I, Faithless
Jonathan Delacour and Mike Golby continue their examination of spiritual beliefs. I have come to a place similar to Jonathan's, largely by the same Catholic route, through Jung, but then onto other kinds of books -- Merlin Stone, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Robert Graves, Elaine Pagels, Annie Dillard....

What research and writing ultimately shows, it seems to me, is that we humans continue to create and re-create our gods in our own images. And then, when we allow our worst human nationalistic tendencies to motivate us to commit crimes against those not of our politics or faith, we can say -- not "the devil made me do it" but "it is the will of god." In his almighty name, we kill for land, for economic, political, and cultural control; we kill because we believe that we are right and "they" are wrong, because the god they created doesn't exist but the one we created does. Many individual members of organized religions live as good, moral, and compassionate people -- but not necessarily because of what their religious institutions are and have been, but rather in spite of them. Whether consciously or not, they live by the universal golden rule of "do unto others...." And in doing so, to me they prove the basic irrelevance of organized religion. (Except, of course, these institutions do provide employment for scholars, writers, monks, and clerics of all persuasions. And they give people a sense of belonging. I can get that from blogging.)

I place my faith in the wisdom of poetry. I breathe what I am: the first and last of all things. (Theodore Roethke)

There is no messiah but us.

Whatever World This Is, I Want to Be a Part of It
Spurred by David Weinberger's new book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined , there is all of this dense discussion still going on among webloggers about the nature of the "web." In her post on "Figments of Reality," Daniela of livingcode discusses these discussions. Her words reflects why I am so engaged in weblogging and its potential for human/e development. She says:

It is a temple that transcends space and territory. It is spaceless in the sense that not one person can claim this space as in the real world. But it is also a place that a lot of people want to partake of, and do so very well. It is extelligence. Is it for the lack of such physical spaces that we seek a virtual one? Or is it because we feel comfortable on neutral teritory, where the possibility of a superculture transpires more readily?

Extelligence. Superculture.

Does that make Blogtank the Extelligence Superforce?

Sunday Morning Coming Down
Unnhh. Too much sugar on that bus trip yestersay. Chocolate chip cookies on the bus; Pepsis at the Flower Show; chocolate mint fudge and m&m covered pretzels after lunch and on the way back. I look at Marek's post, including instructions for signing up at the new Blogtank and I want to go back to bed. (What am I doing here? I know what I'm doing here. This is not my world. This is my world. Marek's mania is contagious.) Boy, he must really crash after one of those manic caffeine-high pseudoterraforming binges. He could have flown all the way to Poland on his own last night.

Unnnhh. I think I bruised a rib the other day when a door I was pulling open rebounded and smacked me on my left side, head included. (I had stashed something behind the door and didn't realize it was sticking out that far. See, older isn't really wiser, is it?)

Halley and I Missed Our Big Chance
Halley Suit and her family were in downtown Boston today. Just think! We might have had a chance to meet if we only had known.

October Sky in March
On the way back on the bus tonight from a long day at the big Boston Flower Show, we watched the movie October Sky, about the kids who were inspired to figure out how to build their own rockets after watching Sputnik sail across the sky in October of 1957. I had seen the movie before, so I allowed myself to doze on and off while I listened to the sound track of my life at 17 as a freshman in college -- sorority rushing, falling for a fraternity guy, getting pinned, going to formal dances, learning how to drink lots of huge 10 cent glasses of beer without getting drunk, cutting classes on Friday afternoons to start the weekend's dancing, getting unpinned, and barely making the 2.5 grade point average that allowed me to go back the next year.

Like a lot of people, I review my life in the context of the songs that were popular in each of my life’s eras. Last week, I heard on the radio a bunch of Simon and Garfunkel songs, and they took me back to when my marriage was breaking up – Sounds of Silence, The Dangling Conversation, Bookends, Patterns, Cloudy. Every time I hear those songs I’m back being 33 again and watching my life fall apart around me and my two kids. When I hear For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her I have a good cry for the romantic girl I once was who thought love would be all I needed, that love would be enough. And every time I hear early Carly Simon, or disco's Donna Summer, I am back re-inventing myself into several different people at the same time so that I can explore so many of the things in life that I missed as a young and totally clueless wife.

And every time I start to wonder if the choices I made were the right ones and to fret about what the future might hold, I play my all-time favorite song as sung by Mary Travers. It reminds me that when one door closes, another door opens. We just have to keep going.

All my life's a circle/ Sunrise and sundown/ Moon rolls thru the nighttime/ Till the daybreak comes around./ All my life's a circle/ But I can't tell you why/ Season's spinning round again/ The years keep rollin' by./ It seems like I've been here before/ I can't remember when/ But I have this funny feeling/ That I’ll be back once again./ No straight lines make up my life/ And all my roads have bends/ There's no clear-cut beginnings/ And so far no dead-ends.