Healthy Religion

I copied a reader's commentary from Andrew Sullivan's blog "The Daily Dish" because I like the ideas expressed and because I couldn't figure out how to link to it directly.

I sit with those who as of this moment cannot believe. When I was 20 I had a perhaps-mushroom-influenced mental breakdown around the belief I had discovered the nature of God - core to my discovery being that no single path is better than another, as the son of a now agnostic Christian-American and a spiritually Hindu Indian immigrant, it was clear to me there was no one right way.

As I descended (or ascended?) back into rationalism I sit with an increased sensation that we as humans must make deep efforts on one another's behalf, because we may be all we have. Articles like The Aquarium and experiences like the Japan tsunami, the Haitian earthquake, and 9/11 all inspire me to believe that what we have in fact is each other, that there is no nihilism in that, and that empathy for others borne of the lack of surety that there will be some other accounting, later, is in fact required.

Said differently, the notion that the universe loves us, that all will be okay, might diminish our incentives to live this life with a healthy respect for it's randomness, with the humility that there may be only one shot, with a deep appreciation for empathy as the cornerstone of our humanity without requiring religious underpinning, and a belief that no further belief system is required, with its concomitant anti-intellectual and non-empirical remnants, to influence that sheer love of each other.

At the same time, I support and personally feel belief in the mystery of it all, recognizing that we don't know what we don't know; and I have a strong sense that the teachings of Buddha, of karma, of Judaism, of Mohammed, and of Christ have a great deal to offer - that these world views all are directionally healthy if interpreted without literalism, that they all imply reasons for gratitude and that they all help build social fabric as shared belief systems, and that those things are good things which probably outweigh the obvious downsides of groupthink and the devastating divisions they also cause with humans who otherwise have so much in common.

For lack of a better term I call this world-view Gratheism, aka Grateful Atheism, and believe it's a needed antidote to the condescending atheism of writers whose bravery I admire, like Hitchens and Dawkins, but who are - I don't think - building much social fabric, and who I suspect are not winning any converts.

Ticks

We have lots of ticks here.  I've pulled a couple hundred dog ticks off me. I always heard you needn't worry unless the much smaller deer tick embedded itself in you. How do you know? Well, a deer tick makes a rash that  looks like a bull's eye, they said. So you're always casually examining ... does that look like a bull's eye, does this look like a bull's eye? Well, once you've seen one, there's no mistaking it. The picture shows what I found on the side of my thigh yesterday, after I'd removed the tick, piece by piece, with the tiny tweezer that comes in a Swiss Army knife. The doctor said it was unlikely it'd been there for over 24 hours, so I didn't need to worry about Lyme's Disease, or the other things deer ticks can transmit to you. But antibiotics just in case. "And keep your eye on it," she said. So I'm keeping my one good eye on the bull's eye.

Droughts/Foul Language

When the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, their first in 86 years, people in these parts were pretty excited. Not me though. I didn't care. Sports-wise I care about only college basketball.

November 1963

In 1960 (I was a soldier in Germany and not quite old enough to vote for Kennedy) I thought my country was all set.  We'd have President John F. Kennedy until 1968; then we'd have President Robert F. Kennedy until 1976; and then we'd have President Edward M. Kennedy until 1984, by which time maybe one of the Kennedy grandchildren would be old enough to be President.  I could be proud forever and more.

On November 22, 1963, I was working in a small two-man (as we'd say then) Western Union office way up in the small town of Cadillac, Michigan.  I was filling in for the manager while he vacationed ... my job was going from town to town, filling in for other people.  In Cadillac my co-worker liked to take her lunch from noon to one; and I'd go from one to two.  When she returned from lunch she told me that it'd just come on the news that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.  We turned on the radio.  Strange names and places ... Dealey Plaza, Parkland Hospital, Texas Book Depository, Oswald, grassy knoll, Tibbets.

In an instant the future I'd supposed would come about was blasted to smithereens.  I walked around in disbelief for days.

Things Tucked in Books

Someone in Liverpool bought a book in a car-boot (yard) sale and found tucked in it a 1960 letter from Paul McCartney offering someone a job as drummer for a group called The Beatles; it was auctioned off this week at Christie's for over $55,000!  I was looking through some old books at a friend's recently deceased father's house but all I found was this card with its beseeching for an apostolic blessing from Pope Paul VI; it's possibly from the mid-sixties.  All offers will be considered.

Day of the Dead - RIP Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy wrote great novels and then, tired of novel writing, became a great poet.  At his death some in his family and some of his friends wanted him buried with his first wife, Emma, in St. Michael's Churchyard in Stinsford in Dorset; the Executor of his estate, however, demanded that he be honored by burial in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.  A compromise was reached: Hardy's heart was removed and buried with Emma; the rest of him was cremated and put to rest with his fellow poets in Westminster Abbey.

I have a thousand or so favorite lines of poems; one would be the last line of "During Wind and Rain".  I can't imagine walking in a cemetery on any day -- rainy or sunny -- without thinking of it.

Thomas Hardy - 1840 - 1928

During Wind and Rain

They sing their dearest songs—

       He, she, all of them—yea,

       Treble and tenor and bass,

            And one to play;

      With the candles mooning each face. . . .

            Ah, no; the years O!

How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

       They clear the creeping moss—

       Elders and juniors—aye,

       Making the pathways neat

            And the garden gay;

       And they build a shady seat. . . .

            Ah, no; the years, the years,

See, the white storm-birds wing across.

       They are blithely breakfasting all—

       Men and maidens—yea,

       Under the summer tree,

            With a glimpse of the bay,

       While pet fowl come to the knee. . . .

            Ah, no; the years O!

And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

       They change to a high new house,

       He, she, all of them—aye,

       Clocks and carpets and chairs

          On the lawn all day,

       And brightest things that are theirs. . . .

          Ah, no; the years, the years

Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

     -- Thomas Hardy

Hardy grave; down his scripted name raindrops, like tears, plough.

St. Michael's Church; Stinsford, England

All Saints Day

A Navy SEAL from Iowa, Jon T. Tumilson, was one of the 30 American troops killed August 6 when the Taliban downed their helicopter with a RPG. At Tumilson's funeral, his dog Hawkeye paid his last respects, walking up to the casket and lying down in front of it.