Ugh
I hate hashtags.
Constant Havoc
Yes, I thought about this stuff before I put it here.
Month: November, 2014
November 16, 2014
Truth
I think I’m an anomaly. I want to know the truth, even if it contradicts something I hold dear. I am willing to step back from what I think and believe and allow those things to be questioned.
I do have some precious ideas that would pain me greatly to let go. The most important of those ideas are the spiritual ones. I do not fear disagreement with my spiritual beliefs as some people do. I don’t need to defend them. I recognize my spirituality is not based on anything that can be empirically verified.
My spiritual ideas feel right.
That’s all. There’s nothing more to it.
It feels right.
This understanding that my spirituality feels right is not new. However, the type of spiritual practice I enjoy today was not possible when I practiced religion. Having another person define my relationship with existence I see as larger than what can be described with our five senses was too confining. I am much calmer now that I left religion and all its trappings. I don’t need to explain anything to anybody. I sit and know that I am part of a magnificent reality.
Leaving religion freed me.
I am not in any way a materialist who views life mechanistically. I am more than chemical processes occurring in the mass called my brain. I recognize those processes take place, but I reject the idea they define me. I do not think the day will come when a scientist will open my skull and find me.
I am the memory of the cascading scent of freshly turned earth and hot marigolds on a summer’s day.
I am waking from a long nap riding in the car, opening the door only to be assaulted by a wall of fragrant pines.
I am the sound my foot makes in the gravel as I walk with my son as we view the ruins in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.
I am the first sight of a clear night’s stars glistening overhead.
I am the taste of warm skin under my lips.
I am vast.
November 8, 2014
More Ephemera
I like old names. I like traditional spellings for names, too. I am not a fan of inventing names. Naming is an art. It marks a person for life, and it should, therefore, be taken quite seriously. A name can lift a person or weigh them down like an anchor. My children have names that have been in our families for a long time.
I am infatuated with the music duo 2Cellos. I absolutely love rock music played on classical instruments. There are many very good performers marrying these two streams today. It’s very exciting.
Humans are hard-wired to try to control. Our first attempts at communication are about control. The baby feels hunger, so it cries, and the parents give it food. It learns to cry when it wants something very quickly. We carry this idea throughout our lives. Crying got us food, so why don’t our attempts to manage other areas of our lives yield similar results? As we age, I think each of us has to come to terms with our relative lack of power. There is very little in my life I can control. I do my part, and then I have to sit back and watch events unfold.
Education may be the most important activity we do. Everything starts with education.
Why hate? Why do people revel in the filth that hate churns up? I have felt hate, and it upset me so much I have endeavored my whole life not to feel it again. I have yet to hear about hate that was rational or justified. It harms the one who harbors the hatred.
Studying the classics made me a richer man. There is very little original thought since the Greeks. We may have more technology, but we humans have not changed in the past 3,000 years.
I like the Internet very much. I can wander around it all day. There is a lot here that makes me smile and laugh and cry, and there is much that gives me hope.
People are wonderful.
The arc of history is moving to a more peaceful and egalitarian world. It is a slow process, but it is happening.
For most of my life, I resisted the notion that I should love myself. It sounded too self-centered. I was raised in a strict, fundamentalist evangelical Christian family, so I often heard that I was unworthy and sinful. Loving myself seemed wrong. I had to give up religion to find the peace that religion said it would give me.
Quitting religion improved my spirituality vastly. When I rejected the notion someone else should tell me how to approach divinity, my approaches to divinity began to give me the answers others kept telling me they had for me.
I like thought-full people. I want to surround myself with people who like to think carefully about many different topics.
Constant Havoc 