Recently, a friend of mine recounted a difficult day that ended well. I nodded along – we’ve all been there and will be again. Then, she ended the tale with “god is good all the time” and I was taken aback. Nothing in her tale invoked or even hinted at a god, as far as I could tell. This was not a tale of being saved from a terrible fate; this was a mundane event.
I’m writing now because, sometimes, writing helps me understand. Further, I imagine my friend would be taken aback by me being taken aback. We have an opportunity for discussion here, but we know going in, no minds will be changed fundamentally. Her surprisingly-casual and intimate relationship with the divine will not change nor will the scales fall from my eyes. I don’t want to change her or challenge her but I do want to respond to her or, rather, the shock I felt.
First, people have a right and need to speak and not everything we say should be analyzed or challenged. Self-expression becomes more difficult from adolescence on. In my case, so much of what I say is sheer glibbery, but, then, I don’t have an immortal soul or a god to back it up. If I did, s/he would save me from myself right now.
Secondly, in this world aflame, it is common to blurt out “screw you” or “you lie” in self-righteousness and self-importance. I do not mean to do so here.
I mean, instead, to get back to that initial story in which I saw no god and my friend saw “him” (?) every step of the way. That she believes in a god is not shocking. That she believes “god is good all the time” is jaw-dropping, given endless evidence to the contrary. It is as if we live in what should be separate universes. Yet here we are, occupying the same space-time with one huge paradox: : hers has a god and mine does not.
Candide.
My grandpappy had an old saying
which went and still goes, “cada cabeza es un mundo”…loosely translated within the context of your described experience, that dicho
means the following (to me, at least, i reckon):
In a dynamic universe governed by forces that are still little understood, but none
the less multitudinous and of a manifold complexity that may, in fact, symbolize chaos or perhaps even another unknown system of
organization which we as puny buckets of flesh, bones, and water cannot but barely perceive, there is plenty of room (terrabyte upon
terrabyte actually, plus a whole big blue planet) for other universes to exist — and so other worlds do exist in each skull of each
living individual being. that fact speaks eloquently to the complexity alluded to above, but whether that complexity is consequently
attached to divinity or a lack thereof falls purely within the realm the world in which it was perceived.
you world contains no gods,
but i *think* that there are other worlds that do.
btw, one of my dogs is named Schrödinger. He’s a big red hound dog that barks a
lot. I found him wandering the banks of the rio grande, hungry and injured. He is happier now, i think. Free from human intelligence and
will, he experiences the universe through a world unbound by the constraints of reason and artifice. I shall never know whether he
praises or damns the totality of his experiences as the work of g-d or the lack of g-d, all i know is that he likes hamburgers quite a
bit.
Rudolfo- I’ve known and loved that dicho for 20 years. It is my
favorite. It is the seed of a reference I make elsewhere: From my head to yours. Small world, nicht wahr? peace, mjh