Growing up in a Catholic home, and Catholic school, I have in my mind gone visiting through history the religious people they taught me to revere. Didn't always go well. Jesus could be either a gentle prophet, a little sad, knowing me immediately and taking me aside to offer his teaching. Other times, he was a misogynistic jerk who shoved me aside, depending on my age and state of mind. The older I got, the more cynical, telling him about the wars and atrocities committed in his name.
The saints were likewise a mixed lot, and my irritations with them grew over time. A few, like Augustine, I visited merely to annoy him, and lambaste him.
Most of my imaginings of biblical people are lost to me now, a working through of my own ability to believe and my need to know. I wanted the contradictions to evaporate, and all to grow clear and easy. No god spoke to me, no faith ever granted. For long years, I considered the afterlife might be a wandering across time and space, speaking to all the thinkers and writers, leaders and common folk, satisfying my boundless curiosity.
I have finally left this dream of my version of heaven at the wayside. I much prefer oblivion, a comfort I did not perceive in youth feels right, now.
The visit with Lao Tsu was largely silent, he, or maybe she, simply laid a warm hand on my arm, and I laughed.
(Wish I could have a conversation with the Blooger people, I want to know why my autofill is sometimes rejected, and they make me change everything to get back on my own blog. And no, I didn't "forget" my password, the bloody site just won't see it. But Blooger is harder to complain to than any god ever was.)
4 comments:
Sounds like you really cut your teeth on them, though Zhoen!
I feel quite envious of so many things here, and in the last few posts, though I see you are not always in a restful and contented place.
I actually quite envy you the acquaintance with the religious figures and saints who peopled your world, perhaps that's hard to understand, but protestantism, and that very watered down as I received it, never had such a cast of characters, I am interested in many of these characters and their ideas now, but lack the will or time to find out much. And I envy your courage as a youngster in wanting to confront them.
I envy you all the conversations in your head; I haven't had these for years. Those with imagined characters ( I had a whole load of imaginary animal friends as a kid, and a perpetual narrative in my head involving me and them,) stopped in my teens, and those with real people, whom I couldn't speak to in reality as I did in my thoughts, haven't happened for years. I have to say the latter were something of a torment, but I wonder what happened to the faculty.
I also envy you the novel. I don't know what to say to help with its resolution. As a reader, it always amazes me this holographic universe which is created in our heads by a fiction, but as a reader one is passive in the matter. It sounds as though to some extent one is a a writer too, or at least receptive. Something extraordinary is clearly happening, and I don't know at what point you can say, enough, I've listened enough, things need to start moving forward now. I think am might be right, and you're on the edge of it now. I hope so.
Thanks for all you share here, I am always surprised and full of admiration, curiosity and affection.
"The visit with Lao Tsu was largely silent, he, or maybe she, simply laid a warm hand on my arm, and I laughed."
When I read your words, I experienced deja vu. Thanks so much, Zhoen!
Well Blogger is run by Google.
Deus Ex proposed that we might make our own gods from intelligent machines with access to huge stores of information about our everyday lives.
Try typing a little prayer into the search box before logging in.
Pacian,
That just got me to a bunch of Catholic sites. Good thought, though.
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