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I was driving to work yesterday, listening to a contemporary Christian CD by the vastly popular Hillsong, because even though I do not subscribe to religious beliefs, I do love some of the contemporary music. But as I was listening to the lyrics, talking about the cross and being devoted to Jesus, I began to wonder why the New Age, or the spiritualist movement, doesn't have their own music, something I could listen to and not only enjoy the music but also the lyrics. And it dawned on me that there is such music. One of my favorite groups of all time has always been Enigma. Ever since I first listened to Sadeness,

Another Enigma favorite was Return to Innocence.

I have always loved those lyrics and have posted them on various of my blogs, myspace, facebook,etc . There can not be any more beautiful lyrics anywhere in popular music. How positive, how life affirming, how true, how spiritual. Just be yourself, don't fake, and don't care what people say, just follow your own way.

I have always tried myself to live up to that ideal. I have always prided myself on just being myself, no matter what.   had a girlfriend one time, while I was in the Navy, who told me that the thing she liked about me the most was that I am just myself and that I don't pretend to be anyone other than who I am. I took that as one of the best compliments I have ever received. It's a better compliment than if she had told me how good looking I was, or how funny I was, or how charming. I am all of those things, ha ha, j/k, but the most important thing is to just be yourself.

Another favorite Enigma song is Dream of the Dolphin.

In every color there's the light.
In every stone sleeps a crystal.
Remember the Shaman, when he used to say:
"Man is the dream of the dolphin".

One more Enigma Song, Cross of Changes

That is something that I truly believe yet Christianity preaches the opposite. In order to be a Christian and go to heaven you have to believe a certain way, their way, as if belief was a choice anyway, as if a person could will themselves to believe something in which they don't. How much truer and freer the statement, "whether you believe or you don't, whether you even understand or you don't, there is a universal truth and justice, and you have access to that universal truth as much as anyone, that universal love belongs to all of us, not just a select few.

I want to make this kind of music, spiritual, life affirming, beautiful music of the soul, meditation a part of my regular blog experience. To be a part of my theme, so that when I find beautiful music, I will post it for all to hear and enjoy.

Everyone needs a focus, for their lives, for their blogs, etc. In the past on my blogs I have just written about anything and everything that comes to mind, in a kind of stream of consciousness. But William Faulkner and James Joyce I am not. I think I need more focus.

So my focus from now on is going to be spiritual and religious matters, which include great music. Most of what I have been writing about on Vox has been about my growing awareness of spirituality and breaking away from the religion of my youth, so nothing too much should change. Yet, with a renewed focus, I should be more prolific.

We shall see.

Show us something crooked.

My forearm tattoo. The Angry Thinker.

2 comments

Alexander Supertramp!

I just watched the movie "Into the Wild" last night and I found myself crying throughout most of it. I am haunted by the story of Chris McCandless, AKA Alexander Supertramp. I am saddened by it. I am overjoyed at what he was able to do. I am jealous and I envy him because when all is said and done, he lived life exactly the way he wanted to, no compromises made against his conscience or with society.

I do not want to lionize the man, I do not want to turn him into some kind of larger than life hero, some kind of Christ figure. I also do not agree with those who have demonized him, made fun of him, said that he was just an ignorant, naive fool whose high ideals led to his death. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

I think the reason that his story touched me so deeply is because I see myself in Chris, I see Chris in me. I was touched so deeply by his story that I stayed up half the night last night reading his story on the internet and I am still crying about it today.

No, I do not think he was a prophet, but if one was inclined to see the world in such a way, he could be seen in the context of Jesus, or the Buddha or any number of prophets throughout history who have all basically said the same thing. He could be seen as a modern day Thoreau or Tolstoy.

People do not take this life seriously enough, I don't think. I think a mistake is that some people accuse others of taking life too seriously. People become complacent with all of the bad things happening in the world, all of the bloodshed, all of the inhumanity done to man. Even on a personal level, husbands and wives scream and yell at each other, totally oblivious to what they are doing to their children, they lead "lives of quiet desperation", mesmerized by their television screens and their iPods. Not too many people actually do something worthwhile with their lives and whatever one can say about Chris McCandless, at least he lived life EXACTLY the way he wanted to, on his own terms and he actually DID something with his short life and in the end, he has inspired millions.

I am assuming here that everyone pretty much knows this man's story but if not I will paraphrase. Growing up in an a fairly affluent family, in the suburbs of D.C. but emotionally scarred due to the way his parents treated each other and also the way he and sister were seen by the rest of the family as bastard children, he graduates from Emory University in Atlanta in 1990, and along with the $20,000 he has left in his college fund, his parents were willing to give him the rest of the money to go to law school. Instead he cuts all ties with his parents, gives his $20,000 to OXFAM and sets out to wander the western US, starting out in his old beat up Datsun. His ultimate plan is to go to Alaska and to just live off the land for awhile the way Thoreau did. His parents did not hear from him for over 2 years, until his emaciated body was found in an abandoned bus in the wilderness of Alaska.

Jon Krakauer, the author of the book "Into the Wild", said in his article in Outside magazine, entitled Death of an Innocent

"Alaska has long been a magnet for unbalanced souls, often outfitted with little more than innocence and desire, who hope to find their footing in the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier. The bush, however, is a harsh place and cares nothing for hope or longing. More than a few such dreamers have met predictably unpleasant ends. "

Alexander Supertramp was NOT an unbalanced soul, though, and if anything he was more balanced than most people would ever even know how to be, even if they wanted to. Yes, he was a dreamer, but he was much more than that.

"And although he wasn't burdened with a surfeit of common sense and possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not readily mesh with the realities of modern life, he was no psychopath. McCandless was in fact an honors graduate of Emory University, an accomplished athlete, and a veteran of several solo excursions into wild, inhospitable terrain."

I think he had a LOT of sense, a sense of who he was, what he wanted to do, how he wanted to live his life, and he was upset with the world he saw around him. He knew that he could not change the world, but he could change himself, so he decided to leave the world behind for awhile. He never intended his break from the world to be a permanent one.

What exactly is meant by "stubborn idealism"? Once again, he knew who he was and he was sure about his convictions. Was he stubborn because he didn't allow anyone or anything to change him? I praise him for that. If only more people in this world were "stubborn idealists", the world wouldn't be in the shape that it is. Only people who don't truly understand Chris would call him stubborn, only those who would have wished to change him would call him stubborn. Jon Krakauer understood a lot about Chris, but he got a few things wrong.

"An extremely intense young man, McCandless had been captivated by the writing of Leo Tolstoy. He particularly admired the fact that the great novelist had forsaken a life of wealth and privilege to wander among the destitute. For several years he had been emulating the count's asceticism and moral rigor to a degree that astonished and occasionally alarmed those who knew him well. When he took leave of James Gallien, McCandless entertained no illusions that he was trekking into Club Med; peril, adversity, and Tolstoyan renunciation were what he was seeking. And that is precisely what he found on the Stampede Trail, in spades. "

This is what people do not understand when they wonder why he didn't go into the wild more prepared. That was the point, he did not want to be prepared, he wanted to take things one day at a time, to face nature and God head on, to see if he could survive. And survive he actually did, for over 100 days. But maybe because he was lost within his own self and his ideals, he failed to take into consideration that the river he originally crossed on ice at the end of winter would be a raging river of water come summer time. He literally got stuck in the wild. There have been those who have pointed out how close he was actually to civilization, that there was a manual tram just a 1/4 mile from where he tried to cross. All of this is hindsight and for whatever reason, Chris did not know this and did not search down the river a bit to find it out.

But really, I do not want to talk so much about the particulars of his physical ordeal. Anyone can read the book, or watch the movie, or read his story online. I want instead, to talk about his spiritual ordeal, his idealism, what he knew about himself and how he was different from most people and how it relates to myself. Because, as I said, I see a lot of myself in Chris.

I have never done anything close to what Chris has done, but that is because he was a much braver man that I. I do understand him though, as if he were a brother of mine. I feel myself in his story.

I, too, came from a family where my parents fought and yelled at each other constantly, more so in the later years of their marriage. When I was only 11 and my sister 6, they split up for good. I will always remember my father, who was a Harley Davidson riding tough guy, at least in my eyes, come into the living room to tell my sister and I goodbye, and as he got down on bended knee to give us a hug goodbye he had tears streaming down his face. Up until that point I had never seen my father cry. I remember that day now like it was yesterday and I am now 35. I will remember that day for the rest of my life.

During the scenes in the movie where Chris' parents were yelling and screaming at each other and getting a little physical, I looked at my girlfriend and I said, "Oh my God, that was my childhood...exactly!" I am a 35 year old man with 2 kids of my own and I was crying. I am crying right now as I write this.

I have an Aunt on my father's side who has said that she doesn't understand why my parent's divorce affected me as much as it did. After all, her own parents were divorced (when she was almost a grown woman) and she wasn't affected so much by it. I want to strangle her by the neck!! My childhood affected me tremendously, but it wasn't just the divorce itself. It was all the fighting my sister and I witnessed prior to the divorce. My sister was only 6 and doesn't remember a lot of it, but I was 11 and remember every bit. I remember them fighting one afternoon prior to when we were supposed to be going over to my Aunt's to swim in her pool. What they were fighting about I'm not sure, but my Mom says it was because she was going to leave the house with a dirty pot in the sink. They started yelling at each other and my Mom would just not stop. She has NEVER known when to just stop. My father runs over to her and has her up against the wall with his hand over her mouth yelling at her to shut the hell up. My sister and I are screaming at him not to hurt our mother and he yells back, "Oh, I am not hurting your mother, stop it!!" She falls to the ground crying hysterically saying that he was trying to kill her, that his hand was over her mouth and nose and she could not breathe. He swears to this day that he was not trying to kill her and I believe him, but it makes no difference whether he was or not. My 11 year old eyes witnessed all of this, and I had no idea what was going on. Eventually, we made it over to my Aunt's house and as soon as we walked in the back yard and saw our Aunt, my sister and I started balling our eyes out. And she chewed them out for doing this to the "kids."

But it wasn't just them fighting before the divorce either. They got divorced and CONTINUED to fight and yell and scream at each other. The only difference now is that they both started to put my sister and I in the middle of things, between the two of them. They used us as pawns in their game of chess, in order to get back at each other, to get one over on the other. My father, in the beginning, would ask me to spy on my mother, I was only fucking 11 years old. He wanted me to listen to her phone conversations, to find out the name of the new guy she was now seeing. He wanted me to call him as soon as my mom dropped us off at our grandparents house so that he could follow her to see where she was going.

Before the divorce, I can remember my mom waking us up in the middle of a school night to go try to find my father. We went to the parking lot of night club after night club looking for his Mustang. Eventually, we found it and she sat outside for hours,waiting on him to walk out with his mistress that she just knew he had. She finally got tired of waiting and hearing the "kids" screaming to go home, so we finally went home.

I can remember her chasing my father down with the "kids" in the car, him on his Harley. She was chasing him, and her front bumper at times would be right up to the rear fender of his bike. My sister and I were screaming, we thought she was going to run him over and kill him, either on purpose or accidentally.

So when my Aunt wonders why all this affected me so much, yea, I'm sorry but I get angry. WTF do you mean it shouldn't have affected me so much? It has. I have been through two marriages now myself and my own 6 year old son is now living without the benefit of his mom and dad living together. Granted, we did not fight as much and do to him what my parents did to me, but I know that he is traumatized as well. And it just tears me apart. When I was growing up, I said that I would NEVER get divorced. I guess I was a little naive and a "stubborn idealist".

Some may ask why I'm turning Chris' story into my own. It's because his story IS my own. Everyone's story is our own, we are all in this together. And the reason why movies and books affect a person so much, is because we see ourselves in the characters.

I too became introspective and withdrawn from society as I grew older. I never took it the extreme that Chris did, but as I said earlier, that was only because I lacked his courage, his bravery. When I became a teenager I began to read books voraciously. I had not yet come across Thoreau or Tolstoy though. Or Jack London. But it was at this time that I began to doubt my Christian upbringing. I too wondered why and how people could be so cruel to one another. I became so that I just did not understand other people at all. I felt as if I was from another planet. I did not understand the unsatiable desire of most people for "success", however "success" was defined by society. I shunned church and refused to go. My mother and I had many loud arguments because of this. She told me one time, several times actually, starting when I was around 16 or so that I reminded her so much of my father that it sickened her. I thanked her for the compliment but it tore me up inside for my mother to say such a hurtful thing. I knew how much she hated my father, and I now knew, or felt, how much she hated me too. She didn't really hate me, but she sure made me feel as if she did.

Like Chris, I also graduated at the top of my class. I graduated from high school in 1990, the same year Chris graduated from Emory University, in the top 1/3 of my class. I was a Florida academic scholar and was able to go to any state University that I chose. My father, who I was now living with, gave me no other choice but to go to the local University, the University of South Florida. During my first year of college, my mother moved to Knoxville, TN with my step father, to get him away from the drugs and his alcoholic friends. He was a terrible alcoholic at this time. My sister was only in 8th grade, and in her eyes, our mother chose her husband over her own daughter. My sister stayed in Florida. I ended up moving up there after visiting one time mostly because I fell in love with the area and with the University of Tennessee. I attended school there and continued to do well throughout my first semester of my second year. By the second semester I was becoming disillusioned with everything, did not see the point in anything that I was doing any longer. I was pre-med at the time but I felt trapped. I had always wanted to be a doctor since I was 5 years old and that is the direction my parents always led me in. I was always told growing up that I was going to be a doctor. At the age of 19, I no longer wanted to be a doctor.

Instead of going to class, I would drive my car down by the river and park by the scenic overlook of the Tennessee River as it goes over the Ft Loudon Dam. I would just sit there for hours, no music, no nothing. I would turn the car off and roll the windows down and I would just listen to the sounds of the river, the birds singing, the children running down the slope of the embankment to the river front. This was peace for me, tranquility. And I knew that I was done with college. I just had no idea what I was going to do. I was living at home at the time, making minimum wage a nursing assistant at the local nursing home. I was so confused. I was disturbed. I sat there and thought about God, wondered why life had to be so difficult. Why God allowed the Church to continue to spread lies about him.

So I finally decided to go to my own wilderness, to go into my own wild. I joined the United States Navy, for many of the same reasons that Chris wandered the country. I wanted to make a clean break, to get away from my parents, to live on my own terms. Joining the military, it turned out, wasn't the best of ways to live life on your own terms.

I could go on and on with this, I guess, I could ruminate on the many ways that Chris and I are kindred souls but there also many ways in which we are different. For one, I wouldn't have the balls to do what he did and if I did, I probably wouldn't have survived half as long as he did.

But I also want to get across how wrong I believe some people are about Chris. How do I know they are wrong? Because I understand Chris, I understand what he did and why. Some of the things people have said about Chris just frustrates me and some of it makes me angry. I feel like not too many understood Chris, just as not too many understand me.

There was an article in Men's Magazine, what a joke, entitled The Cult of Chris McCandless I know that I can't expect a magazine such as this to understand Chris, their idea of what it is to be a man is based so much on gender stereotypes, but one thing the article said struck me.

'Carlson, a barrel-chested Athabascan who worked as a tribal liaison on the shoot, shows me around the bus. He chuckles through a handlebar mustache and offers an unburnished appraisal of McCandless: Another fool bit the dust. "We grew up here. You learn how to make a campfire when you're a kid. This, I didn't think much of it at the time. That kid's mistakes started a long time before he got here."

What got me is not that Chris was called a fool, but that Chris' philosophy of life was trivialized as a mistake, that Chris was the one who was wrong in his assessment of society. And I am here to say that no, it is society that is largely wrong in it's assessment of Chris.

The guy goes on to say:

"And what will happen to this bus?

"Not sure what we'll do with it. Make it some kind of attraction. Maybe a cappuccino stand. I know that sounds like we're profiting off someone else's story, but you do what you have to do to survive here."

This is exactly the kind of thing Chris was talking about. This makes a mockery of survival. It turns the idea of survival into market capitalism. It is grotesque! That is not survival, it is profiting off Chris' bravery. They didn't have the balls to do what he did, yet they want to capitalize on it.

"The majority of Alaskans share some version of the opinion that McCandless was deeply out of his element. Medred, the outdoors columnist for the Anchorage Daily News, believes that he was suffering from schizophrenia and compares him to Timothy Treadwell, the unstable filmmaker and bear enthusiast who (along with his girlfriend) was killed and eaten by a grizzly in Katmai National Park in 2003. "McCandless didn't need the wilderness," he says. "He needed help."

No, society needs help. Chris was spot on!! There was nothing wrong with Chris, he had a clarity of vision that most people will never have.

Chris said, "Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth." I full understand where he is coming from, I have said nearly the same thing myself in some of my articles here on Newsvine. But what Chris found out too late and what I know now, is that one of those words did not belong with the others. I shun money, faith, and fame but love IS the truth.

""So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greather joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

This is one of the biggest reasons that led me to drive a truck for a living for a year and a half. It was my way of leaving society behind, so I thought, of just being on my own, just me, the truck and my music, and when the weather was right, the wind. It wasn't exactly like that though in truth.

"Surely all Americans have the right to give their money only to those causes which they support. But what kind of society has this created? A society where the ignorant reign. A society where enlightened must hold their tongues. A nation whose politicians must profess half-hearted devotion to an ancient fable or face the disastrous consequences of speaking their true mind."
Chris McCandless writing on religious fanaticism in The Emory Wheel student newspaper, October 1987

"Two years he walks the earth.
No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. — Alexander Supertramp May 1992

I have never been as brave as Chris, I am still working on killing the false being within. It is a task that we each must do alone, in our own way.

Near Death!

In closing, I want to leave you with a snippet relating to a John Bunyan work, called, "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners", written in 1666. I do not agree with the truth that Bunyan ultimately came to but I can very much relate to his journey. When I read this, I felt like John's journey, like Chris' was just like my own. You could almost insert my name in here and it wouldn't make much difference, except for the final destination, which obviously has been different for me, John basically sticking with Christianity because, he was a product of his times after all.

"As a nonconformist, Bunyan rejects the Church of England -- it's rites, it's doctrines, it's authority, and it's congregations. And this makes him very much alone. He longs to join other believers: when he hears "three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, and talking about the things of God," he longs to enter into a brand new life. But the women, he writes, seem to be "on the sunny side of some high mountain... while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold." Between the women and himself,Bunyan sees a wall; he can't find a way through, until he discovers "a narrow gap... At last, with great striving, methought I at first did get in my head, and after that by a sideling striving, my shoulders, and my whole body; then I was exceeding glad, and went and sat down in the midst of them, and so was comforted with the light and heat of their sun." Finally in the company of others who also believe, Bunyan should be secure and full of grace. But the temporary comfort and hope that he feels is followed by an obsessive desire to blaspheme, and the cycle continues; Bunyan fights off temptation, is "put into my right mind again," is assaulted by temptation again, understand grace, struggles against guilt again. Finally he grasps that his righteousness is not his own, but that of Jesus Christ. "Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed." Is this the final act? Not quite; darkness descends again on his soul, until God assures him with a final scripture: You are come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God.. to the general assembly of the first-born..to the spirits of just men made perfect. At last Bunyan has found his company, where others stand with him in the presence of God. He is no longer alone. Has he reached Salvation at last? Perhaps, but for Bunyan, conversion is is not a single shining moment, but a long path down which he walks, with an eye always cautiously behind: Like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan was threatened by the "door to hell, even at the gates of heaven."

And that, my friends, is the story of Phaedrus. Told in the year 1666. The only difference being that I have found the truth in the opposite direction, away from the Church, but the journey is the same.

The following is my review of the movie Into the Wild.

LOVED IT!!!

The following is an article I just finished writing on another website I am on called Newsvine.

Losingreligion

Well... At the risk of being ridiculed all to hell by my friends and enemies here at Newsvine, I am going to do it yet again!! Yes, I have once again changed my mind about one of the most fundamental questions of mankind. This time I believe for good. Let me just come out and say it. I am NOT a Christian!! I really have not been a Christian since my late teen years. I have always known deep down inside of me, down deep where true knowledge resides, that Christianity and all other organized religions are bullshit. But the pull of the religion of one's youth is a very powerful draw. Sometimes it's like a black hole sucking me back in and so there have been a few times in my life, up till now at the age of 35, where I have fallen back into old ways of thinking. I'm not sure if anyone can truly understand this phenomenon unless they too were raised in a religious family.

I was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition and have chronicled this in other articles I have written. When your entire family is telling you that you are wrong, and that your eternal soul is in jeopardy, no matter how much you know in your heart it just isn't true, there are times in life that you begin to wonder, especially at those times when your life doesn't seem to be proceeding exactly according to plan. You start to wonder if maybe they are right after all? Maybe if I could just learn to have faith, if I could just learn to accept what they have accepted so easily, maybe if I too could just learn to believe, then maybe I too could find happiness and peace.

So there have been a few times in my life when I have tried this. And sometimes it does seem to work. For about a minute. Sometimes I have been able to lie even to myself, to convince myself, "yea, you can do this, you can believe this crazy shit if you just try hard enough."

So, in this last go round, my girlfriend and I started going to this local contemporary, seeker-friendly mega-church, and we actually liked it. They didn't preach hellfire and brimstone and the music was great! Contemporary music played by a terrific contemporary band.

Then I started to write articles here and to argue with Atheists, but what I was really doing was trying to convince myself. That's what I always do here on Newsvine, I am more having a conversation with myself than I am with anyone else. I am more trying to convince myself than I am anyone else.

But after awhile I had to ask myself, "What the hell, exactly, is it that you are doing? Why are you lying?" And I realized that this is what I was in fact doing. I was lying!! Lying more to myself than to anyone else and a person can only lie to themselves but for so long. A person can lie to others all they want, lying to oneself does not work out so well, if a person wishes to remain sane. And true to oneself!!

Religion1

To hell with it all!!

I have told myself that from now on, I am going to remain true to myself and to no one else, not to anyone in my family, only me!! I know what I believe in my heart is true for me, and I don't have to convince myself of anyone else's truth.

Shakespeare said, "This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

And so I felt the need to write this article to try to explain myself and to apologize to anyone and everyone who I have come into contact with over the past few months in the context of Christian belief. Most notably Iarnuocon and Adam. I am NOT a Christian, have never been, I only fooled myself into believing that I could be. I can't. I have tried and I can't lie to myself any longer. It's one of the worst things a person can do in this life.

I am still trying to figure out exactly what it is that I DO believe, in the wake of my absence of faith and I will write more about it in the future. I have an insatiable need, an insatiable desire to know the truth, not the tired ol' dogmas of the past.

The following is excerpted from a recent email conversation I had with an Aunt of mine, who is still very religious to this day, although not a Southern Baptist, she is a member of the Church of God, a church who teaches that one must speak in tongues in order to be saved, even though she personally has never spoken in tongues. These are my excerpted words to her over the past few days:

Wow, for someone who says people shouldn't discuss politics or religion, you went right ahead and did so anyway. ha ha. I never agreed with people who said that anyway. I don't know why people get so hung up about religion and politics. They act as if their beliefs are so cherished that to even discuss it is somehow dangerous. People are scared, I believe, they are afraid to talk about these things because their beliefs ARE so cherished and they are afraid of upsetting the apple cart so to speak, afraid that their cherished beliefs might need some fine tuning after all.
I love discussing these things and am on several different websites online where I do just that, with complete strangers. I love it!!
I NEVER said though that I know everything or that I have answers to anything. I don't know anything, actually, even when it comes to religion, that's why I call myself an Agnostic. I'm neither a believer nor an Atheist. I just don't know. I do know though that a lot of things I was taught to believe as a child are, without a doubt, not true. I can't prove it to you though, and I know that you do still believe in a lot of those things. I just know in my heart and soul that God is real, but the God I was raised to believe in is no more real than Santa Clause. But you knew that about me anyway, you and I have discussed these things years ago.
I don't know why people have a hard time talking about these things without getting upset or getting their feelings hurt. Especially family. I should be able to talk about these things with family, but in actual fact, there is no one in my family I can talk to about these things. Everyone in the family, on both sides, has their minds made up about these things already and what they believe is literally Gospel. It's hard to talk to family about my doubts when they are all obviously concerned for the destiny of my soul. I could show you some things I have written, maybe you and I could actually talk about these things without getting angry with each other.
Gene and I have been discussing religion a bit, and I just still can not understand how a person can go through life, essentially believing everything he was taught as a child, about God, Jesus and the Bible, and yet live the life he is living. I'm not saying he is a bad person, not at all, I'm just saying he is not living a Christian life, but he believes every word of the Bible, therefore he must know that according to his belief system, he is going to hell, unless he repents. To me, to live your life in such a way that you "know" is sending you to hell...well.. that is the definition of insanity to me. Me... I don't believe in hell, and he just thinks that is hilarious, he can't wrap his mind around how somebody could not believe in hell, yet the life he is living, he is going there just the same as I am, for my unbelief. So what exactly makes someone like him a better person than me? If we both died today, is God gonna look more favorably on him because he believes and I don't? I don't get it. That's why I'm agnostic.
Anyway, I said all of that because you got me thinking when you said that I don't know the answers either. You're right, I don't, but doesn't it seem that the ones that are so sure they DO know the answers are the very ones who are screwing up this world so badly?
You say you don't get me. Not too many people do. Do you know how lonely it is, knowing that not a single person in my entire family understands me? The ONLY person who I think does understand is Jackie(my girlfriend). Her beliefs and mine are pretty much in sync. She wasn't raised in a religious household though.I almost feel as if I was raised in a cult of sorts, raised in a bubble. You asked me why I can't be grateful for what I have and why do I dwell on things that do not matter? Donna, if what you say is true that I'm going to hell for my beliefs, then it DOES matter. It matters a great deal, don't you see? I AM grateful for everything that I have, most especially my kids and for Jackie, because in the way of material possessions I don't have much. But that doesn't preclude me from thinking about spiritual questions. I am a very spiritual person, I just do not believe the way you believe, and believe me, I don't get you either, I don't get Gene, I don't get my Mom, I don't get anyone in my family, as they don't get me. I think about existential questions all the time, you ask me why, and my answer is that I have no other choice, that is how I was built, it is who I am. I could no longer stop asking these questions than you could stop believing in Jesus. What if I asked you why can't you just be grateful for what you have, why do you have to go to church and believe in Jesus, someone who lived and died over 2000 years ago? I am a very spiritual person, sometimes I think I'm more spiritual than a lot of Christians I know. Gene claims to believe in God and Jesus, yet I don't think he has given his beliefs more than a cursory glance, he has never asked questions. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you believe the way you do? Maybe for you, it doesn't matter. For me, the truth matters a great deal. I can't just believe in something because it makes me feel good, I have to know the truth. For you, believing in Jesus makes you feel good and it makes you feel better about where you are going when you die. I don't care about feeling better, I care about the truth. And I have asked myself a LOT of questions over the years.
I just think religion is largely a function of geography, there are lots of other religions in this world besides Christianity and they can't all be wrong, they can't all be right either. I think they are ALL wrong, every one of them. As far as Gene saying he believes and thinks he has time, well the Bible also says that the devil himself believes. Faith without works is dead. That's why I said living life the way he is, the way you say you have in the past, the way we all have, is the definition of insanity, basically playing Russian Roulette with your soul. If I believed the way you guys do, I could NEVER live anything other than a Christian life, to live otherwise makes no sense, I would be afraid to go to sleep every nite, for fear I would die and go to hell. But there is no such thing as heaven and hell, it's all make believe.
I am not trying to persuade you from your beliefs, at all!! Not one bit. I am just trying to get you to understand where I am coming from, why I believe the way I do. Christians are so ego-centric about their religion, that they come off as superior about their beliefs, as if their beliefs are better, or the only right way. No one in the family feels the least bit of gumption about proselytizing their beliefs, I get emails all the time from different family members telling me about Jesus and how much he supposedly loves me, wanting me to hear the good news, so why should I feel ashamed for letting my beliefs be known? I have lived in the dark for far too long. And I am no longer ashamed of who I am and who I am not.
People talk about the Gospel, about the good news of Jesus Christ. To me, I have never understood what the good news is. What is the good news? That I am going to hell because I don't believe any of it? What exactly is the good news? That most of the world is going to hell because they are of a different religion? I don't get it.
You act as if these matters don't matter. That we shouldn't worry about them. They DO matter. Look at the last 8 years if you don't think they matter. That's exactly what those in power want us to do, not think about these things too much, so they can go on and rape our country and the world as they have been doing. They don't want us to think, don't you see? And the Church doesn't want us to think either. But I think, and to ask me why would be like to ask me why I breathe, because I have to. It's who I am and I can't help it.
But I am not trying to persuade you away from your beliefs at all. I have thought about that in regards to my Mother, I asked myself what if my Mom told me tomorrow that she too was no longer a Christian, how would I feel? And for some reason, I think, I would be sad, not because I think she would be going to hell or because she would be wrong, but because being a Christian is who she is, it's who you are, and to lose something that large about yourself is a tragedy. Trust me, I know what it's like to lose your religion, I lost mine a long time ago. It can be terrifying but it's also liberating. I don't have to worry about the destiny of my soul any more, about heaven and hell. I can now just let you guys worry about that for me.
I don't need anyone in the family to believe the way I do, I just need at least someone to "get me", to understand where I'm coming from. I was born with an analytical brain, I think too much, but I can't help it, it's in my genes, it comes from my father. I just can't see how God could or would send me to hell for using the brain he supposedly gave me. It's interesting to note, that the vast majority of all the greatest minds who ever lived were Atheists, people like Einstein, Mark Twain, I could go on and on. Dad asked me one time what kind of garbage I was reading to make me think these things, and I said, "Oh, just people like Einstein, you know, the smartest man who ever lived, and Mark Twain, the most respected man who ever lived, who wrote Huckleberry Finn." I don't read a bunch of New Age mumbo jumbo, or Atheist handbooks, I read the greatest minds who have ever lived, the ones we were told to read when we were in high school and college. Why is it that most of 'em were Atheists, yet I'm the crazy one in the family? I have come to the conclusion that the more educated a person becomes the less religious they necessarily become. But like I said, I still do believe in God, just not the way you believe in him, I can't believe in a God who rewards and punishes based on something which a person can't help anyway, their belief. I have asked this before and I'll ask you now, if Jesus died on the cross for my sins, why do I have to believe it? What does my belief or lack thereof have to do with it? I don't get it. It makes no sense to me at all. Is his love not large enough to encompass those of us who just can not find it in them to believe? Belief is not a conscious choice.
I told Gene that I'm a good person, that I love my kids and Jackie and my family and that I work hard to give them a good life, I don't drink to excess, I don't party, I don't do anything bad at all for which I'm trying to justify my life through a lack of belief. I'm a good person and I can't see how or why God would punish me for simply not believing in him, if he does in fact exist. Gene said that not being a Christian doesn't mean I'm a bad person, it just means I'm going to hell. Well thanks, is what I thought. You guys say these things so nonchalantly, I don't even think you realize what it is you are saying. So in your religion, a lot of good people are going to hell. Sorry, I just can not buy that.

Re-read your last email to me, what you and Gene are basically saying to me is this:

"since you don't believe in the Bible, you are going to hell when you die, but hey, don't worry about it, it's all just stuff that doesn't matter anyway, why can't you just be grateful for what you have in life?" Do you not see how insane that statement is?!

You said you didn't know what it was I was searching for in life. I am searching for the Truth, whatever that is. I can't just believe things because I was raised to believe certain things, because I have been told to believe certain things. It's not how I am made internally. I have to KNOW things for myself. I am a seeker, I love knowledge, I love learning, always have. I love to read and read voraciously. I just read 3 books from the library in the past 2 weeks. I just finished "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway and rented the movie from netflix with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. I am almost done now with "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller, probably one of the funniest books I have ever read. The term catch-22 wasn't even in the American language until that book. I just love to learn, love to think about things. There was a time when I was an Atheist, but I'm not any longer. Just because I'm not a Christian doesn't mean I'm an Atheist. It is precisely because I DO believe in God and his infinite love that I can NOT believe that the Bible is his word. I just can not. I just can NOT believe that God would order his people, the Jews to annihilate men, women and children, to kill entire groups of people, simply because the land was supposedly their "promised land." No, I think people do those things and then they try to use religion to justify the terrible things they have done. That is what the Jews did and then tried to ascribe their genocidal behavior to God's imperative. Why more people can not see through these lies is beyond me. Just like it is precisely because i DO love this country of ours that I have to oppose our President and the terrible things he has done. I believe that we are all a part of God and that is the only thing Jesus was really trying to tell everyone. He said he was a Son of God, as we are all Sons of God, he also said, "These things you see me do, these and many more things like them will you also will do." He wasn't claiming to be anything that we are not, he wasn't demanding our worship, that was all lies put on Jesus' lips by the Church afterwards. Jesus preached peace and he preached against the religion of his day, he preached against false piety and he preached living a simple life, for all these reasons, he was killed, just as many people have been killed for their beliefs throughout the ages. I believe we are all "one" and the sooner more people realize that, the better off we will be. It is not rich vs poor, them vs us, republican vs democrat, it's all just us, and we are killing ourselves on this planet because of the things we believe and don't believe.
I believe that God is infinite love, where there is love, there can be no hate. There are only two basic emotions in all the world, love or hate, God is not hate, God is love. So I can not imagine him punishing me for eternity simply because I do not believe a particular myth or story about him. I once heard a story that all the religions are like people who have all had the chance to gaze upon God but every one was given a different part of God to gaze upon, some the feet, some the head, some his garment. Obviously this is metaphor. But what religions have done is that they all think their particular view of God they have been allowed to see, is the only true nature of God. Those who saw the feet, think the feet is all of God, those who saw his garments think they saw the totality of God as well, and we are all arguing fighting and dying, fighting over whose view of God is correct when we need to realize we ALL have been allowed to gaze upon God. I probably didn't tell the story too well, maybe you've actually heard it.
There is a comedian named Julia Sweeney who used to be on Saturday Night Live and I just love what she said, "It's not you God, it's me. It's because I take you so seriously that I can't believe in you." It sounds funny but I think it is a very profound statement. And I totally agree, It is precisely because I believe so much in God's love that I can not believe in the Bible. But anyway, I think if God exists, he loves me even if I don't believe in him. I think he feels compassion for me, I think that he understands me as no on earth does, and I don't think that if I die in my unbelief that he is going to punish me for all eternity.
In other words, I think God's love is unconditional, he doesn't place conditions on his love for us the way people do. It's not believe in me and then I will love you, no he loves us regardless. As I said, I think THAT was the good news of which Jesus preached. He said that we didn't need the church in order to talk to God, that we each were a part of God, his children and had access to him at any time or place. Obviously, this rankled the religious establishment and they killed him, as they killed many other people just like him. Did you know that Jesus was not even the only one to come along and claim to be the Messiah? In his day there were tons of people making that claim, each with their own set of disciples following them. he was also not the only person in history to be crucified. Crucifixion was the Roman form of execution back in those days, like the electric chair or the gas chamber today.
I don't really pray in the traditional sense I guess. I meditate a lot, not in the traditional sense of that word either, though. I don't sit in a trance and go "Om!!!" I just think a lot about things. When I come home from work I look up at the night sky and contemplate the stars and the universe. In this way, I talk to God every day. I don't think one has to kneel beside their bed to pray or pray in any traditional sense. My own inner conversation with myself is how I pray.
No, Donna it doesn't sound off the wall, what you suggested, (to pray) it's been suggested to me a hundred and one times. The thing is, I've already done it. Many many times!!! And I've read the Bible backwards and forwards too, been there, got the t-shirt!! ha ha And the answer that keeps coming back to me is that the Bible is NOT God's word!! That the Bible was written by fallible and sometimes even evil and capricious men. God tells me that Jesus was a real man who walked the earth, who preached a spirituality so novel for his day, that he was killed for it. God tells me that he is love, that he loves each and every one of us, with no conditions and no strings attached. He tells me that I am NOT going to hell. Hell was made up by evil and capricious men in order to keep people scared in order to keep them in line for the purposes of empire. Do you realize how rich the Catholic Church became over the centuries? They needed something to keep people scared, and when the concept of hell no longer worked, they resorted to torture and burning people at the stake. God asks me what his holy purpose would be in sending his own creation to a hell of everlasting torment? When I say, "Well, I've been told it's to satisfy your sense of justice, that you are a just God." He asks me why his justice could not just as easily be served by annihilating me, why would he have to subject me to everlasting torment? He says that Christianity makes a mockery of who he really is. When you really sit down and think about these things, you realize that none of it makes sense, and then you realize, it's all make believe. Yes, God exists, and we are all a part of him. To send any part of God to hell would be to send God himself to hell. It makes no sense.You would never do anything to harm your own child, I could NEVER hurt one of my children, no matter what they did, why do we then think God would or could do so?
And most of all, when I pray, God tells me to just relax, that everything is perfectly fine and as it should be. God tells me that I am NOT the product of my bad decisions over the years, that I am NOT my job, that I am NOT how much money I make or don't make, but that who I am is defined by how much I love. And that's it and that's all. The rest is just all make believe, fairy tales.

And there ends what I told my Aunt the past few days. I wish I could tell this to more of my family members but most of them don't understand.

In closing I am going to leave you with a poem I have come across that speaks to me more than anything in the Bible. I love this poem, written in the 1920's. It's called The Desiderata:

Desiderata

-- written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s --

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Nathan Asher and the Infantry

While perusing one of our best local independent and progressive newspapers, the Independent Weekly, here in the triangle area of NC, which includes Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, I found this terrific local band, who sadly is calling it quits after 5 years. I wish I would have discovered them earlier, but alas, I only moved up here to this mecca of Progressiveness and great music about a month ago. I have noticed over the years that some of the greatest music out there is either local music or independent music or both. This band is no exception. Their name was Nathan Asher and the Infantry and the only song I can find at the moment is titled Turn Up the Faders.

It can be found at Trianglerock.com. Listen to what a beautiful song this is. And mesmerizing!! I love this damn song! And I just wish I could have heard them play it live.

Two of my favorite lyrics from the song read as follows:

"So we take the A-Train into the city,
Sticky seats shake at the station,
Women's footsteps drag,
From the cave of the tunnel dragon,
Into the open high-rises, buildings,
Street urchins come to siege us,
Corner preachers carry Jesus,
Like he carried the cross, toss leaflets.
All this misdirected lust,
All these, all these, all these people,
As dusk turns into evening,
We just get funneled to the clubs. "

And

"I'm in the backroom, drunk,
The stars cut chunks out of the darkness.
It's a portrait of the young artist,
As another target market,
Playing dumb in the club,
Using liquor as a tourniquet,
Let's succumb to our desires,
We'll become just like our fathers,
Bang into each other
Until the lights smother us
And we go under. "

Wow!!!!!!!!! That's all I have to say!! Any band who references James Joyce, I can't recall any other band to do so, has to be cool!! This was not only music it was sheer poetry!! Beautiful stuff!!

Here is what the little blurb at the Independent Weekly had to say about them:

NATHAN ASHER & THE INFANTRY

From: Raleigh
Since: 2004
Claim to fame: Writing songs for self-improvement; playing them big

"Nathan Asher & the Infantry gathered a singer-songwriter with a defiant spirit, his best friend (a keyboard whiz since middle school), a blues harmonica player and the core of a since-forgotten Raleigh rock band named Nova Cancy. Tonight, they'll close out a five-year career with a show at the BERKELEY CAFÉ, which they'll record for future release. The small stage of the Berkeley is an admittedly awkward exit for an act whose intentions and sound always seemed so big: They commandeered a stretch of Hillsborough Street windows for an advertisement and played several Manhattan showcases for record labels. The Infantry's Springsteen-based presence worked best with the big lights and speakers of the Lincoln Theatre, but—after only deciding to end the band three weeks ago—they'll take this exit on Martin Street. 10 p.m."

They also have a myspace page which can be reached through the Trianglerock.com page I referenced above. Or you can reach it directly at Nathan Asher

Enjoy!!! And tell me if you agree what terrific music this is!!

I wrote this little piece yesterday, as a joke, to my cousin. We have been having a religious debate through email, him still believing in God and Jesus, as we were taught to believe as children, me, the dissenter. I wanted to break Christian belief down into it's constituent parts, to show him how utterly ridiculous it all sounds. The following is my attempt at that.

Cool Jesus

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. You look around us and you see things,and these things must have been created because everything must have a cause therefore there is a God, but wait... If everything must have a cause, where did God come from? What is the cause of God? Oh, you say, Christians get to change the rules as they go along. God doesn't have a cause, he has existed forever and ever, amen!! He has been in existence since eternity. So.... before he created the universe, what was God doing for all of that eternity? Watching re-runs of Three's Company?! Seriously, if God existed forever and ever what was he doing for all that time? Well time did not exist yet, you say, God just was and guess what, God is perfect, all knowing and all powerful, but poor ol' God got bored and decided to create some company, first some animals and then man and then since man was bored too and wanted some nookie he created woman for him, by putting Adam to sleep and taking out one of his ribs whereby he fashioned a woman out of it. Then he breathed the breath of life into her and she was alive. Sound ridiculous enough yet to you? Wait it gets better...

And here we are today, and you STILL believe this cockamamie story. Why? Well because that's what your mom and her mom and her mom etc has always believed, that's the way they were raised to believe and the way you were raised to believe. Who needs an education when you got Jesus, right?

The Neural Buddhists I read this piece in the NY Times op/ed section, by David Brooks. Very interesting stuff and it got me thinking quite a bit. In the piece, he references a 1996 essay by the novelist Tom Wolfe, entitled, Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died. Both of these pieces are brilliant. Tom Wolfe, describes how after over 100 years since Nietzsche declared that "God is dead", the new wave of neuroscientists, the New Freudian Psychologists, are trying their damndest to declare that the soul is dead, that we possess no soul. They are trying to show, through advances in brain wave scanning, that we are really nothing more than biology, genes and chemicals and no more, and all that this entails, including the abolishment of the idea of free-will. But an interesting thing has been happening in the last few years since Tom Wolfe wrote his piece, as discussed by David Brooks, science and mysticism are beginning to walk hand in hand.
Something that David Brooks said just really struck me:

"In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism."

When I read that, it was like hearing someone describe a long lost relative, I screamed out, internally, "That's me!!!!" I too, feel the existence of the sacred, despite my scientific background and my rational, analytical brain. Yet, I too think all religions are basically a bunch of bunk piled on top of universal truths. In other words, even though I have all but abandoned my Christian upbringing, I still have NEVER been able to call myself an Atheist. I just can NOT believe that we are all just reducible to biology, It makes absolutely no sense to me, no more sense to me than the Bible makes sense though. I believe in God, just not a personal God, I am more Buddhist in my beliefs, more Deistic. One of my heroes is Tom Paine and his Age of Reason, one of my favorite reads of all time. It is actually one of the first things I ever read which convinced me that it was ok to not be a Christian. Then I read about all the other founding fathers who were also Deistic and members of Unitarian/Universalist churches. It was an eye opener

So definitely read these two referenced articles. They are fascinating indeed.

Oh and I also still have some major problems swallowing all of Darwinist Evolutionary theory and from my reading, it is not just those loony Creationists who have a problem with it. As Tom Wolfe says in his essay:

"Recently I happened to be talking to a prominent California geologist, and she told me: "When I first went into geology, we all thought that in science you create a solid layer of findings, through experiment and careful investigation, and then you add a second layer, like a second layer of bricks, all very carefully, and so on. Occasionally some adventurous scientist stacks the bricks up in towers, and these towers turn out to be insubstantial and they get torn down, and you proceed again with the careful layers. But we now realize that the very first layers aren't even resting on solid ground. They are balanced on bubbles, on concepts that are full of air, and those bubbles are being burst today, one after the other."

I suddenly had a picture of the entire astonishing edifice collapsing and modern man plunging headlong back into the primordial ooze. He's floundering, sloshing about, gulping for air, frantically treading ooze, when he feels something huge and smooth swim beneath him and boost him up, like some almighty dolphin. He can't see it, but he's much impressed. He names it God."

<a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20070924/ai_n20519036">FindArticles - Bush will skip U.N. talks on global warming
Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Sep 24, 2007, by Steven Lee Myers New York Times News Service

This is just disgusting what this man is doing, or NOT doing, one should more accurately say!! I've heard of a lame duck, but this man is a lame dick President!!

Which news websites do you frequent?

Whichever ones the Google News page directs me to, generally.