11/15/97
What is this world? I move through space, my own tiny tiny fragment of it, and breathe it into me, but what is it? What is my place in it? How do I live and give it meaning?
I am fundamentally an agnostic atheist. This means that I believe it is impossible ever to know if there is a divine, a "god", if you will. But I believe that there isn't. I believe that people are simply people, that life is simply life, that death is the end of that. It sounds obscene to say I feel my life, and, by extension, the lives of others, to be nothing more than the result of millions of years of the chaos of chemical reactions, yet I cannot find more to it than that. Can these thoughts be only a series of hormones striking my mind in the right place at the right time? Can the love I feel for those I hold close to my heart be a naturally mechanized process?
I can only answer yes. But what I do with what I have is more complicated, and more difficult to describe.
"Wherever you are is home
And the earth is paradise
Wherever you set your feet is holy land ...
You don't live off it like a parasite.
You live in it, and it in you,
Or you don't survive.
And that is the only worship of God there is."
--Wilfred Pelletier & Ted Poole
A thing need not be eternal to be of value. There is no requirement that worth be calculated in transcendence. I breathe, I see, I feel ... insofar as I can live as though the sacred is all around me, is in me, this world is, in fact, sacred. No, no Spirit, no God, no Great Beyond imbues the sacred as sacred with its magic. I believe everything to be cradled in the same pattern of evolution and development, and the holiness lies entirely in my perception of it. Or in your perception of it.
How discomfiting, to say that the only permanent condition is impermanence. I find it rather comforting, though, too, because it means that nothing goes on forever. I wish the best moments of my life could be eternal, but I'm glad they aren't; this way I get a variety, some good, some bad, but all my own, and all bearing worth in what I take from them; this way I can grow, can develop, can evolve, can feel myself to be a part of the big bang in a tiny pocket of this galaxy.
And still, I find life worth living. So it ends. Big deal. What a joy to have been caught up in it! Why consciousness? Who cares? Savor it! Look, taste, feel, smell, hear. Because you can, so why not? There is no sin, no right, no wrong, except in relation to others.
Why not be intense? Why not reach for vibrancy? Why not find people who shelter you, who challenge you, who frighten and comfort you? Why not love!? If this is all I have, I want it all!
I choose not to worry over morality in individual actions. If I am happy or comfortable or growing, and I am hurting no one, how can what I do be wrong? How could love, mental, emotional, physical or otherwise, be wrong? Absurd. I reject such assumptions.
I revel in life, in the world, in my body and who I find myself to be in the firing neurons of my mind. If there is a creator observing human action from elsewhere, my enjoyment of that which exists shall be enough to justify my actions. If it's here, make use of it as it was meant to be used. Do not cause harm, but what's the use in living in the world like a china shop? Air is here to be breathed. People are here to be loved. Life is here to be lived. The sacred is what I make it.
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© 1999 Rosa Carson