"The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgement appear the only result of out most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistable contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarreling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy."-David Hume, "Natural History of Religion" (Oxford), p185
I do no presume to understand the inner workings of this universe. My life plays out like an vinyl audio recording of T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of Alfred Prufrock", caught at the moment in which Prufrock simply cannot decide. My faith is not of agnosticism and certainly not atheism, and I cut the ties from the monotheistic tradition last year after severe philosophical questioning. Deism strikes me as the loneliest of all faiths. I am a pantheist and my faith is in the world and the surrounding universe.
Herzen, Thoreau, Emerson, Hugo, Tolstoy... May we resurrect the sentiment of these writers as not to lose sight of what we should be striving for; if not religious uniformity at least a way of living together. I have no interest in prolonging my life or reaching heaven and there is no handshake from up above that could take the pain out of the loss of my tenderest memories, which are attached to the soil and to nature itself. I believe that we flare out like spent fireworks in the night sky, that the value of life is that at one point it is life and at another it is nothing but spent time. Spent time is better for myself and a way of allowing me to make the most of myself and of my time. Writing earlier in the week I mentioned that I no longer see death as an end to life; it is a prompt to start life and to fill it with passion and cultivate it as though you intend to make the most wonderful and fruitful garden of it.
"The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others."
-Cormac McCarthy
When I read McCarthy I feel like I'm entering wild and unknown places and the unfamiliar begins to engulf the surrounding area. But the sense of this quote is that one must make one's own sense of it, that as long as one is willing to admit that the world is a sometimes unforgiving place that it is also only a matter of realising its expansive nature that one might realise the freedom will not let itself be tamed. For freedom is in the abstract; freedom, like time, cannot be overcome and nature reclaims the troublesome who temporarily seize it when it takes them to the grave. And along with them go the truly virtuous, at any given moment, for what learning and satisfaction would there be if nature herself protected its inhabitants?
It all appears with such clarity before me that God is an ever-renewing source, is ever surrounding the universe and is woven in with all its events. For the pantheist God is everywhere and one need never feel alone because God can even be found within the spirit of the self. By marrying philosophy to knowledge, as Alexandre Dumas, the true meaning of the Gospels might be understood. And I by no means discount the Gospels; after reading the King James Bible the Gospels resounded within myself. But I take what I will and insist that God is latent in everything and everyone. The real trouble is bringing it to the surface.
I do no presume to understand the inner workings of this universe. My life plays out like an vinyl audio recording of T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of Alfred Prufrock", caught at the moment in which Prufrock simply cannot decide. My faith is not of agnosticism and certainly not atheism, and I cut the ties from the monotheistic tradition last year after severe philosophical questioning. Deism strikes me as the loneliest of all faiths. I am a pantheist and my faith is in the world and the surrounding universe.
Herzen, Thoreau, Emerson, Hugo, Tolstoy... May we resurrect the sentiment of these writers as not to lose sight of what we should be striving for; if not religious uniformity at least a way of living together. I have no interest in prolonging my life or reaching heaven and there is no handshake from up above that could take the pain out of the loss of my tenderest memories, which are attached to the soil and to nature itself. I believe that we flare out like spent fireworks in the night sky, that the value of life is that at one point it is life and at another it is nothing but spent time. Spent time is better for myself and a way of allowing me to make the most of myself and of my time. Writing earlier in the week I mentioned that I no longer see death as an end to life; it is a prompt to start life and to fill it with passion and cultivate it as though you intend to make the most wonderful and fruitful garden of it.
"The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others."
-Cormac McCarthy
When I read McCarthy I feel like I'm entering wild and unknown places and the unfamiliar begins to engulf the surrounding area. But the sense of this quote is that one must make one's own sense of it, that as long as one is willing to admit that the world is a sometimes unforgiving place that it is also only a matter of realising its expansive nature that one might realise the freedom will not let itself be tamed. For freedom is in the abstract; freedom, like time, cannot be overcome and nature reclaims the troublesome who temporarily seize it when it takes them to the grave. And along with them go the truly virtuous, at any given moment, for what learning and satisfaction would there be if nature herself protected its inhabitants?
It all appears with such clarity before me that God is an ever-renewing source, is ever surrounding the universe and is woven in with all its events. For the pantheist God is everywhere and one need never feel alone because God can even be found within the spirit of the self. By marrying philosophy to knowledge, as Alexandre Dumas, the true meaning of the Gospels might be understood. And I by no means discount the Gospels; after reading the King James Bible the Gospels resounded within myself. But I take what I will and insist that God is latent in everything and everyone. The real trouble is bringing it to the surface.
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