Reasons for God

I'm agnostic. I don't believe human beings can conceive of God. I don't believe people can know what God might want. In my experience, people who claim such things are trying to manipulate other people. Manipulate them with fear and and anger.

They tell us that God will reward us with an afterlife. But I don't need God to comfort me. I do not fear death.

They tell us that God will make us whole, will address all our grievances. But I don't need God to bless me. I am not aggrieved or bitter.

I don't need the God that those people offer. And yet, as an agnostic, I see how God, the concept if not the fact, can help me to lead a better life.

Atheists will often concede that holy writings, the wisdom of humanity accumulated over thousands of years, reveal extemporaneous truth. 

And if scripture teaches anything, it warns against the deadly sin of Pride.

So, I ask God to keep me humble. I thank God --whatever that may be --for confronting me with the stark fact that I am at the mercy of entities and forces that I can never understand.

And I ask God to receive my gratitude. For all I've been given. For all the beauty and joy in my life.

Mostly, I thank God for releasing me from the fear that I might one day have to pass judgement.

That would be beyond me.

Agnostic lament

Agnostic : a person who does not have a definite belief about whether God exists or not

By this definition, I'm an agnostic. As I see it, agnosticism is a recognition that Truth is forever beyond human comprehension. To believe otherwise is vanity --vanity and ignorance --whether it is the condemning piety of the faith-blind devotee or the scoffing cynicism of the jaded atheist.

I've discussed theology with persons from each of those groups --Believers and non-believers --and I've found that, apart from their fundamental disagreement about the existence of a "God," they share a dead-sure certainty.

Atheists discount scripture in favor of "science" or the "rational mind." That seems arrogant.  Scriptures are the collected wisdom of thousands of years of human contemplation. To mock the Upanishads or the Koran or the Bible is to ridicule our forefathers, our ancestors, ourselves.

Worse than the atheists, though, are the insufferably arrogant (and utterly misguided) religious zealots. The people who deny well-established phenomena (evolution, climate change, et alia) because such observations don't fit the simple reality they've derived from their shallow interpretation of scriptures. People like that deserve ridicule and scorn. When minds are that tightly shut, people become capable of all kinds of atrocities.

I'm all for ridiculing faith-healers, snake-charmers, and Tongues-speaking charlatans.  But not scriptures. The beauty and truth in scripture has outlasted the petty schemes of people like that for thousands of years. Atheists fall victim to the charlatans by allowing them to claim scripture as their own.

Consider these outtakes from various holy writings:

• To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven --Ecclesiastes 3
• A kind word and forgiveness is better than a charitable deed followed by hurtful words: God is self-sufficient and forbearing. --Quran
• Just as, my dear, by one clod of clay all that is made of clay is known, the modification being only a name, arising from speech, while the truth is that all is clay --Chandogya Upanishad 6:1:2-6

Believer or non-believer, we can all recognize truth in these verses, no?

Truth as metaphor

Some 2000 years later, I'm still haunted by the question that Pilate posed to Christ. "What is truth?"

As I stated in an earlier post, I believe that truth is unknowable.

Certainly, our attempts to empirically describe truth --the scientific disciplines --are inadequate. Mathematics, physics, natural history, et alia are founded on assumptions that invariably prove to be inadequate or erroneous as our understanding of the Universe increases. (Remember, just a few short centuries ago, scientists believed that all matter was composed of only four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.)

In the end, empirical knowledge of the Universe will always be imperfect and incomplete. Our human brains are finite, after all.

But humanity does have a tool with which to describe truth, and that is metaphor.

While empirical truth is short-lived and imperfect, metaphor is extemporaneous. Metaphor, by its nature, must be interpreted. Interpretations evolve as knowledge advances. Enduring metaphors, then --metaphors that withstand constant examination and reinterpretation --are as close to eternal truths as humans can conceive.

Referring to another post that I wrote about 5 years ago, I believe that, at their core, this is what the great faiths of the world have to offer humanity. The stories, the mythology that comprise these faiths (which are the distilled wisdom of thousands of years of human experience) --whether Christ's crucifixion, Mohammed's mountain moving, or Rama's battle with Ravana --are not descriptions of actual events, but metaphors that suggest truths that run deeper than human perceptions.

There is not, nor could there ever be, empirical evidence to prove, for example, that Moses parted the Red Sea in order to effect the escape of his people from Egypt 3500 years ago. To believe the literal truth of the story is preposterous. But what if the Red Sea story is a metaphor? What lesson might be taken from the story?

And if metaphor is mankind's highest expression of truth, then art is the pinnacle of human achievement. Because all art is metaphor, yes?

Here's a few short, famous metaphors to consider. What do you think? Might these qualify as eternal truths?

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances. --William Shakespeare

I am the good shepherd, … and I lay down my life for the sheep. --The Bible, John 10:14-15

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. --Khalil Gibran

Religiously-illiterate America: What does it mean?

Get a load of this.

Many different studies (read one account here) have found the United States to be the most religious of the industrialized nations.  And yet:

...a recent survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths. --from Huffington Post; read more here.

With all the ridiculous furor erupting over the location of mosques, and the insistence by some that the United States is a "Christian" nation, one would think that the passions on display are rooted in deeply held conviction.  But this survey shows that most Americans, and especially those who claim to be religious, don't know much about the core tenets of their faiths.

In support of the survey's findings, my own informal observations are that I am often more informed about religion than many supposedly religious people.  Believe me, folks, I've met some ignorant people purporting to be Christians, Muslims, Wiccans, and just about every other faith you'd care to name.  (Let me also quickly add that I have learned a lot from knowledgeable and reverent believers.)

What might it mean?  

My take on it is this:  Too often, in the United States, religious fervor is really just a veneer used to conceal tribalism and racial identity. Persons who have identified themselves as belonging to a particular faith feel that, by applying a label to themselves, they have fulfilled their obligations to seek Truth.  Nothing more need be done.

In short, this religious illiteracy is a manifestation of the intellectual laziness first brought into vogue by Ronald Reagan and culminating in the ultimate anti-intellectual, Junior Bush.  Let the clergy worry about all those impossible questions surrounding God and Man; as long as you call yourself a [insert your religious label here] your ass is covered.

I find the whole thing discouraging.

I'd make a pitch to those who call themselves religious:  whatever your faith, does it not warrant constant study and examination?  By continually questioning and exploring, are you not making your faith stronger?

There is a mini-quiz available here for those interested.  I answered 13 of the 15 questions correctly.  That put me in the 92nd percentile.  And I'm an Oregon agnostic.

Oregon agnostic

I believe that the search for Truth (or God, or Whatever-You-Choose-to-Call-It) is similar to a calculus expression.  That is, let Absolute Truth =  ∞; and let X = Human Comprehension.   The search for Truth might be expressed thusly:

lim {X -> ∞} f(x) = X/∞ = 0

Or, to put it another way:  Truth is incomprehensible to the human mind.  It is beyond our capacity to understand.  The best we can do is approach It, just as X approaches ∞. And no matter how close we get, we remain infinitely far away.

Such belief, of course, requires a degree of faith.  More faith, in fact, than is required to derive a literal interpretation of scripture.  By acknowledging that Truth is unknown and ultimately unknowable, one must accept that, at any moment in the journey through life, a sudden epiphany may render ridiculous all of one's previous assumptions and tenets.  Enlightenment is never absolute. 

So, regardless of the method we use to approach the Truth, be it Hindu mysticism, Buddhist tranquility, or strict adherence to the rigid dogma of the Children of Abraham, (any of which is as valid a method as any other) we cannot arrive at the Destination.

This, I suppose, is why I find objectionable so much of what passes for religion in the world.  Bible-thumping hypocrites, jihad warriors waving the Koran, and the brutal descendants of fanatic Simon Zealotes all seem to believe they have arrived at Truth.  They've stopped looking for It.  Instead, they try to compel others to believe as they do.     

Well, as a scion of this little corner of humanity's domain, where religion is largely viewed as a private matter, I reject all that.

I'm an Oregon agnostic, seeking with the full knowledge that I will never arrive.  Forty-eight years into it, and I'm still looking.

How about you, dear reader?  How does it seem to you?  I'm listening.

Note to Anonymous poster: The f(x) of my equation is X/∞ . X does not approach 0, it approaches infinity. And anything divided by infinity = 0, which is the point I was trying to make with this post.

Dream of forever

One morning, long ago, he awoke to the certain, unassailable realization that he was immortal.  This, after countless millennia:  eras of bliss and light, epochs of cruelty, savagery, long years of simple existence marked by the petty joys and tragedies common to every sentient being.

The truth struck him much as his very own thunderbolts had struck down the legions of his vanquished foes:   he could never die nor cease to be.  Never.

From that moment on, his existence became a tortuous burden, a hell more profound than any of the unnumbered gruesome and brutal deaths to which he had borne witness. Each experience was laced with horror.  Horror at the truth:  In the face of eternity, nothing registers.

Fast!  Feast!  It simply did not matter.  In the epiphany of revelation, he became mad.  And he understood immediately that madness was to be his one and only companion. For all eternity.

***

There came yet another morning when he awoke to find himself seated on a stone chair looking out from an aerie.  He sat above a green vale shrouded in the mist of a roaring falls.  Sunlight glinted off the damp, cool stones in the riverbed.  Refracted light, the full spectrum of colors, danced like phantoms among the water droplets.

In the days before his revelation, such a scene would have becalmed his heart.  Even in the many lifetimes of hardship and despair.  But now, such sentiments were forever erased.  Even their memory was indistinct and fading.

His son, the golden boy with the lyre, stood on the edge of the stone platform, waiting.  How long?  A minute?  A century?  Irrelevant.

"What is it, boy?" he asked.  His voice was stern out of unconscious habit.

"Thy brethren await, father."  The boy's voice was weary.  Could it be that the boy, too, had been damned by eternity?  Who could know?  Though a thousand-million years might pass, who could know?  There had been ten million boys before.

He stirred in response to the boy's statement, lifted his chin from his hand.  Very well, then.  For the billionth time...

On a whim (oh, rare gift!), he paused for a moment.  "Look there," he said to the boy.  He pointed down into the vale.  "Do you see that birch tree that grows on the far side of the ravine?  That birch is the descendant of a seed that was carried down the river, the sole refugee of a fire that consumed a great forest a thousand years ago.  The forest had arisen from the deposited silt carried on a flood ten thousand years before.  The flood was caused by the retreat of a great ice that had held the world in its grip for a million years.

"Do you know that every moment, every single instant, from the time when the first ice crystals began their southward encroachment to this very morning, when I behold my golden son, fingers poised on the strings of his lyre, I have endured my Great Burden?"

The boy cast his gaze downward, shifted his feet.

"Don't you understand?"  he said.  "No dish is so savory, nor pleasure so ecstatic, nor horror so appalling that it can avoid the entropy of the mundane.  Not though a million years pass!"

The boy frowned, sullenly.

Useless, of course.  But law is law.  "Very well," he sighed.  "Are they assembled, then?"

The boy nodded, brightening.

Slowly, he stood.  Far away galaxies altered their rotations to account for the displacement.

He stepped down onto the platform and followed the boy to a long stone stair that descended to a terrace, partially obscured in the mist.

As they went down, the sounds of the river seemed to amplify and resonate.  More so with each step.  He could see the others, his brethren, huddled on the stone terrace below.  They were chanting:  their voices joined to the song of the river.  They peered up at him, expectantly.  Come!  Bestow thy wisdom upon us! they seemed to enjoin.  Just as the billion gods before them had done.  Just as the billion gods after them would do.

As he stepped onto the terrace, they dropped to their knees before him.  Their reverent supplication was the one absurdity that could still evoke a trace of indignation in his being.  But that, too, would fade, was fading.

Their voices rose again, echoing the eons past and those yet to come.

"Hail, Zeus, King of the Gods!"

The Holy Man and the Grieving Mother

Thanks to my friend, Sarah, for the inspiration. This is an adaptation of a Buddhist story.Walking, a holy man came upon a woman lying prone before a holy shrine by the river. Her face was turned to the earth; her body was wracked with sobs. The monk's heart went out to her; he knelt beside her, and took her hand, asking "What is it, woman, causes you to sob so?"

The woman lifted her head to speak, but for a moment was only able to wail. Tears coursed down her cheeks. The monk waited. "I have lost my child," she managed, eventually. "My child was a fine boy, kind to his mother and to every living creature. His cheeks were more red than any sunset; his eyes more deep than any water well. But as he fished on the river bank he slipped into the water and was swept away. He is gone! Gone! Never to return to his mother's arms! My boy! My precious boy!" And she fell back to sobbing.

The holy man continued to hold her hand while she wept. After a time, she quieted and the monk spoke. "I cannot return your son, woman," he said. "But I know a way to ease your suffering." The woman, exhausted and desperate, implored him with her gaze.

The monk continued. "You must go to your village and seek out someone there; a person who is a stranger to grief. If you can find one person that has not suffered as you suffer now, bring him to me I will help you to live as he, without grief or sadness."

The hopeless pall on the woman's face lessened slightly. Surely there were many who had never suffered as she suffered on that day. "I... I will do it," said she. The holy man said that he would await her there, at the shrine by the river. Then he sat, with his begging bowl in his lap and the woman struggled to her feet and set off down the path to her village.

As she walked, the woman's heart rose. Perhaps the holy man did indeed know a way to ease her suffering. She must seek out a person whom tragedy had passed over. Her son was gone forever, but if she could find some respite to the burden of her grief... But as she walked, if ever she paused, the memory of her lost son came rushing back, and she was nearly overcome. And so she made her way back toward the village, alternately hopeful and despairing.

After a time, she came upon a man leading a horse from a field. The man was whispering in the horse's ear, stroking it's muzzle softly. He smiled as he whispered, and his eyes were filled with love for the animal.

"Here is a man content with his work," thought the woman. "Surely, he is untouched by the grief I know. I shall bring him to see my holy man."

But when she spoke to the man with the horse, and told him her tale, the man shook his head. "I am afraid I cannot go to your holy man, woman," he said gently, "for I have known grief. At one time I had a farm with many fine animals and my larders were full to bursting. Every new moon, I would feast the village, laying the best table for miles around. But rumor of my wealth spread too far. One night, bandits came and stole all my animals and burned my farm to the ground." He smiled, sadly. "Now I have this horse, my only companion in the world. We have no place to call home; we wander from village to village, pulling plows and carts for farmers who will hire us. But it is enough for me."

The tale the man with the horse had told her caused the woman to again remember her son and fresh tears streamed down her face. She wished the man well and set off again.

After a time, she came upon an old woman sitting before a hut. The old woman sat with her hands in her lap, gazing out at the ripened fields before her where the peasants were reaping. Her face was deeply furrowed, like the tilled earth in springtime, and her hair was white as river lilies.

"Here is an old woman, sitting by her home, awaiting the return of her children with the harvest's bounty," thought the grieving mother. "Surely this woman knows the peace for which I long. I shall take her to my holy man."

But when she told the old woman her story, the old women shook her head. "I must not go," said she. "I am an old woman. At one time, I was young and strong and beautiful. But now I am too old to work, too old to help my children in the fields. My husband has been gone for years and I am too ugly to find a new one. For a long time I grieved the loss of my husband and my strength and my beauty. But now I sit here during the day and watch the sun play on the fields and I help my daughters cook porridge when they return from their work. And someday soon, I will join my husband."

The grieving mother's heart ached at the old woman's story, imaging how it must have been to lose her husband and to become a burden to her own children. And again, she saw her own son's face as it had been in happier times. Sadly, she thanked the old woman and continued on her way.

At last, she arrived at her village. The people had mostly returned from the fields and the cook fires were crackling happily. The village children were gathered in the yard, laughing and running. The woman saw a strange man among them. A traveler with a painted face and enormous shoes and a beaming smile. The traveler chased the children, now galloping like a horse, now stooping and dragging his hands in the dirt like an ape, causing them to shriek with laughter. For an instance, the woman even forgot her own grief and delighted at the clown's antics.

"At last!" she thought. "Look how he capers without a care in the world, laughing amongst the children. Surely, here is a stranger to grief."

When finally, the children were called to their supper and scampered away to their huts, the clown sat in the shade of a tree and mopped at the sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief. The grieving mother came and sat beside him.

"Stranger," she said, "I have need of your help. My son was recently drowned in the river and I have been wasting away in grief. But a holy man has promised to teach me peace if I will bring to him one person who has avoided the agony of despair throughout his life. Will you come with me?" But, as she watched the clown's face changed. He brought his kerchief to his eyes and dabbed at them, and he sighed.

"Alas, woman," said he, "I cannot go to your holy man. At one time I had a wife and ten children. I was a wealthy and successful merchant and provided every need for my family. I was the happiest man in all the world. But a ravaging plague swept over my land and took my wife and my children from me. And since that time, I have wandered the land as you see now, clowning with children, laughing, playing the fool. It is what is left to me. But I will not squander it."

The grieving mother bowed her head and kissed the clown on his brow. Then she returned to her hut, set her cooking fire, and cooked rice and vegetables in the way that her son had liked. She took her pot of food and set out along the path.

When she came to the shrine by the river, the holy man was still there with his begging bowl in his lap. He was deep in his prayers and paid her no mind.

Quietly, she sat beside him, uncovered her pot, and spooned the rice and vegetables into his bowl. Sighing, she heard the river sigh in the distance.

The Hindus speak of Unity

The days grow shorter as we denizens of the northern hemisphere approach the winter solstice and, as often happens this time of year, my thoughts stray toward the nature of existence, toward the concept of God. And following up on my post, yesterday, commemorating Eid al-Addtha, I want to explore a little further the idea of henotheism, as practiced by Hindus.

Merriam-Webster defines henotheism thusly:

henotheism: the worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods

Years ago, in the heady days of the Mahatma Candy phenomenon, musician/philosopher-king/hopeful-muser Dan Binmore and I had a conversation about Hinduism which I still carry with me as a succinct layman's explanation of the faith.

As Dan explained it to me, Hindus generally believe in a single God, just as do the major western faiths. But the Hindus believe that there are many manifestations of God, and from these manifestations they derive their pantheon: Annapurna, Ganesha, Kali, Krishna, Vishnu and countless other deities.

Indeed, the Hindus further believe that everything, every rock, tree, human being, blade of grass, electron orbiting an atomic nucleus --literally everything is a part of God. God is the Universe.

Alone in an infinte sea

And, continuing on this idea, it follows that there is nothing beyond God. Think of a single creature, perhaps a jellyfish, floating in an endless sea of emptiness. Naturally, such a creature would desire to understand itself, to see itself. And so, this creature would find methods by which to do so.

And this, the Hindus contend, is the function of life, of living forms. Plants and animals (including humans) are organs, if you will, of the living God, by which God examines itself. So, each of us lives out his or her life in the Universe, providing input and stimuli to the Whole. Eventually, our corporeal forms break down and return to the Whole, only to take a new form and begin the cycle again. (Hence, the Hindu belief in reincarnation.)

This explanation, which Dan related to me in one of our many rewarding conversations, is beautiful in its simplicity, and also explains why Hindus are, indeed, henotheists. Each god, each deity, whether it is a pagan dryad or Christ the Savior, is but another manifestation of the One. As are we all.

So, there it is...in a nutshell, my understanding of the Hindu faith. Perhaps it is overly simplistic. But, I don't know... must truth be complex?

In any case, this is what happens when the days get short and I fall to brooding. Aw, hell... maybe I should just stick to politics.

(Happy Birthday, Mia!)

Karma spares no one?

Every once in a while, I'll see a bumper sticker or a graffiti scrawl or a comic that really strikes a chord within me; that sets my mind to wandering and really gets me scratching my chin.

The other day, while I was out walking around the labyrinthine suburban streets of Wilsonville, Oregon, I came across an automobile with a bumper sticker that read: "Karma spares no one." Well, this was one of those.


The phrase struck me as somehow incongruent. It seemed to assert that karma is something that is to be dreaded and feared. Turning to Miriam Webster, we see that the verb "spare" is defined thusly:

spare: to forbear to destroy, punish, or harm

So the verb "spare" implies that karma is the visitation of retribution on a person for his or her transgressions. Well, this doesn't seem quite right, does it? This doesn't fit my understanding of the word "karma."

Miriam Webster defines karma thusly:

karma: the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence.

Far be it from me to dispute the definition of a word with Miriam Webster. Nonetheless, I find this definition overly clinical. In particular, constraining the word to its original context, within the milieu of eastern philosophies, ignores how it has evolved and melded into the modern American lexicon. Today in the layman's tongue of a post-'60s America, could we not add a second definition?

karma (2): the rewards or punishments visited upon an individual as a result of the virtue (or lack thereof) of his/her behaviors.

This definition, I think, comes closer to the meaning of the word. At least, in the way that it is used today.

So, returning to our phrase, karma may indeed spare no one, but does it not also reward everyone?

Occasionally, on this blog, I've mused about faith and the existence of a divine being. But, karma, as I have defined it above, is something that is beyond doubt.

We have all known people who are unethical or needlessly aggressive or dishonest. But, if you think about it, how many of those people would you also describe as being happy? Those persons may have money or power; they may have tangible symbols of success around them. But have you known any such people who you can say are at peace? Well, I certainly haven't.

Conversely, we've all known people who are honest and kind and sincere. And, in my experience, these people tend to be happy (or, if not happy, at least at peace), regardless of the amount of money they might earn, or the house in which they live, or their rank in the social ladder.

Is this not evidence of karma? And, if it is, rather than "Karma spares no one," would it not be more accurate to alter the statement as follows?

Karma never fails

A smile for Maty

My wife, Maty, works as a nursing assistant at a home for Alzheimer's patients. Yesterday, she called me from work, in tears. "My tenant passed," she said. "The woman, she passed."

Maty has been working there long enough (some 3 or 4 months now) to have known tenants that have died. She has become accustomed to coming to work of a morning and finding that certain of the people for whom she has been caring have passed away. So, I was a little taken aback by the strength of Maty's emotions for this particular tenant.

That afternoon, as we drove home, Maty related the story. This woman, whom I shall refer to as Mrs. Cedar, had recently received a visit from her daughter. The daughter had been out of touch with Mrs. Cedar for many years. In fact, she had been unaware that Mrs. Cedar's husband, the woman's father, had passed away several years earlier. The daughter had had to call several nursing homes in the area before finally locating her mother.

The story, as Maty related it to me, was sad and bittersweet. The daughter was glad to see her mother, and Mrs. Cedar was happy to have a visitor, but it is unclear if she was able to grasp that the woman coming to visit her was her own child.

The daughter, seeing that Mrs. Cedar was well-cared-for was effusive in her expressions of gratitude toward Maty and the other staff. "Thank you so much for taking care of my mother," she told them as she left.

Mrs. Cedar began having problems breathing later that same week. When Maty left work on Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Cedar had been diagnosed with pneumonia. The general consensus among the staff was that she would not survive the night. But when Maty returned to work on Monday morning, Mrs. Cedar was still alive, and seemed to have recovered despite all expectations.

Maty went about the routine of caring for her: changing her bedclothes, feeding her, and then showering her. But during the shower, Mrs. Cedar's breathing became labored and rasping. Maty and the other attendant became concerned and they called for the facility nurse to come at once.

At that point, Mrs. Cedar seemed to relax a bit, looked at Maty and her coworker, and smiled. When the nurse arrived, moments later, Mrs. Cedar had passed.

Maty had not had the experience of one of her tenants dying in her arms, and she was profoundly saddened by the experience. Yesterday night, she was not at all her usual cheerful self, and she went to bed very early.

I've been musing on the incident myself, and although I didn't witness the event firsthand, I have applied my own belief to it in such a way as to make it work for me. See what you think:

I believe that sometimes human beings are given the gift of awareness as they stand on that final threshold. And I believe that this is what happened for Mrs. Cedar.

When my own grandfather passed in 1999, also from pneumonia, I believe that he made the conscious decision that his time had come. He had recently been moved into an assisted care home, which he disliked even as he realized that it was necessary. His older sister, toward whom he felt some responsibility, had passed earlier in the year, and the rest of his family was doing relatively well. I believe he decided that he had done all he could do for the people around him and took the opportunity of his pneumonia to exit the stage.

I think Mrs. Cedar had a similar experience. Her long-lost daughter had come back into her life after many years, and at some level, Mrs. Cedar must have known this, despite her Alzheimer's affliction. A loose end in her life had been tied up. Perhaps, in those final moments, as she was being bathed and fed by these kindly women, she saw her opportunity to go. But, perhaps, she didn't want to seem ungrateful; perhaps she wanted to convey her thankfulness to the people that had cared for her in the last stages of her life.

And so, she smiled. A parting smile. A smile for Maty.

A rationale for faith

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. -- 1 Corinthians 13

For the better part of my life, I have wrestled with the concept of God. The product of a union between a part-time Catholic and a part-time agnostic, I was not indoctrinated into any particular faith. However, as a child, I did ponder God, and professed to believe in Him.

As I came into physical (as opposed to emotional) manhood, and the flower of my youth, when the world seemed to be at my feet, I came to believe that God was unnecessary to me. I read all the classics of literature (including the Bible) to enhance my understanding of the world; I maintained my health with vigorous exercise; I was a stranger to defeat. I drew strength from my ability to live what I considered a moral and informed life without relying on what I believed to be a crutch for weaker men.

But then, of course, life dealt me a lesson or two: divorce (the dissolution of my first marriage), death (my grandparents, my father, my aunt), and the suffocating triumph of ignorance and fear (the Iraq war and the beguilement of the American people by the Bush administration). Gradually, I came to realize that there were many things in this world that were greater and more powerful than was I.

Dad

When my father passed, in 2001, his wish was that I would be baptized in the Catholic church. In accordance, I contacted the local Catholic parish and undertook to study their faith with an eye toward conversion. To my surprise, the lessons I derived from this experience did not conflict with my secular humanist views. Rather than interpreting the Bible literally, I was encouraged to view the stories as metaphors....metaphors from which we interpret meaning in our lives today. Whether or not there was actually a Great Flood that drowned everyone except for Noah and his family is unimportant. The importance of the story (myth?) is the meaning that we derive from it.

Of course, many Bible-thumping Evangelicals will shriek "Heresy!" at such a notion. The idea that the Bible is subject to interpretation is a frightening prospect for those that feel they must have concrete, moral absolutes to guide them through the perils of the modern world. But, for me, it is an acknowledgement of what has become obvious: I am just a man; just a tiny part of the Great Creation.

There has been no sudden epiphany (at least, so far). Only a gradual realization that God is something so vast and beyond comprehension that no one faith (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, et alia) can define Him, can claim to know Him. And how can one deny something that is beyond definition?

One might scoff at my father's end-of-life return to the church. A larger-than-life figure, who scorned weakness and stupidity, he had rediscovered the church at perhaps his weakest moment: after being diagnosed with Lupus. In short, his conversion came as he faced his own mortality. But when in one's life is one likely to confront the truth of one's existence? As Leonard Cohen so beautifully wrote:

And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water

And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower

And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him

He said, "All men are sailors, then, until the sea shall free them;"