DISCLAIMER

It's easier to say I'm pagan than to wade into the tricky waters of saying: I'm not polytheist and couldn't square the notion of supernatural beings with what I've learned of science. Can't square the soul, either. It seems to me we're atoms making cells making organs--mostly a brain--and so on. Physical stuff. "This crude matter" as Yoda put it.

That said, I cannot fail to see the beauty and grace inherent in Nature. There is "something" there that speaks to those random assortments of neurons, and they talk back, somehow. The communication is subtle, so subtle, but so meaningful.

I don't feel lost in the vastness of space. I recognize my atoms were forged in the stars, as was all matter surrounding me. I see a flower and try a reasonable estimate of "shared genes" and don't get me started on fuzzy/cuddly mammals! I feel lightning storms like some ecstatic discharge of the weather, like the planet having a thought. "Eureka!" BOOM. I'm okay with dying, knowing it doesn't diminish me, at all. I'll still be here, in another form--hopefully not locked up in a box barely decomposing--plant my ashes, please.

And I still doubt there is NO magic. I've experienced enough and heard enough honest tellings of wondrous things. The conclusions we arrive at might not be true--we lack knowledge--but that doesn't mean we should box it or dismiss it. Nah, poke at the Beast of the Unknown and see if it stirs!

Tuesday, November 3, 2015


This is one of my favorite parts of my favorite movie in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy for a million reasons, but it is also what I tell myself when I have doubt--in myself, in others, in the general goodness of the world. I don't have Sam to give me precisely the right answer, no matter how cheesy it is. I just quiet my mind for a while, breathe slowly, and open myself to whatever "truth" feels right. Does it always work? No. Sometimes I really don't know what I am holding on to.

The few times I've come across my answer doesn't necessarily match the one given above. After all, they were in entirely different situations--and are also fictional characters. Whatever I get is close to this:

  1. The Earth is sacred. Not in relation to any given spirit, intelligence, or god, but because it gives and sustain life. Ours among them.
  2. Life is a miracle. Not because it was "created" by any given spirit, intelligence, or god, but because it reverses the entropy everything else in the universe is locked into, if only for a little while. Life creates whereas everything else decays.
  3.  We are all children of the Earth. Another way of putting this is: "The Earth is our mother, treat her with respect." Because she gives life, and life is a miracle, this should be instinctual.
  4. All the children of the Earth have unalienable rights and deserve to be treated with dignity.
Is this good enough for a belief system? Somehow I always find the faith part to be superfluous. If those four things are "self-evident" then it follows that we behave accordingly. Period.
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