I originally posted the following elsewhere, back in 2006, after -
A) A period of self-imposed exile from organised religion.
B) The deaths of my Father, Mother, and then, my only sibling.
C) Deciding to never again live a stifled, rotten, lie of a life wherein I am 'obligated' to sacrifice both conscience and humanity in order to unquestioningly comply with any religious community or doctrine, out of superstitious fear, or in order to save face.
Our time is short, friend - if you like what I say in this new blog - if you find it helpful; if it speaks of/to your concerns - then it has, at least in part, fulfilled its purpose.
Thank you:
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again - T.S. Eliot.
At times during the course of our lives - and frequently initiated by some seemingly mundane event - our understanding of Divinity or Aseity shifts.
This shift may effect every aspect of our lives, and may well appear to both ourselves and those near to us to be an unwelcome, disruptive, or even, in some cases, a dark and destructive force. It is seldom, if ever, the smooth transition, or joyous phenomenon, one would perhaps imagine it to be; a happy (re)discovery (or drawing closer) of one’s destiny. Rather, what often unfolds, preliminarily, is an acute sense of the loss of God, of purpose, and of life itself:
A black and soulless existence encroaches; a broken highway, which stretches out before us - silently, with not even a whisper of a promise to comfort us, to greet us. And behind, still visible, as if through glass, our old friends, brothers and sisters, like phantoms, rejoice still, amidst the rubble of our abandoned shelter, as though drugged and delirious, in a conception of Deity whom to us is rendered redundant, being now but the embodiment of the death of our eternities.
One may thus, by extension, become embittered and distrustful, to the point of hatred of those who follow or take succour from, any religious practice and/or belief, in order to try and escape the pain of such benightment; believing that this , shutting out and shunning what we ourselves once found to be our raison d'être, will return to us our hearts, our youth, our apparently wasted years.
Yet it is only by traversing this fractured, lonely, and uncertain road, that we may again meet with Him, the Worshipful, whom we may come to know, sometimes chooses to reveal Himself in - and, it would seem - as Absence.
At times during the course of our lives - and frequently initiated by some seemingly mundane event - our understanding of Divinity or Aseity shifts.
This shift may effect every aspect of our lives, and may well appear to both ourselves and those near to us to be an unwelcome, disruptive, or even, in some cases, a dark and destructive force. It is seldom, if ever, the smooth transition, or joyous phenomenon, one would perhaps imagine it to be; a happy (re)discovery (or drawing closer) of one’s destiny. Rather, what often unfolds, preliminarily, is an acute sense of the loss of God, of purpose, and of life itself:
A black and soulless existence encroaches; a broken highway, which stretches out before us - silently, with not even a whisper of a promise to comfort us, to greet us. And behind, still visible, as if through glass, our old friends, brothers and sisters, like phantoms, rejoice still, amidst the rubble of our abandoned shelter, as though drugged and delirious, in a conception of Deity whom to us is rendered redundant, being now but the embodiment of the death of our eternities.
One may thus, by extension, become embittered and distrustful, to the point of hatred of those who follow or take succour from, any religious practice and/or belief, in order to try and escape the pain of such benightment; believing that this , shutting out and shunning what we ourselves once found to be our raison d'être, will return to us our hearts, our youth, our apparently wasted years.
Yet it is only by traversing this fractured, lonely, and uncertain road, that we may again meet with Him, the Worshipful, whom we may come to know, sometimes chooses to reveal Himself in - and, it would seem - as Absence.
