If you're going to get all freaky worrying about your safety or groveling on your knees begging God to save you because anti-abortion propaganda drove some loony to shoot up medical clinics, or because some asshole with a religious mania, or a nasty personality, shot up his workplace's Christmas party you're worrying about the wrong thing.
An e. coli bug, or a drunk driver, or that third goddamn Hostess Ho-ho you just ate is gonna kill you long before some Islamic nut or some rightwing manic.
So...you could get all freaky about what seems like a mad orgy of death and destruction and the end of times and OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!
Or. You can listen to an old Army sergeant.
You're gonna die. Yep. Some day you're dead meat. Pinin' for the fjords. Ceased to be. Expired.
But.
Until then every day you live you are a gift of love.
So hug your children. Drink something strange, and adventurous. Sit out under the stars and watch the universe wheel overhead. Hold someone dear to you very, very close and still, so still that all you can hear is your heartbeat and theirs. Kiss their skin softly, sweetly, and inhale their scent and stop and remember; every day you live you are a gift of love.
Someday you will die.
6 comments:
Gee, "Love". What a concept.
Love something beyond your own mortal gonna die anyway self, but still love yourselves and others as if your life depended upon it.
bb
One of the things about people who believe in "bigger things", whether the "thing" is political or religious or philosophical seems to be a willingness, even an eagerness, to sacrifice people for that thing. One reason I have moved away from those things is that I've come to believe that simple human good; peace, love, as much happiness and contentment as can be attained is more valuable than the noblest thing.
I've gotten to the point where the place where I'll dig in and fight is where you come to enlist me and mine in your crusade or your revolution. Given the suffering and horror those will bring...
I can't stop the crusaders. But I sure as Hell won't join them, and will resist them to the degree I can.
I've known for a long time now where you stand on religion in general, and I respect that. But I still consider you someone worthwhile, even so far as to buy you your favorite brew if we should ever stand face to face, and not b/c of your previous occupation, but b/c your head and heart are in the right places, IMVHO.
I do have a confession to make, I haven't been to church for a couple of years now, b/c of our present situation, and I do miss it for a few reasons. Ventura is right in his infamous quote about religion. but then he continues by using a well known religious concept. It is a paradox, a conundrum, and I personally do not know why professed believers are not raging commie pinko liberal fanatics, even in the denomination I favor.
There is another religion many adhere to, that of Power and Money and Ego.
Which is why I am pleased you express such fine, noble and enlightening religious concept in this post.
Sorry. :)
bb
As Gandhi is supposed to have said; I love your Christ. The problem I have is with your Christians...they are so much unlike your Christ.
My problem with religion - as opposed to faith - is not the concept of a God or the idea of devotion or worship to a God (although, frankly, if I was a God I'd wonder what the fuck those hairless monkeys were doing, seeing that I had some quasars to experiment with and some galaxies to harmonize and fiddling with their ridiculous personal problems was really THEIR Problem, not mine...) but what seems to happen when people get together to do that as a group.
And the first thing they seem to want to do is find some sort of target for their anger and unhappiness. It's not JUST religion; Nazism and Leninism and Maoism did the same damn thing. Trumpism, if I may dignify the moment's sordid idiocy with a name, does it. But it helps if you can use the idea of an all-powerful God hating on the whatever or whoever you want.
In a sense, those people who use religion or a political creed as a mere vehicle for their desire for power, or money, or personal stroking are less frightening to me than the real True Believers. Those people you can buy off or frighten off.
The person of faith, who generally believes that his or her God requires sacrifice and is willing to die and kill to accomplish that?
THAT's a fucking scary person.
But in general I tend to agree with Chesterton; it's not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, it is that it has been found difficult and not tried.
I remember meeting right after 9-11 who were all but afraid to leave their house for fear of a plane falling on them. I told them that the old of another 9-11 was infinitely small. And to date that has been true.
It would be nice if we could arrange things so that there's less chance of a Christmas party being shot-up. But then there's always a meteor from space... God's suggestion that it's time for the cockroaches to be in charge
I so wish more folks would wrap their minds around a couple of ideas implicit in your post: death comes for us all AND there are worse things than death that a society might find worth thinking about with the immediacy begin given to gun nuts.
Here in Washington State, gun sales are going through the roof. ::::shakes head:::: Talk about "cures" that can be worse than the disease.
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