On certitude, nothingness, G-d, love, hatred, confusion, and cleverness

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I've decided to write this in the Journal area, not so much to squelch discussion, but because i love the sound of my own voice. And by putting it here, acoustically it shares much with the sound of one hand clapping.

I want to talk about many things. much of it falls to the realm of spirituality, however, appropriate application of thermal bonding materials to computer chips may arise as well. we'll see how it goes.

i do not know what, if anything, specifically informs my spirituality. i can say certainly that scripture plays precious little part in it. I don't reject christianity; neither do i embrace it. background may be in order.

my mother's father was a fundamentalist, evangelical christian. unlike the execrable toads who wear that mantle these days, he was - as the youngsters would say - 'old school'. he was born in 1899, and grew up on the prairies of oklahoma, the son of Great Plains pioneers who raced into the vast reaches of the american midwest and became settlers. in his twenties, he ventured out into the world. he traveled through russia, and persia, and armenia, as a christian missionary. he was there when the armenian genocide took place, and later wrote a novel about it. he came back from persia with persian rugs, which grace the homes of his descendents.

when he returned to america, he resumed his education, becoming an economist. he became wealthy from his investments, a remarkable success for a child who grew up in a home with a dirt floor. he served, for a mere six months, as the treasurer general of iran (the former persia) after world war two, and restored a demolished economy by putting it on the gold standard in that time.

he created a charity for blind children in iran - trachoma-caused blindness was epidemic there after world war II. he was active in his church, and read aloud from the bible after breakfast each morning.

he was, also, a son-of-a-bitch, who violated his four daughters, leaving them all with lasting emotional scars.

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my mother, his eldest daughter, led a completely controlled childhood. her path was determined by her father, who was intent that she become a christian missionary too.

mom went to vassar immediately following WWII. she graduated with a degree in philosophy. at vassar, she met my father, who had grown up in poughkeepsie where vassar lies, and after he returned from the war chose to go to the 'hometown' college. he was one of eleven men who went to vassar on the GI bill, and because vassar was an all-girls school at that time, he was issued a diploma for the fictitious 'University of the State of New York'. He was finally issued a real diploma in 1969 when vassar finally went co-ed.

my father grew up in terrible poverty, a child of the depression. as a boy, at one point, he supported his family selling newspapers.

my father was 'earthy', very solidly grounded, very athletic and masculine, and having spent time in a foxhole, was probably not an atheist, though religion never played much of a role in his life.

when he and my mother married, it set her free. a wealthy debutante of sorts, married a swarthy, poor little greek. nearly the day after they were married, they drove to california to start their life together.

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my mother, after vassar, had also gone to Union Theological Seminary, where she studied under the notable theologian Paul Tillich. However, she married my father before completing her studies, and never got her masters.

I was raised, such as it was, in the Episcopal church. we went to church most sundays when i was a child, though as i reached my teen years, church faded out. perhaps it was the times - the early 1970's - with so much other turmoil in the nation and world. however, just before i hit the teens, i wanted to be 'confirmed', and because my mother had a degree in theology, the church allowed her to essentially 'home school' me. i was, to put it mildly, colossally shy at that age, and could not bring myself to go to the confirmation classes. as well, my mother was terribly indulgent of me, thus the home schooling.

i 'passed' i guess, because at some point i went to a largish gathering at grace cathedral in san francisco (at least, that's where i think it was), where hundreds of other kids were 'confirmed'.

why do i put it in quotes? because i have no idea now what it means! i don't know what it conferred or signified. it just was.

as i said, church faded from the scene in the years following. i was a teenager, a bit of a hippie (i'm still very proud of how long my hair got to be - nearly three feet long, reaching to my tailbone). i tried all the requisite drugs of the time. i was very dark and sad, i guess in today's world i'd have probably been a goth!

my two older brothers similarly faded away from church. i don't recall whether my mother continued going to church on sundays. i don't think she did. there were still easter and christmas services which we went to. and in my early twenties i recall my oldest brother taking me to easter services at a russian orthodox church in san francisco, which was a heady experience.

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a few words regarding my brothers are in order, if only to further hear the sound of my own voice (or this utterly punished keyboard, toss of a coin on that one).

my oldest brother also went to vassar. he was the first legacy graduate of vassar. his degree was in religion. his wife is a baptist minister, and he's very active in his local church, primarily in the sense of communion and community, though i can't really speak for him.... if you did not meet him at church however, you'd never know that he's 'a christian'. he doesn't spout scripture (because scripture actually advises against it!), and considers most who do to be utterly missing the mark.

my next oldest brother didn't go to college. he is, and always has been, a genuine contrarian. upon graduating high school, he traveled to lansing michigan where he worked for an aged seedsman. After a lengthy 'trial', much of it spent digging graves on some of the seedsman's property that he had set up for such purpose as he became less able to tend to his many acres of land, my brother bought his business, and transported it lock, stock, and barrel via freight train to california. he found some undeveloped mountain land in the wilds southwest of the san francisco bay area, and to this day - thirty some years later, runs his small business selling rare seeds, totally 'off the grid' (uses solar power to supply the little lighting he needs, to pump water, etc). he is an acknowledge horticultural expert, and speaks regularly at colleges and universities, and within the botanical/horticultural community. he has rejected most of modern culture and life. he is in his own words, anti-christian. as above i can't pretend to speak for him, but he sees the genocides perpetrated in the name of god and rejects most religion on that basis. he wrote a book a couple of years ago - the culmination of several decades of research and thought, on the pseudoscience of 'Invasion Biology' (the notion that there are 'non-native' plants that destroy ecosystems). i'm intensely proud of him for that work, which is extraordinarily perspicacious, and devastating to what he has critiqued. we are unfortunately not on speaking terms. it's a familial tendency. don't know if we'll ever speak, or for that matter see each other again. doesn't really matter to me, i love him just the same.

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quite a bit of prelude so far. i wonder if i'll ever get on with this - whatever it is.


no time like the present to put off until tomorrow. or not.

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as i started with, i don't know what informs my spirituality. i know what things do *not* specifically inform my spirituality; perhaps that's someplace to start.

i reject most of 'organized' religion. jesus never went to church, and i believe he'd be appalled at the poppycock that's spouted on his behalf by an awful lot of people. from televangelists, to fire and brimstone preachers, there are so many people who claim to be speaking for god that the cacaphony is as a bunch of locusts, and the behavior about the same.

jesus, himself though, fascinates me. we have only the word of those who we believe transcribed his words to inform us about him. i have no doubt whatsoever that he was a real man, and that he walked the earth some 2000 years ago. that a legacy across the globe could grow to its current proportions and influence upon nearly the whole of humanity, beginning with the words of one single person, is really, well, i don't think there are enough superlatives to describe it. which reminds me of the opening quote of a wonderful book i read some twenty years ago ("Another Roadside Attraction" by Tom Robbins) -

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.
-John 21:25

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so, the things that don't inform my spirituality didn't really pan out in that last.

I am far, far less interested in the words of jesus - whether directly or as interpreted by others - than i am interested in what he was. this of course is rather a conundrum. we have only the scriptures to inform us of anything regarding jesus, at least directly. his words, and the descriptions of his actions, are all we have - if we are to look upon the spirit as something informed by words.

i cannot suggest that church, my experiences with same, my reading from the bible - paltry though it has been - and the experience of christianity as brought forth in the world around us - does not in some manner inform my spirituality. yet, ask me if i'm a christian, and all i can say is 'i don't know'. ask me if i am a buddhist, and all i can say is 'i don't know'. ask me if i am a hindu, and all i can say is 'i don't know'.

does not-knowing mean that i am not now? my love of aphorisms intrudes:

The no-mind not-thinks no-thoughts about no-things.
-The Buddha



To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is disease.
-Lao Tzu

How dieth the wise man? As the fool.
-Ecclesiastes, 2:16

We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
-H. L. Mencken

When you are at sea, keep clear of the land.
-Publilius Syrus

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there is, of course, a sublime sort of thievery at work in quoting aphorisms. i relieve myself of the burden of expressing myself, and let others do the talking. this is fundamentally at odds with my desire to hear my own voice. On the other hand, that the aphorism confirms or acknowledges the way that i feel, their presentment is very much like propping up an 'audience' of mirrors, so that i may hear the applause rendered by the images of my own reflection.

"yes, dear, you're very lovely, dear, now finish cleaning the toilet"

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i have no certainty in my faith, yet, i feel faith. words really do have shortcomings here. to describe that which is indescribable is at best folly, at worst a delusion that damages the soul.

in the twentieth century, we learned that the atom is not what it means. the greeks coined the term 'atom', and it means indivisible. the indivisible has been found to be utterly divisible, and the smallest constituent still eludes us. the nature of matter has been found to be energy, that which we grasp is made of the sun.

the scale of the universe - the macro and the micro universe, is all but unfathomable.

if you made a model of an atom the size of a basketball, a dime composed of those atoms would be about the size of the earth. but now, let us look at the size of the atom's components in relation to one another - if you made a model of an atom the size of the earth - the electrons would be spinning about earth in the clouds, and the nucleus? it would be the size of a basketball down at the center.

things are similarly mind-boggling on the macro scale. If you make a model of the earth the size of a basketball and set it on the ground, the moon would be the size of a tennisball - suspended more than two stories above the basketball.

if the sun were the size of a basketball, the earth would be the size of the head of a pin - almost a football field distant from it.

the distance to the star nearest to us - proxima centauri - is 4.3 light years, or about 26 trillion miles. proxima centauri, in relation to that same basketball sized sun placed in downtown Boston, would be in downtown Moscow.
where am i headed with all this?

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with a universe at such scales, why would god have any concern for clumsy bipeds clattering around on a tiny blue ball?

we are specs of cosmic dust, on a spec of cosmic dust, in a dust-bunny behind the door of the janitor's storage room in the basement of the Empire State building.

God has bigger things to deal with.