If It's Greener...

The difference between a blog entry and a formal essay, at least in my estimation, is that you can ramble aimlessly in a blog, and it seems almost to be half the point.  Blogs can be a sound board for one's own thoughts, hypothetically typed as if speaking to oneself in the mirror out loud.  Except I'm very sure I'm not speaking out loud as I type right now.  Still, blogs are cathartic to some because they (like me) articulate their thoughts more cohesively in print form.  It makes sense, really.  If you change your mind about something, like I have at least twice so far, you can backspace it into cyber-oblivion, with no one the wiser.  About to make that comment about something or someone you've been waiting for so long to do, but chickened out at the last second?  Reminds me of the time I chickened out on the Kamakaze slide at Magic Mountain when I was in Grade 11, except less embarrassing.  Side-bar (because I'm allowed in blogs, where the digression is more acceptable):  the Magic Mountain t-shirt mom and dad bought for me that day stayed in my wardrobe for over fifteen years.  Every time I wore it, it was a reminder that on that sunny day in 1991, I failed.  For years I swore I would go back and avenge my humiliation.  Now, I go to Magic Mountain like everyone else, but I look up at the hulking sentinel that dominates the MM sky with a secret satisfaction.  The slide didn't win.  By choosing not to go back, I acknowledged that I had not succeeded, and opted to walk away with my head high.  We spend too much time worrying about righting wrongs.  Some wrongs just remain wrong.  They also remain finished.

I have written publicly before about how I feel about religion.  It is one of those subjects that once it arises in conversation, it becomes that white elephant in the room.  People know it's there, no one wants to address it head on for fear of offending someone, yet secretly we all behold it in our own way.  You might think the elephant looks lovely standing over there by the curtains, while I might find it's just taking up space, stepping on everyone's toes and occassionally smelling bad.  All the other guests may feel some or none of these things, but the point is it's there.  Irregardless (a little nod to my grammar friends out there, we spoke of this recently), I have an ever-changing opinion about religion, ranging from sympathetic to scathing sometimes in mere minutes.  One little-known fact about me is that I was quite involved with my home church, Trinity United in Port Elgin, where I took pride in my years of service bars I earned for consecutive years of attendance in Sunday School.  I have something like thirteen or fourteen of them, I think; they're in mom's jewelry box, so mom, if you're reading, can you see how many exactly?  After that, I taught a class for a couple years--poorly, but I filled a spot.  I was good friends with the Minister, who entrusted me to prepare two services and conduct them in his absence, and I was told they went rather well.  I did everything but play the organ.  And it was a neat experience, and one hell of conversation piece!

And then I did the one thing you should never, ever do if you are religious.  I got an education.  I minored in Religious Studies at St. Thomas, originally out of an appreciation for Biblical study and the history of the Scriptures.  Liberal arts, however, introduced me to the notion that there is more out there than meets the eyes and ears.  I learned that the Christian world is brim full of contradiction.  Evidence pointing to the veracity of the doctrine is scant at best, and absurd at worst.  I became certain that blind faith in things people wrote centuries and millennia ago have caused people to do some really awful things.  Finally, I found myself questioning whether or not a man named Jesus really knows me, or whether or not anything mysterious is out there smiling kindly at me, assuredly guiding me to better times while I suffer the humiliation of Kamakaze slides and other unmentionable embarrassments.  

It was during these years, some of the most trying of my life, where I took it upon myself to learn about some of the other writings from back then, some from the Dead Sea Scrolls, some from the Nag Hammadi documents, and some other Gnostic writings.  I can't pretend I know even the tip of the iceberg of material out there, but I can say that the movie 'Stigmata' pointed me to the Gospel of Thomas.  Long lost in the desert of Egypt, among the Nag Hammadi collection, this unaccepted gospel was deemed heretical, and cast aside when the powers-that-be assembled what we now recognize as the New Testament.  Who got to pick what stayed or went is anyone's guess, and the criteria for inclusion is sketchy, but Thomas' gospel struck me as fascinating for one particular reason.  It says, and I quote:
"From me all came forth, and to me all return.  Split a piece of wood, and I am there.  Lift a stone and you will find me there."  Then I began to think about why open space means so much to me.  Solitude is as close to a religious experience as I think I've ever found, particularly when I'm near the sea.  I began to craft the sincere belief that God does in fact exist, but that we are all a part of it.  Everything around us is God, from whence we came and where we return.  Maybe the big religions understood it once, but have lost sight of it since.  Makes sense really; when too many self-agrandising people start to run something, it goes right to the dogs.

So long story short, I think God is Nature.  Henceforth, I'll capitalize it as such.  Nature is really all-powerful; if humankind thinks it has the upper hand, Nature will swiftly kick its ass.  And justifiably so.  I can just hear the echo of the late Graham Chapman, speaking (from Nature) quoting that awesome line from the Holy Grail "How DARE you profane this place with your presence?!"

I was inspired to write about this by a visit I received to my front door by a couple really friendly ladies campaigning for the local Kingdom Hall.  It's the one on St. Mary's Street, which is really Killarney Road, just around the corner from my house.  I was up having coffee, looking over my last blog actually, when I saw them filing up my front step, tote bags and testaments in hand, dressed to the nines and being monitored from a safe distance by two gentlemen in a fancier car than mine at the base of my driveway.  Naturally, I had to talk to them.  This isn't new, I've chatted with Jehovah's Witnesses countless times.  Once, I greeted them on the Greenhouse porch in my Taz boxers with a beer and a cigarette.  That was a short conversation.

Anyhow, they tried really hard to find out why I was so skeptical about anything they had to share, but I didn't have the heart to tell them I had it all figured out.  I don't have to retort that I know where to find God, because it would have ended in a stalemate anyway.  I have no right to convince them one thing or another, and that's why people hate when they come to the door.  No one wants to be shoved in any direction they can't choose on their own.  Even the Witnesses.  So what if I've got all kinds of angles to play,  a five-figure education full of logic and rhetoric to blow their tenets out of the primordial soup?  It doesn't matter.  And one more thing, what if I'm wrong?  What if it's greener on their side?  Sometimes I wonder; their property always looks so nice and pristine.  Deer graze in the yard there all the time.  I could have sworn I saw Bambi and Thumper flitting their eyelids at me that one time.  And with no windows or anything, they must have something really special going on in there.  When the ladies realized I wasn't going to crack, they very kindly offered to come back one day soon with literature for me to read, and I said that would be fine, because I like reading.  They never did, and I was somewhat offended, because they promised me literature.  I almost went to the Kingdom Hall to follow up on it.

I once read that they believe that only 144 000 people can actually get into heaven.  It seems odd that anyone who believes that would want to try to recruit more, when there are millions of believers already out there, not to mention the ones that have already passed away.  I needn't go any further exploring that paradox; most religions face conundrums like this everyday.  The best thing you can do is just accept something at face value and hope the hand you're holding is a winner.  Or, you can just turn around and go tubing on the Lazy River.