Religion for agnostics

If I pray to God …

Hold on there, human. That language is archaic. Try this instead.

Let’s say that I find myself alone, the sky is reflecting in the river, and then my thoughts overwhelm me,  Is this language necessarily inappropriate:

“I lift up mine eyes to the Universe from whence I sprang, my conscious awareness sings, I exult in my being.” And then in the next breath, I might breathe these words: “I am humbled to stand here in the presence of an Existence – a Great Mystery - that I do not understand.”

Is it impossible that my thoughts, sparking across synaptic clefts, do not extend outward or inward beyond time and space? Hang the double negative. What does it mean that I express thoughts and feelings at all? Why do I experience wonder?

It is beyond my experience or my human reasoning that there might be more to life than the matter and energy of our natural experience. Science says that those elements are One. And science also says that if we go back to the beginning of time, one explanation of Everything is that there was a Singularity in which All of existence was infinitely compressed and then somehow Space and Time came into being, exploding with almost unimaginable force into everything that we know. And within everything that we know, there still remains so very  much than we cannot know. At least, so much that we do not now know. Perhaps we can possibly know more than we do know and I think that we should embrace that challenge. But we do not even know if it is possible to know everything - even about time and space. And beyond our natural universe, does some Mystery await?

So I have capitalized some letters to make my point. So what? Whether or not we use language that is archaic … No, when we use language at all, we are only really referring to reality. But I believe that there is clearly a vast reality beyond my own being and my small awareness. Just that muddy wreck of a river - my own momentary experience of the Kaw - is largely beyond me. That, to me, is obvious. What words should I use to speak of some other kinds of experience - realities of which I do not know?

I would like not to speak nonsense. That is, I intend to respect human reasoning and to try not to obviously contradict myself. And I should try not to say that I know things when I only speculate or imagine.

‘God’ has become a troublesome word. It seems archaic to refer to the old conception of a Supreme Being – commonly called God - in the face of modern scientific thinking. But ultimate questions of human existence and awareness remain. What human beings can know about space and time has grown in amazing ways. But the unknown remains. And unknown unknowns.

There is one conviction that what we can (in theory) know is all that there is. Some people believe something like that in the overwhelming face of the evidence of how much we do not know or understand. An archaic word such as ‘hubris’ might be used to sometimes describe the character of such people. They are commonly called atheists.

And the folks still clinging to various versions of ‘God’ language are not running short of their own forms of hubris. From my perspective - and that has changed radically over time - much ‘God talk’ is nonsensical. Hubris would be at least more understandable.

Again, I try not myself to speak nonsense when I am trying to make sense. Mostly, I try to speak out of my experience, listening to others as they carefully pass along what they have discovered through processes and thoughts that seem reasonable to me. But I let my imagination run free.

I do not suggest that you try to walk on water unless the temperature has dropped well below freezing for several days. But in the summer, when it is hot, I might just try it. Who knows? I can only get wet. I am not trying to start an Inquisition.

I try to know and be myself, to know and be with other human beings, and to know and experience the world around me. But almost everything in my own experience - if I am paying attention - leads me to Mystery.

I could have just as well expressed myself simply in words such as, ‘I don’t know,’ instead of ‘Mystery,’ but I have a sense of the sacred (that I cannot put satisfactorily into words even for myself) and so I tend to use language that reflects that sense of Mystery.. You should use whatever words you want. And we might disagree over what is nonsense.

So walk to the river with me if you want to. We don’t have to say anything. The sky will be reflected in the river. I think that the sky and the river are as real as we know. But sometimes I wonder what it all means and why I feel the awe that I feel.

Perhaps my words are archaic, but I sometimes worship the Mystery. I embrace the Unknown. I am only human.

Morning exercise

I found myself with more black people than white.

There were a couple of Asians in the outside lanes.

Women and men in running shoes.

Some kids, a guy older than me.

Were we a demographic?

It was a high school running track

in a suburb of Denver.

The sun had just risen over the plains

lighting up some mountains to the west.

I encountered some smiles and greetings,

some eyes merely looking at the painted lines

going round the oval track.

I will be blunt, I thought that we were all

more together than apart.

One guy ran fast, sweat beaded on his face.

I managed one lap breathing heavily

and then I mostly sat on my butt, watching.

History is against us.

Humanity might be for us.

But only, perhaps, if we spend more time

with each other

than apart.

Maybe one day we will talk

with each other

when our faces grow more familiar.

Once more, I will be blunt.

Perhaps my big red nose and their dark skin

will matter less

than the lines on a running track.

You will have noticed, to be sure,

that I noticed them.

But you should have seen the blues

and the greens

and the dark red running track.

I will be blunt.

Each face that I saw

was human and different.

Together, we exercised a little.

Apart, we forget

what we should remember.

The eye of the Beholder

Audio:

Text:

Beware the eye of the Beholder.

Beauty abounds,

but is often missed.

The lack of awareness is becoming acute.

Air, water and food are not enough to sustain life

as used to be commonly recognized.

As a last resort, the Beholder

has been let loose on the land.

If the Beholder finds you deficient

in certain essential elements of appreciation

you will surely die.

This is your final warning.

Behold

or perish.

Beauty abounds.

Open your eyes

before it is too late.

And beware the Eye of the Beholder.

'Gairaud'

a Ch. O Galtier, 1919

Spencer Museum of Art

University of Kansas

Ms Bailey's Third Grade Class

Ms. Bailey

She stepped out of her fire-engine red car

wearing her college maroon T-shirt

and a pink painters cap.

Her hair stuck out like straw.

Soon, in one hand, snaked the garden hose

In the other, with a metal forked tongue

she scolded the weeds.

But when a tiny little bunny

scurried out of the flowers

she yelled ‘rat’ in her outdoor voice

and the bunny quickly turned

cottontail and tucked back into the garden.

Then we sat on the sidewalk and ate ice cream.

What will she tell her third-graders

about how she spent her summer vacation?

Third grade

I went to third grade fifty years ago.

I went again to third grade - again –

yesterday.

The faces seemed the same,

but none that I could remember.

I recall a boy in a bright orange shirt

in the middle of the room.

A girl, her hair might have been brown,

a pencil poised to make a poem.

If you give me their names with the faces,

I might see if one day they do anything big.

But already they are capable

of little kindnesses

and their curiosity might take them

where they want to go.

You can wait

 

You can wait all morning

for someone to come.

They never promised,

only hinted,

but you frittered away

a hour or two.

Then you put a note

on the front door

that said, ‘in back.’

The paint can came out

and was opened,

brush dipped and spreading

white on white.

Nearing noon

and you’re pounding

the lid tight,

but too soon yet for lunch.

Nothing better to do.

You look with a careful eye

at the peeling front railing.

Or at the zinnias over the side,

splattered so much red, orange, and pink.

Soon will come the end of the summer,

and maybe they will come by for some cut flowers.

And so maybe tomorrow you will

tackle the dusty edges of the floors,

a corner or two.

Walk to the river

Text:

I walk to the river nearly every day. From my house, past Central Middle School, down an alley and through South Park. Then there’s about four blocks of downtown Mass Street. If I simply walk this route, it takes about half an hour to reach the Kaw River bridge. Then I cross, pausing for a moment, over and near the river, and then I head back home the way I came.

But there is more to it than that. I try to walk with my eyes open. I listen. I think about what I am experiencing and what it means. Not always. Often it’s simply one foot in front of the other and who knows where my mind has gone off to. And sometimes something more happens within the intersection of where my actual body is walking in space and time and also where my mind is. Sometimes within the space of a half step – more happens in that moment of meeting than during the other roughly 3 miles of my normal walk.

I walk roughly the same path but of course the light and the weather changes. Plants go through their cycles. People are not so much a blur as they are something like an approaching flash of headlights in my eyes. And then they’re gone. But not all of them. Some images remain. And some people settle into a place in my mind over time.

Consider the other elements too. I start to place some of them the way have tucked the blue glass tiles on the Ranjbar building or the Roosevelt Fountain in South Park into cubbyholes in my head. And some of the things that I have often walked past - failing to hardly notice them a hundred times or more - suddenly they almost magically appear.

It’s only a relatively short walk. There are pauses, detours. It’s an easy walk, easily distracting.

What is it that I hope will happen? It is usually enough to get some exercise, some fresh air, to see and hear the world. I feel the place. I feel the people. I feel myself, alive, marking one foot in front of the other.

And sometimes it’s as if all of time and space glance through me, although surely it’s only small portions of each, but still more - considerably more - than I might have anticipated. Rarely does this moment extend very long for very far, but sometimes it lingers.

Over the days and months it’s as if I have walked through immaterial mists. Memories, some might say. I have some few simple words which I try to write down based upon my walking. Language is a way to try to keep in a pocket of our consciousness portions of what we have lived - what has mattered to us.

Here’s a poem – I sometimes prefer to call them word sketches – that says once again part of what I have just said here.

Some time when I walk

            across the Kaw River Bridge

The sky is reflected in the river.

Some time it is only the sky

            reflected in the river.

Words and poetry do not fail me

They are simply not enough

They neither start

            what I have to say

Nor do they finish.

They are a snag

            to hold on to

                        for a moment

                                    for my mind to catch

                                                a breath

            as the river draws

                        my body ever down

                                    stream.

The clarity of night

You can listen to a reading of 'The clarity of night,'
or read the text.

'All of the above' is an option.

Text:

For a moment everything came clear. I was full and emptied all at once. It might have been love. It might have been joy. It might have been a pang like a blade of star light. But there isn’t one word. There is this instead.

I step down wooden steps in the night time. The wood has been worn up through the gray paint from frequent passing. My feet soon feel the gaps between the bricks on the patio. Weeds grow up green through red rectangles.

But the bricks are not the color of the red tulips, fading, unseen in the dark next to the garage that I scraped and painted white last summer. It was nearly fall then. And green is not simply the color of one leaf.

More of all of this is in my recollection than what I can feel in my mind through the soles of my feet. My eyes have turned upwards to the stars.

The air is heavy with moisture, droplets too minute for my eyes to measure. The Dipper has tumbled over so far overhead that only my skin can feel what has been poured out. The air is clear and moist. Most stars are over water and under foot.

And with only a few more steps, I will be knee deep in peonies. The ground was frozen earth only last week, but the time only makes sense if you could hold it like a tulip.

Now in the night, the blossoms, remembered white, petals thin and fleshy, not like tissue or silk, but tonight they are more like fat, leaf-wrapped blueberries. I can only feel in my memory last year’s uncrushed blooms against my knees.

And then in my mind, walking across the intersection on the other side of Mass street, it might have been at Eighth, a young woman steps lively. We had never met. We never will.

She might have been with someone. She might have just stepped off of the curb onto the pavement. She was hardly even then more than a girl in bright sunlight.

And all that I can recall is that her dark socks - they might have been navy - came up and over her knees. And then that her thin legs were pale bare.

In the morning everything will be different.

A brown bunny will nibble at the green clover. A fuzzy yellow bumble bee will alight on a damp peony bud. The bricks would be cool to the touch – if I touched them. And the sky might be blue with some white.

And I will wonder where everything went and I will long for just one more moment like the moment I remembered so long ago - only last night in the dark when everything came clear - for just a moment.