. But it is given more credibility than that....and I object completely. It should not be considered sacred. It is given way too much credibility.

Kxxxxxx...don't quote the bible to me to argue a point. I heard a speaker once say that arguing with a christian is a futile endeavor....they'll continue to quote the bible to support their points. As long as you give that stupid book the credibility you give it, I cannot get through to you. I'm trying to argue that jesus was just a man....and you're trying to tell me that he knew something about me as a non-believer??? Where can we go with this? Nowhere. It's pointless. Why aren't you telling me what Nostradamus thought of me...or Muhammad...or whatever gods the American Indians or Egyptians or the Australian Pygmies believe(d) in???? I'm sure I am/was abominable to them too. =) I guess you just got lucky and were born in the right place at the right time and got to be filled with the glory of jesus...while so many millions of other bastards didn't.

If you're claiming that I'm contradicting myself by having to own the concept of a god before disavowing it....hogwash. I wouldn't have bothered with such rubbish but it was poured into my head as a child. I remember life before Sunday school. I liked birds and trees and blue skies and toys and puppies and mud puddles. I knew how to love & be loved. I knew how to share, be fair, not hurt, empathize, give. I never worried about a creator or savior. I was INDOCTRINATED that one/they exist and that I was to spend the rest of my life thanking them, praising them, apologizing for being the human animal that I am, striving to be something unachievable, etc. I've just had the great fortune of deprogramming myself and undoing the wrong that was done to me back then. Shame on the adults for filling my head with illogical, impractical, destructive ideas. These concepts warped my thinking and psyche. School never did.

In effect, what you are saying is this: "my thoughts are insufficient in understanding and comprehending the God you understand. Therefore, it does not exist." Oversimplified and completely incorrect. I completely understand the side that believes. Now I understand the side that doesn't have to. Most people are too afraid to contemplate the latter. You forget that I was just like you about 13 years ago. I think you assume that I was raised in some kind of atheistic, rational, scientific household. It was nothing of the sort! I wish I had been, though!

Atheism and communism are separate philosophies. (Whever you have communism, there is a concomitant endorsement/adoption of atheism. There is no Christianity or other form of religion." Again, they're separate philosophies. They may appear in conjunction, but they do not correlate. Communism is a totally different topic and extremely complex. I won't even get into this.....

If you're so well read and studied, is it purely coincidental that you've adopted, endorsed, settled with the religion of white America that I venture to guess was the religion of your family (to some degree)?? Is the bible THAT superior to other ways of thinking that it beat out all others? So vastly superior to other religions? To other texts? Why not Buddhism? Taoism? Wicca? Voodoo? Your education of other philosophies didn't stir up questions that made christianity or religion in general taste bad?

Wait....let me get this straight...Cxxxxxxxxxxxx has gone from an obscure group that I never heard of 10 years ago....to owning a gigantic former soccer building....all by simply DRAWING people to it by some unexplained force (not recruitment)? It must be the TRUE church then...because all the other religions in the US are struggling with declining attendance, according to recent news reports. How lucky we are here in Lxxxxxxxxxxxx!!! I can stop losing sleep at night that a dirty bomb will go off near our national research lab by one of those filthy terrorists because this is one super blessed community! Hey, wait....why hasn't it drawn me? Why haven't I felt the pull? I'm up near 580 daily! Or does it only exert its force on the weaker....er, I mean.....more open-minded residents? I used to tell my ex boyfriend that he'd burn in hell because the bible says he has a hardened heart...blah blah blah....I was dumb and 22.....and now I've got the hardened heart.....so I guess I won't get to ride on that rollercoaster in the sky on the day of judgment. Oh what a bummer.

And what, may I ask, enduring truth have you found in the secular world that is so comforting? I'll be happy to answer this when I've found a secular world in which to live. I'm still hoping...looking...but I can't find it. I hear France or other parts of Europe might be more inline with my philosophical outlook. I'm holding out for something more tropical. Maybe a space colony. And if/when I find this place...I am not naive enough to expect utopia. All the shitty things about religious opportunists will exist in secular land....but at least I'll be able to have rational, intelligent arguments with people without offending their sense of god, and they won't restrict my life for reasons that are quoted in the bible or chalk things up to god's will. They'll think assisted suicide and stem cell research and gay pride and abortion and a woman's right to choose make sense. They'll think Sundays are for sleeping in, eating, and humping the one you can't get enough of. They'll think kids should study harder to become artists, scientists, social workers. They'll think all races and creeds are beautiful and they won't hate you because you think your god is truer than theirs. They may hate you for other reasons, but that's tolerable.

I know you love to argue. I just want you to know that I don't expect you to see what I'm talking about at all. If you did, you wouldn't be...couldn't be...a christian. So there's no point in this. If it makes you smile...makes you think....ok good. If it won't interfere with our friendship...ok good. If it doesn't keep you from all that stuff you should be doing....ok good. I will never go back to that (your) kind of thinking....ever....unless I suffer a head trauma. Then there's no telling what I'll do. I've lived on both sides and choose this one, for what I consider to be damn good reasons. I want others to think about why they're on the side they're on. Most have reasons they'll never come close to knowing (or admitting) even exist. Psychotherapy will take people places they cannot fathom. Very few will dare venture into their psyches that deeply. I've done it for over a decade...weekly....faithfully. I owe it to myself to know who I am.

I will never know what it's like to be pregnant until I live through it. Psychotherapy and atheism are the same way. I know deeply of what I speak. You have to know what it is you're rejecting before you can really reject it. You and I cannot discuss pregnancy because you've lived with and without it. I've only lived without it. You and I will never really be able to discuss atheism until you've lived...really lived...on this side. My rejection of your religion is not a rejection of you.

If I remember correctly....this whole thing got started NOT by me asking the question "does god or religion exist"....but by me asking the question "are there scientific reasons given for why people are believers"?????

You are a gem, farmer lover woman sister girl. I can only imagine what you'd be like without religion in your brain.

At 12:52 PM 2/13/2006, I wrote:

So let me get this right. My addressing your questions is labeled as arrogance, met with a vitriolic evaluation of Christianity, sarcasm about "weak minded" people being drawn to religion, although it was not I who approached the subject, but you? Then I'm told only people suffering from head trauma could consider adopting such a ridiculous belief system. You tell me you want others to think about the side they are on, the underlying assumption being that they have not, or if they had, the only "correct" conclusion to reach is your conclusion. If they have not reached your conclusion, that is all the evidence you need that they have not plumbed the depths of their soul, excuse me, mind, and should consider psychotherapy to take them there. Hmmmm.... OK.
To correct some assumptions: I was not raised in a religious family at all. I never attended church (except for a very brief time when I was around 7 years old). My father and mother stayed together until he died at age 69. They did not attend church. My sister is an atheist. My brother is more metaphysical, believing in panspermia perhaps more than anything. My great uncle studied for the ministry, but became an attorney instead. My grandmother smoked pot with the artists in Greenwhich village, and preferred life as a single mother in the 20's, becoming a nurse and never remarried after divorce, also unheard of in the 20's. My grandparents on the other side were traditional, but poor, and grandpa an alcoholic who beat the kids. I was, and am, a very free spirited person, never buying into any type of group think. Like you, I searched many paths for many years. That I should settle on this one, who knows why one answer should resonate with the heart more than any other? Maybe science will someday tell us, but I doubt it. I am not a reductionist by nature. So, you see, my upbringing and surroundings were very eclectic in nature. I have made no assumptions regarding your upbringing, nor did it factor into anything I said.
Regarding Cxxxxxxxxxxx, perhaps it is a bit like the pregnancy analogy you have drawn in your last email. You have assigned all types of motivations, heaped assessments upon it, lumped it in with your personal experience of religion, yet have never even been there. And you can't be drawn to anything when you are busy running from something else, you can't go places you have erected barriers to, no matter that those barriers at one time served a purpose and no longer do. Regarding having a Godless society, as I said, that desire has been instituted and practiced in every communist and totalitarian state, historically. It has not proven to be the panacea to all the shortcomings human societies suffer from. I don't know how you institute a Godless society in a Democracy and still call it a Democracy. I personally do not want to live in a theocracy any more than I want to live in a strictly mechanistic, reductionist society based on materialilsm, empiricism, hedonism. Hate, envy, ego, jealousy, greed, hypocrisy, abounds and proliferates in the field of science as well, and the answers science produces are also colored by those things, colored by the secular worlds quest for profit and power. Ask any researcher who has to compete for grant money, or buries data that does not support the goal of the funding entity.
I quote the Bible not to argue the point, but to demonstrate that the subject was already covered and conceived of prior to our discussion of it, and by the source you vilify. The arguments you raise are not new. Archeologists, be they Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Bantu, Kwanzaa, use the Bible and its history when determining location of sites to dig. It is a historical book, as well as a spiritual one, and the accuracy of its historicity is unchallenged. There is much psychology within it's covers. I am reminded of people who watch Silence of the Lambs, can't get beyond the cannibalism, think the movie is about cannibalism, and miss the larger story line of power, domination, freedom within constraints, exploitation and manipulation.
And the whole thing started, as I recall, because you wanted to date a guy until he listed his religion as Christian. Not even a practicing Christian. Just Christian. Then he was immediately dropped, with some denigrating remarks about Christians. Let me pose the same question to you. Would you dismiss someone because he professed to be a Muslim? A Jew? A Buddhist? Are you restricting yourself to dating only atheists? Can you have only atheists for friends? For by restricting yourself to only that, are you not subjecting yourself to the very groupthink you are also claiming to avoid? The groupthink of like minded people?
I have read the works of Jean Paul Sartre, the "founder" of existentialism, as well as Simone de Beauvoir, his mistress. Or more accurately, I have read translations of their works. While certain aspects of the existentialist movement resonate with me and certain concepts I can embrace, it is not the philosophy I've chosen to adopt and live my life by. It leaves me wanting. I have atheist friends and family members, I am friends with a Jewish psychologist, I have Christian friends, I have agnostic friends. And I am a great admirer of Carl Jung, the Swiss Psychotherapist whose tombstone reads "Bidden or not bidden, God is present". I attend a church that does not, by my estimation, focus on indoctrination. Without exception, it is my atheist friends who go bonkers. They are the polarized version of the religious right. I can conceive that there is no God. It's just not what I believe. You asked for proof. I can't provide you the proof you want, any more than you can prove there is no God. I can't condense a lifetime of experience, of reading physics, philosophy, psychology, the Bible, and yes, the Mormon Bible, and Buddhism, living and talking with people from all walks of life, from devout, to convicted felons, to drunks, to politicians, to believers, to non believers and offer it up in a Readers Digest Condensed version that can be assimilated in 20 minutes, nor would it be offered up to convince you of anything.
We will just have to agree to disagree. My experience of religion has not been nearly as negative as yours, nor my experience of science as positive. It's not about how other people practice it, pursue, adopt it, or present it. It really is between me and my inner voice. Your convictions are no more deeply felt than my own, your path no better explored than my own. That we have chosen different ones is done so for purely subjective, not objective, reasons. And if you ever do have a pregnancy, I hope you do talk to your husband about it, despite the fact that he will never personally experience it!
You're in the same boat as my little sister, I'm in a different boat, but we're all floating in the same sea. Sometimes the boats bump each other, sometimes they crash into each other, and sometimes, they just float side by side. Maybe if one boat sinks, we climb into another. Or maybe we learn to swim, to tread water. Maybe we grow gills and don't need a boat. Just don't think your boat is the only one on the ocean. And remember, mine’s got the guy who can walk on water.
Ok woman....let's just quit. My boat is not the only boat afloat, and I have no desire to sink anyone else's. All I want is to have the freedom to reject a christian or any other religious man for THAT REASON and not be called closed or narrow-minded. I don't question other people's reasons for going out (or not) with someone. If you were rejecting an atheist date, I'd totally understand. It's about compatibility. I'm not missing out on anything by not dating this man. I know what I respect. I tolerate all levels of intelligence and all types of beliefs because I have no choice, plain and simple. Some differences I revel in, others I can hardly stomach. People can believe in whatever the hell they want to as long as they don't force it on me. In America we do not live-and-let-live because some self-righteous people keep sticking their noses in other people's business. I believe in letting people do whatever the hell they want as long as they're not hurting anyone else. By hurting, I don't mean offending. If a person gets offended, that's their problem. My decision to abort is not hurting anyone else. My decision to sleep with men or women, or reject a god isn't hurting anyone else. I have not been to your particular church...but I've been to many others over the years and they all do the same thing....they tell you how to think, how to live, what to believe, what to support, what is good/bad or right/wrong, where to spend your money, etc. I call that groupthink. Call it what you will.

You're lucky to have had such an eclectic upbringing. I guess that's partly why you're the crazy broad you are. =)

FOOTNOTE: I did subsequently provide a 37 page article, by a neuroscientist, about why people are born theists. I don't know if she ever read it or not, but God put it in my hands to deliver to her :) I don't really think it will make a difference. I can only hope that as some point in time, the conversation will be recalled. It's up to the Holy Spirit to determine that time.

Sexuality, Sensuality, Pornography

I'm a woman. I participate in a photography site advocated as safe for workplace and school environments.

I spent the day yesterday with a computer forensics consultant that in a former life was an FBI agent who worked child porn cases. The occasion for our meeting was unrelated to his former career, but knowing what it was generated some interesting discussions about the proliferation of sexual material via the internet, which led to discussions about freedom without restrictions, freedom with responsibility, censorship, who considers what arousal material, how we depict woman and children in a societal context, democracy, freedom of speech issues. We didn't quite get around to the international trafficking of woman. Time didn’t permit it.

We talked about how predators "groom" their subject into accepting the unacceptable as the norm.

It's not only predators who groom us to accept the unacceptable, it’s society, it's media, it's the internet. We live in an age when girls as young as 14-16 get breast implants, CD covers show sexually explicit acts, we have computer games where woman get raped (embedded, I understand, in Grand Theft Auto). Sexuality in all its forms is prevalent and pervasive. We've all been groomed to accept it. We've all received various levels of innoculation to it depending on our age, circumstance, culture, socio-economic group, ethnic group, education level, and so on.

Regarding a particular representation of a woman in a teddy: It's not just a photograph. It's a provocative image loaded with sexual innuendo. Many adults are sensitive to that. It is not admiration or love of a woman, nor do I personally know of any women who sleep in garter belts, stockings, high heels and a teddy with a bodice that has wire stays in it to push her breasts up. It's just not a very comfortable way to sleep. That's not how woman generally dress. Except to provoke or incite sexual arousal in a man. That is the sole purpose. That is the point. Some of us come here to get away from that because this is one of the few places left that you can.

Marylin Monroe may have thrilled millions, yet her death seems to pronounce the amount of satisfaction she personally obtained from her symbology.

There is power in being provocative, in being a woman. Many use it to exploit and manipulate men, to advance careers, precisely because they know its power. Younger woman adopt it because they see it depicted in magazines such as Cosmo and think it harmless, but you won’t see Helen Gurley Brown’s photo plastered across cyber space in one of those outfits. Some of us feel this is abuse, not use, of both men and woman, and when used this way, debases both and Gurley Brown herself begins to resemble the female version of Howard Sterns. It has it's place, but the public arena is not one.

And if you think it's "just a photograph" think of this. When explaining to me how pornographers generally get caught, he said "what's the most important thing to him, the thing that outweighs even the risk of getting caught? It's his pictures”. That's the impact a photograph has. Particularly those images that are intended and designed to evoke arousal.

Years ago a friend who worked in a medical lab once related to me how over a period of 3-4 months, men were frequently unable to produce urine samples. The mystery was solved when one man, back for his second try, rather embarrassedly explained..... "well, you have directions and diagrams posted on the wall for how a woman should give a sample, and when I read them......" They took the signs and visual aids down; the problem went away.

Humans are visually dominant, both sexes taking in more information with the eye than any other sense. Men are more visually stimulated, as measured by blood pressure, heart rate, pulse when looking at provocative images. Woman know this. Believe me, woman know this. Marketers know it.

When Dennis Rader, the BTK strangler was arrested, he had thousands of pictures, cut out from magazines, of woman and children scantily dressed. They are not "just pictures"... they are tools others utilize to feed fantasies. That's the big deal.

Are all fantasies and tools unhealthy? No. Absolutely not. Is a woman depicted in a diaphanous gown, her body silhouetted, intended to arouse a man? No. It may be a byproduct, but that's not it's intention. Is it a big deal to me? No. Does a man's desire for these visual images render him perverted. Of course not. Or beastly? No.

A woman with garter belt, high heels, metal stays, lanquishing on a bed.... that has an intent. There are risks in feeding those fantasies, there are risks in exploiting a man’s 'natural hardwired response'. Some of these results are harmless and intended, some not so harmless. The risks are never given voice; only the pleasures. Woman of experience know this. They’ve learned to see around the corners to what’s on the other side. They use their sexual power judiciously, appropriately, in the right circumstance.

What's the big deal? I hope you are one of the lucky ones who never has to face some of the real risks associated with deliberately dressing, acting, behaving, provocatively. Strippers know. They often have security walk them to their cars, or have boyfriends pick them up. Do I not understand a man's dilemma? It's precisely because I do understand it that I, and others, react the way we sometimes do.

It's precisely because the impact is so well understood that it is capitalized on so very very much. But the risks.... ahhh. the risks lie in broken marriages, empty relationships, eliciting not just lust, but rage when lust remains unfullfilled or unsatisfied, and the bar keeps getting higher and higher.... and eventually, can no longer be jumped. Helen Gurley Brown's generation and the sexual revolution did not live up to its promise. Antidepressents, not intimacy, mediates our emotional needs. Disease, not health, infects our relationships if recent crime statistics are to be our guide.

It's a big deal. To me. Because I really do love all of you. Because I've seen around those corners. Sometimes it leads to a pleasant path. Sometimes to an abyss. It's a big deal if you don't know which corner you are turning.

The Siblings Duke it Out

Well, I haven't had time, or really much inclination to keep this up, so I thought I would just post some recent exchanges my sister and I have had. The origin of this exhange was a .... ahem, I'll use the word "review" loosely here, of a William Rivers Pitt article.

I like William Rivers Pitt and find him both intelligent, articulate and persuasive. Yet, I'm usually a bit slow to jump on anyone's band wagon. So when I received the link to the article, I sent the response below, alluding to the fact that I wasn't quite convinced by Pitt's article.

Yeah, I saw this, but I found it a bit overreaching. As much as I hate Bush and like Pitt, I'm not convinced we are any closer to fascism then when Hoover was head of the FBI. Kennedy was probably a political/mobster assassination, Pearl Harbor was permitted to happen to gain entry into the war, those deemed traitors (Ethel /Julian Rosenberg) were shot, not imprisoned, and individuals like William Rivers Pitt would not have been allowed to publish without treason charges most likely.

So I'm not convinced by the rhetoric, on either side. It seems whichever party has political power at the time swings the pendulum in its direction, but never loses sight of the fact that it's always a swinging pendulum. The cry that it has come to rest is not yet founded, that I can see.

While the fear mongering of this administration has occurred to the Nth degree, the cry of fascism may in fact be the same tactic, from the other side only. Congress has not been gelded by Bush per se, but by Democratic endorsement of the marginalized, by vocal and radical gay marriage proponents, pornography as free speech proponents, etc. They went so far out on a limb that the average American could no longer relate to the party.

While the inboxes of average Americans were being filled with offers to view farm animals and women getting it on, homosexuals demanding to be treated as heterosexual and children be raised to see this as not only acceptable, but a desirable consummation of intimacy between members of the same sex, reports of cities spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to remove "In God" or "Under God" from city seals, and the religious right feeling as if history was writing their religion out of the picture in deference to secularist ideals, in their eyes this was akin to communism and fascism of its own brand; Bush just ran in and filled that gap. He could not have done that unless the Democrats, so assured of their own strength, failed to recognize that a gap in fact existed.

And they did fail to do that.

With this, I received a one liner from sis which simply said "you gotta stop hanging out at that church, really". Thus the war of words began:

----- Original Message -----

From: Karen W. Meyer

Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 9:03 AM

Subject: Re: xxxxx wants you to see this.

You really gotta stop hanging out at that canoe shop. When you start attacking the person, and not the issues, I gotta believe those drunks masquerading as intellectuals ain't doin you no good. Really.

When middle of the road is something you no longer recognize, when suspension of belief regarding the positions of two polar opposites is something you can't entertain, you gotta admit that you probably have more in common with the fundamentalist right than I do. Same tactics, same strategy, same fears, same origins..... just manifested down a different avenue. The difference between you and I is that I have invested the time in hearing both sides of the arguement. You, it would seem, are willing to hear and surround yourself only that which validates your personal viewpoint, and attack the individual who holds a different one.

Yup, you're farther right than you know it, lit'l sis.

There. Now isn't that fun to make it a personal issue instead of a political one?

In My In-Box was a rather lengthy missive sent as an education in civics and current politics, for apparently I conveyed, unintended, that I was ignorant of these things. The original email from sis follows:

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 11:28 AM

Subject: Re: xcxxxxxxx wants you to see this.

Well, at least my "drunken intellectuals" get their facts straight. Some things you might want to know: it is not the democrats in Congress who have pushed the agenda on gay rights, and separation of church and state. It is organizations dedicated to those particular interests who have won court battles, in front of judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic leadership. And sometimes they win, and when they do, it's because we have a pretty good Constitution and Bill of Rights. Still.

No one in congress, save possibly Ted Kennedy or Bernie Sanders, advocates an agenda that far to the left (if you must call it leftist to keep the government from promoting religion and denying gay life partners rights in the event of medical emergencies and the like). To do so for most members of Congress would be political suicide because, as you rightly assert, the mainstream of American voters disagree (and I would say most misunderstand) those particular civil liberties issues and would vote their friendly senator or congressman out of office.

So, the democrats are not really the problem. And if Pitt fails in his argument to make a persuasive case for the rise of the fascist state, it is because his article is too short and leaves out further convincing evidence. Fascism is not exactly the face of Hitler, but it is the alliance of the government with capitalist interests, and we have that to a shocking and detrimental degree right now in this country. Made possible by democrats and republicans alike. We have the best congress money can buy, and for the most part, it has been bought and paid for by very large, multi-national corporations.

So, one of the criteria for meeting the definition of fascism has been met: alliance of government with private capitalist interests.

Secondly, we are currently under an administration which has seized and manipulated executive powers to an unprecedented level. Prior to this administration, the single greatest concentration of power by the executive branch took place during the Reagan administration, was somewhat less utilized by Bush the Elder and Clinton, although they too used it to their advantage to a greater extent than presidents prior to Reagan.

This administration, however, has used its authority to extend the timespan of "secret" documents; to justify secret wiretapping as part of the patriot act and in excess of what the patriot act (passed by a majority republican congress but with plenty of democratic support) allows; to redefine torture and to redefine the term "prisoner of war" in unprecedented ways; to (for the first time in our history) say that we can hold prisoners indefinitely without charging them and without any judicial authority for holding them in the first place.

This administration has stepped all over the free speech rights of citizens in innumerable ways, but just to name a few: extending a "no-protest" ban for 7 miles around Bush's Crawford, TX ranch; requiring anti-war protesters to be corralled in fenced-off protest zones far from the event they are protesting during IMF and World Bank meetings; by encouraging landlords and other citizens to report on all suspicious activities of their fellow citizens (of which your son nearly became a victim); by imposing fines and causing the cancellation of television and radio shows that expressed vehemently anti-Bush positions (Politically Incorrect and Howard Stern, for example. Yes, technically Howard was fined for being a pig, but he had been a pig for more than ten years and no one cared at all. When he became a pig who was critical of the administration in the wake of 9/11, and an advocate for John Kerry, he suddenly became too much of a pig for the public airwaves.)

So, another criterion has been met: increasing governmental control over the flow of information out of the governmental realm to the public, and the concomitant control over speech that is critical of the government.

Thirdly, fascism is defined by decreasing individual liberties. This is clearly what the Bush administration and its allies on the Christian right are looking for, because they see those liberties as threatening to their own interests, although I don't think that the Christian Right "gets" that the Bush administration is using them more than it agrees with them. Individual liberties on issues like freedom of choice, like gay rights, like freedom of expression bother the religious right because they see these as examples of immorality that are prohibited by their own religious codes. It benefits this administration to make people all lathered up about these issues that may rarely if ever affect their own lives, because then they won't be thinking about
the fact that this government has used its power and our money to amass unprecedented wealth and control over the population while the majority of people in this country don't know if they can afford to retire, worry about their health insurance or lack of it, and blithely shop at Wal-Mart even though some kid in China is probably chained to a sewing machine so that they can fill their carts for less than their take-home pay.

So, the evidence is there that we are closer to a fascist state than we have ever been. Is it overwhelming? Maybe not yet. But it sure is bad enough to be concerned about. And, FYI, only one person at the Canoe Shop is a drunk, and none of them are convicted felons.

Nonetheless, I read, and responded as follows:

(What's convicted felons got to do with anything? (And even you must know that lack of conviction is not absense of offense, it's absence of detection).

You're preaching to the choir. I'm not a fan of this administration and never was.

With that said, you failed to address the sole issue I raised.... the denigration and ridicule of anyone, absolutely anyone who holds a different opinion... All Christians are painted with the broad brush of "religious right", and all people of religious faith as intellectually inferior. That's just not the case. I'm sorry you never knew anyone who held a deep conviction and faith and whom you could respect as possessing an intelligence equal to your own. You are the poorer not having experienced it, or shut the door on it.

I don't doubt that you understand your side of the issue. I don't even necessarily dispute most of them. I only asked if you had ever invested the time in learning the counterarguements to that? Or do you truly believe none exist? I never said this administration hasn't done a lot of horrible things. I implied only that the pendulum of democracy allows for that, where Pitt raises the alarm that the pendulum has stopped mid swing. I simply said I was not convinced of that, and for that my belief is disparaged as a result of religious affiliation. I find that attribution objectionable.

30 years ago when you did not have the totalitiarn Bush in office, you also did not have the Howard Sterns, the live sex shows, masturbation in public as a form of "entertainment" under free speech. The failure to recognize that lack of all restrictions with no concomitant responsbility for the impact such will have can in itself be viewed as a derogation of duty and irresponsible. That's not an unreasonable conclusion for people to come to. You fail to recognize the conditions which also must precede the acceptance of such restrictions on civil liberties.

Securing medical, financial and other instruments for the protection of gay "partnerships" can and have been developed. That those mechanisms, domestic partnership laws permitting collection of retirement funds and health insurance, are deemed insufficient precisely because they do not in, and of themselves, carry the same psychological currency as endorsement of marriage, is in my estimation asking government, and society at large, to validate and promote one's preferred perversion, not just protect it. NAMBLA has piggybacked and capitalized tremendously on the gay rights movement, free speech protection, and with many gay supporters, to promote and advocate their predeliction for Man/Boy love using the same platform gays have in recent history. Maybe they will eventually be as successfull and I can understand why people would fear that. Maybe in the politically correct world of unfettered freedom, we will now have to make available gay barbie and ken dolls so children will learn the acceptable ranges of "physical" relationships open to them, for to not socially validate it, as opposed to protecting the ability to engage in it, is met with cries of victimization. Ridiculous? Well, 30 years ago so was the idea that domestic partnership legislation for gays would be demonized as an oppressive arrangement.

There is also a failure to recognize another sign of a fascist and totalitarian state: the eradication of all religion from the public sphere, and then from the private. You fail to recognize that the alliance of the state with capitalist interests has always existed. The vote originally was to be granted only to the propertied, the landed, not the general public. That it did not prevail does not negate that it existed. Greed is perhaps written in some mens hearts, as is pride, and arrogance. Science and technology will never mediate the emotions and desires of man, but by chemical restraint, which, if the proliferation of those on psychotropic drugs is any indication, is well on its way also. Nor will legislation.

And to confuse the religious right with Christianity is precisely what Christ addressed. "many worship me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from me."

Throwing off the oppressor at the risk of all is the story and history of Judaism. Doing so without throwing the baby out with the bath water is the story of Christ. The story is not restricted to 2000 years ago. It plays itself out in every generation.

What a sad state of affairs this is, I think to myself. I feel like the bastard child of mixed parentage.... the evangelical churches of America cringe at the mention of Democrats, and my Democrat relatives and friends turn apoplectic at any expression of Christian faith. I never knew the two had to be mutually exclusive.

Growing Up Schizoid - Why I Started This Blog

Ok, this was really only a test. I saw a recruitment ad at Google which referenced this e-blogging site, so I thought I'd check it out. The inception of my blogging was career oriented, therefore, not necessarily a result of having anything interesting or otherwise worthy to put in print, but to investigate what a blogging site offers.

In that vein, I had to come up with something quick. "Growing Up Schizoid in America" was a tongue-in-cheek title I thought about years ago as a first year Psychology/Philosophy major. It's probably worth noting that during those college years all my free time and electives were spent reading physics or taking drafting engineering classes, noteworthy in the sense each requires a different perceptual filter when viewing the world. One consists of a concrete, empirical representation of the world, the other abstract and theoretical.

Now, back to the title of this blog. Perhaps a bit of an explanation is in order. I mean Schizoid resulting from growing up in an arena that Xenophobe's Guide to the Americas attempts, rather succinctly, to portray. Schizoid meaning aloof, not crazy. It could be summed up in an old, but common phrase, "familiarity breeds contempt", which probably was coined by a Schizoid or nihilist. Or a quick look at the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes gives an idea of what I'm talking about. (That's what makes the Bible so great.... if read in light of modern day psychology, it contains all the precepts, rather prophetic, don't you think?).

OK. I had to make that distinction in definition of the term Schizoid because adjectives, particularly mental health ones, tend to be viewed by some in the most negative light.

From that perspective, you hopefully have a better understanding of this blogs title and direction. Didn't I address direction? Well, its bringing to light those incongruities in life that would leave one feeling a bit, well, Schizoid. This covers social, political, and economic incongruities which leave the thinking person sometimes apoplectic, the emotional person sometimes confused, and the spiritual person seeing signs of the last days.

I'm older now, so I can afford to be more honest than when I was younger, can afford to make fewer compromises in life, can afford self-scrutiny without fear of falling apart, much more so than when younger. The irony of life.... that as the body ages and decays and we work at being limber, the mind fortifies and becomes stronger, less dogmatic, more flexible. It's an inverse relationship for some of us.

And although my theology is Christian, I am all too well aware of the current trend of labeling oneself born again (a phenomena that has gained popularity in recent decades). What comes to mind is the Biblical phrase "...many worship me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from me"(Isaiah 29:13) and I feel it better to let the reader make that declaration of me, if so inclined or observed, but that it should not be uttered from my own lips as self-proclaimed enlightenment.

The best declaration I can make is that the darkness made it's presence known, made it's bid that I find sanctuary in it's abode, occasionally seduced me towards it's promised rewards, yet saved was I from trodding too far down it's path. It is truly to the Grace of God that I give thanks, for as I paused before the next step, the dreams would come and show a different way, dreams not of my own desires or making, but dreams visited upon me during that momentary respite from all our efforts, where we relinquish all control. It has been in the serenity of sleep that the battleground is sometimes established, where Grace triumphantly resounds her call and claims her own. It is that Grace that informs the Daylight where I resume the pilot's seat, navigating and charting a course informed by Twilight Dreams.

I like to think of those dreams in the same terms as perhaps Carl Jung would... and as the epitaph on Jung's tombstone reads "Bidden or unbidden, God is Present".