I Dunno

[poliphilo]

I'm not a believer. Not any more. But I'm not an atheist. Atheism is also a belief.

I suppose the word has to be agnostic. A know-nothing. I will sniff at any nebulous theory you choose to float under my nose- I love that sort of thing- but I'm afraid I won't be buying it- thanks all the same.

Is there a God? Any God worth its Name has to be utterly unknowable- and unknowable is practically the same as non-existent.

Are there gods? Of course- hundreds, nay thousands. They are the faces we see in clouds, in patterns of vegetation, in rock formations, in wallpaper. Most of my favourite gods are goddesses.

Is there Life after Death? I've had too many "intimations of immortality" to deny it. But I'm not going to affirm it either. Why don't we all just wait and see?

Comments

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

The Dark Night isn't torments- it's just absence and loneliness. The Lives of the Saints are misleading here. They suggest that the spiritual life is all ecstatic visions on the one hand and being mocked by demons on the other. At either extreme it's colourful. Only it's not like that at all- at least most of the time it isn't. The Dark Night of the Soul is hard everyday grind and the feeling that nothing in the least bit spiritual is going on.

This made me think of Mother Teresa. I saw her interviewed somewhere, and she said that most of the time she was working in Calcutta that she had no sense of God. In the beginning, she had had, uh, I don't want to misspeak, but I don't remember exactly what she said. I got the impression that she had visions or some other kind of, um, direct contact with God. But at some point early on, that went away, and she had no sense of godliness. I was floored by this. How could you do the work she did without having 'ecstatic visions'? I mean, talk about your 'hard everyday grind'...

But I guess that's why she's a saint and I ain't.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Visions and ecstasies are the lollipops of the spiritual life, not its substance. The saint learns to do without them. I suspect Mother Teresa's experience is fairly typical. But there are no rules.