Become a Follower of the Big Dude!

Meet the divine Dude in this blog. This Dude has had and seen his share of sacred shit. He's not afraid of it or of its language. I can't relate to a god that's been crucified, but I can relate to one whom my government has imprisoned and humiliated. I can relate to one who's been raped by his own holy men. I can relate to one who grew up playing baseball or soccer and who dated the Prom Queen. I can relate to the god who knows the working of corporate conglomerates, pimps, and teen-age girls who are pregnant. I can relate to the god who loves alcoholics and drug addicts just a tad more than wall street hotshots or so-called holy men who abuse little boys. This Dude thinks all of us are mortal particles in an ocean of sacred shit. This Dude recycles.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Darkest Night

As humans, we go through dark times, the "dark night of the soul" it's been called. It can feel a bit like quicksand, like the harder we try to get out of this painful place, the worse it gets. We feel stuck and unhappy, maybe even afraid.

So, I'm sitting here today and it's a dark night for me. I'm not fooled by the blue sky and puffy clouds outside the window, the lilac bushes about to burst into bloom, and the "gold" of "nature's first green" as Robert Frost would say. The spectacular visuals around me don't touch the feeling inside that the Big Dude is a figment of my imagination just like every other god before him.

What if there IS no god as many people (mostly sociologists and philosophers) suspect? What if? When you're in a dark night of the soul, you join ranks with rational humanists and sociologists and there IS no god for that moment. You don't just doubt it; you don't believe it. There's a difference.

Doubt means you're waffling between various options one of which IS the existence of god. Not believing means you've given up on god. You accept that god is just another concept created by the needs of the human mind (with apologies to Marx).

The terrible thing about a true dark night is that you have temporarily, at least, accepted the latter as truth. You don't believe there is a god. You have no contact. You don't feel in touch. You feel isolated from the richness that you have experienced at other times. Even nature doesn't move the blindness that fills your soul.

I don't mean to be sacriligious or to make light of this terrible state of mind, but when I'm in this state, I bake! I read somewhere that when you can't figure things out and nothing feels meaningful, you need to engage a different part of your brain--make a list, the article said. Buddhists often say things like "don't just do something, stand there!" My mother used to say the rosary over and over.

What all of these suggestions imply is that this, too, shall pass. In the meantime, you might as well distract yourself by consciously moving yourself in a completely different direction. Prayer, baking, meditation, or shooting a round of golf. The first thing you have to do to get out of a dark night, it seems, is to "forget about it." Stop thinking about it. Engage another part of your being.

So, I'm going to bake a cherry pie. Roxie

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