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More religion, sorry. ;)
In a post I made a while back, I talked about what constituted good writing for me.
I described it as the kind of writing that would make me cry out: "Yes! That's exactly how I would have put it if I had had the presence of mind to do so!"
Which brings me to the real topic of this post:
Good writing is this. This is what religion has always been to me: a tearing, a sundering, the blissful rending of flesh and muscle tissue. My mind has never been able to convince my heart that God is nothing but an abstraction meant to pacify ignorant people who lacked the science to explain the universe.
Even now that millions of galaxies have been proven to exist outside our own, a fact that makes the idea of God and the Earth-centric theology that has been passed down over the ages obsolete, ridiculous even, I can't slough the idea off where it has clung to my skin.
My mind tells me constantly: the idea of an omnipotent being creating the Earth makes no sense now. Why would He send his only Son to this one piddly planet in order to save us? Why not another planet? Why would God play favourites? The Bible doesn't account for anything other than Earth, and even then it accounts for a very small part of it. It can't be your reference. Your omnipotent God has no place in the modern scale of Creation. It's too vast to be encompassed in that one tiny concept. It doesn't work.
My mind still hasn't been able to explain to me why each day is a miracle. Why, when I sing a hymn or a Christmas carol, my heart sings louder than my vocal chords. Why each tree, each blade of grass, each minute that passes calls to me to transcend myself. Why words will bring tears to my eyes. Why I mourn the death of people I have never known and will likely never know. Why I rejoice at the thought of new life, of rebirth.
"Hard sounds and the rush of your spirit."
That, my friends, is faith. That is how I would have described my faith, had I only had the presence of mind to put those words together in that way.
In a post I made a while back, I talked about what constituted good writing for me.
I described it as the kind of writing that would make me cry out: "Yes! That's exactly how I would have put it if I had had the presence of mind to do so!"
Which brings me to the real topic of this post:
Good writing is this. This is what religion has always been to me: a tearing, a sundering, the blissful rending of flesh and muscle tissue. My mind has never been able to convince my heart that God is nothing but an abstraction meant to pacify ignorant people who lacked the science to explain the universe.
Even now that millions of galaxies have been proven to exist outside our own, a fact that makes the idea of God and the Earth-centric theology that has been passed down over the ages obsolete, ridiculous even, I can't slough the idea off where it has clung to my skin.
My mind tells me constantly: the idea of an omnipotent being creating the Earth makes no sense now. Why would He send his only Son to this one piddly planet in order to save us? Why not another planet? Why would God play favourites? The Bible doesn't account for anything other than Earth, and even then it accounts for a very small part of it. It can't be your reference. Your omnipotent God has no place in the modern scale of Creation. It's too vast to be encompassed in that one tiny concept. It doesn't work.
My mind still hasn't been able to explain to me why each day is a miracle. Why, when I sing a hymn or a Christmas carol, my heart sings louder than my vocal chords. Why each tree, each blade of grass, each minute that passes calls to me to transcend myself. Why words will bring tears to my eyes. Why I mourn the death of people I have never known and will likely never know. Why I rejoice at the thought of new life, of rebirth.
"Hard sounds and the rush of your spirit."
That, my friends, is faith. That is how I would have described my faith, had I only had the presence of mind to put those words together in that way.
