When
I was younger I was taught the structure of Catholicism. As I have become older I have come to realize
that my understanding of Catholicism was always coated with a layer of
you-can-not-be-serious-we-say-this-but-do-not-believe-it-literally
footnote. I now see that in fact many of
the pew squatters actually did take this transubstantiation and interactive
prayer thing literally and I found myself thrust into laughter.
What
I assumed was an internal exploration into finding God in others was in fact a
political party. This was a party in
which faith became a sort of voting currency.
One was to gather guilt, humility, and sublimation in exchange for a
lack of damnation and a passport to a playground to bask in the arbiter’s
grace. I found this form of faith to be
sadistic on the part of such a manufactured deity and masochistic on the part
of humans. I left or better say realized
I was never really there to begin with.
I
still have faith. However, that
definition of faith has been cleansed of such myopic taints as a religious
corporate-sponsorship. Jesus can go in
the closet with the Easter Bunny and Santa and play duck-duck-goose. My faith is in the interconnected
consciousness of our collective free wills recognizing that which we are
despite a confirmation through our five human senses being possible. We are a super-organism as humans on this
planet, but just as there are innumerable other planets in other galaxies we
are beholden to these forms of complex life just the same.
I
do not believe in an interactive God, but I do believe that the injuries we
cause to others cascade into our internal beings not as penalty of damnation of
praise of grace, but as injuries of the now in the reverberations that define
our lack of actual separation.
I
have expounded on these concepts far more in my other writings that I will do
here, but in context to faith, I ask myself why a man takes an active wake each
morn. Why does he expel effort at all
and not simply truncate his existence in a heinous act of destruction causing
others to cease his life or do the deed himself? The reason we are here and compelled to live
is to do that which we could not as a non-physical God, to choose. We have choice and in choice there is a before,
a during, and an after. Choice requires
time and any version of us as part of God would exist outside of time.
We
wake and bed with this time and these choices for such a miniscule expanse upon
the expanding universe and in it we are preoccupied with finances, toys and all
ornaments of distraction, but all true seekers find the arenas of love,
generosity, existential understanding, peace, and yes faith. We have faith that we are bonded and others
will see this bond. We have faith that
the man with the option to end our life or another’s out of violent selfishness
chooses another path. Whether this is
the state or an individual, our faith is in the collection of free wills involved. For in no scenario can a free will be
abdicated. Viktor Frankyl taught us all
the power of choice in life’s nadir.
So
my faith is a burrowing confidence in my own volition, to choose. I choose my love of what I bring. My faith is in each and every being to be cognizant of the intricacy of that which comprises our whole, our own
place and that of myself and every other.
This recognition is paramount to my definition of faith.
When
we usurp this individual volition with the authoritarian decry of an omnipotent
deity we default our own autonomy by considering the childish notion of God or
devil playing fancy to spoil or bless our accomplishments or travesties. This is of little value in accumulating a
purpose of life. For existence to be founded in worship is to see such a
miniscule fraction of why life would be created at all out of
nonexistence. If that be the case, let
us stay there. Such a deity has equal
praise and disdain if physical existence were to never come to be. Yet we are here and why.
So
many deaths of famine and murder, tragedies to the loving and the hateful are
brushed away as random. There is no
randomness only the laws of science and the free will of beings capable of understanding
that something outside of physical existence must be the impetus to physical
existence. It is the chicken and the egg
in a varied iteration (and if you have not figured out that question by the age
of ten I am saddened by your lack of scientific comprehension.)
So
I have faith in God, but not the variety of God most temple-goers utilize. I have a different faith, one without statues
or mythical tales or a fear of going beyond and beyond questions to further
questions. I am at peace with what we
are as humans. I am at peace with the Brazilian
Marmosets and the South African Aids children.
I am at peace with the Catholic bishops of Rome and the slum children of
Mumbai. I am at peace with the homeless
men of New Orleans and the bankers of Wall Street. I see the why behind the smiles and smirks
and see not a cop out. These lives burrow
into us all, however our hardened calluses may numb our injections, these
thoughts and acts delve into who we are.
This
is my faith that I may see them. My
faith is that when a man or woman walks up to me that I see the human and not the
shell, that I listen, that I hear, that I respond as human and not as a shell
or out of compulsion or fear of retribution.
I do not do this for a tax deduction or benefit of repayment of
self-compensation, but of knowing that which I do to or with this other is
repaid to the whole, which will unfold into our entire purpose. If not this, then what; if not now then when;
if not me then who; if I do not see, if I do not hear then why am I here in
existence at all? My faith is to bear
the openness, the awareness and to deter the fears to respond when someone
asks, do you see me; do you hear me and I may find the faith to answer yes.
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