Deep in the Heart of Texas

So I stopped in Albuquerque and stayed with a friend for a few days. Pretty cool town. Went hiking in the snow up in the Sandia mountains, ate delicious New Mexican food, etc. Then went down to White Sands Nat'l Monument, a ridiculously crazy area of white gypsum sand dunes set among mountains. It also happens to be part of an Air Force missile testing range, so with my map I got a pamphlet full of pictures of what un-exploded missiles look like. And instructions not to touch anything I found.

Then into Texas. I drove about 600 miles in the first day, finally reaching Enchanted Rock State Park. Full of Boy Scouts, and they wanted $18 for a primitive campsite. No thanks. Drove back towards town, thinking I would sleep in my car, but saw a country bar with a sign outside of it - "Camping, Ice Cold Beer" - $5 to camp, and live music up at the bar. I made friends with four guys from San Antonio who had a fire going. They were really nice guys - offered me food, beer, etc. - and seemed to be liberal minded, at least for Texas. But then, in the middle of talking about protesting the G-20 summit, they mentioned that the big banks were "All run by Jews anyways", the most PC of them saying "Well, their culture just has all the necessary traits to be good at business." I decided to not say that I was Jewish, good choice because I later saw Nazi Low Rider tattoos on one of their arms.

Later on, when we went up to the bar, I saw a confederate flag, heard anti-Arab, anti-Black, and anti-Hispanic hate speech from an old drunk man who told me about how he used to steal cars all the time as a kid. I tried to consider how to respond: leave, and find another place to sleep; get mad, and risk getting hurt; try to respond in some way to create a dialogue. I did the third, and tried asking some questions of them - i.e. "Aren't most of the big banks run by white Christian men?" and "Shouldn't people get helped by their government?", etc. Didn't get the responses I was looking for, but what are you going to do.

These adventures aside, I've been thinking a lot about religion lately. About how differences in religion, or even differences in beliefs within a religion, are so divisive among people. This quote from Abraham Joshua Heschel sums up what I've been thinking about:

"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes and heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion - its message becomes meaningless." -God in Search of Man

I think religion, and really God itself, could and should be something that unites people rather than divides. If we see God as the embodiment of all the universe, if God is the love binding people together to one another, the invisible stuff that connects electrons to nuclei, atoms to other atoms (or Adams. Tee hee), then God is something that cannot and will not separate people from each other. Imagine if, when you were interacting with someone else, you did so knowing that you were interacting with God. Or when you were eating something, you were incorporating a part of God into yourself. When you looked up at the sky at night, the stars you saw were part of God, and that the water in the beautiful forest stream was God flowing through the world. Think I'm a hippie? Tough shit. I already know I am. I'd love to live in a world where people were treating each other/the world this way. You might too.

The issue really begins when we try to describe God in human language. Check out this diagram:


When we try to describe God, we pare down the possibilities of God's existence and put it/her/him/ in the God box. We limit what God could be. How haughty of us to think that we could say what God is. We certainly are haughty monkeys.

This isn't to say that we should avoid trying to discuss what God is. I am suggesting, however, that anthropomorphizing God allows for people to co-opt the God concept for their own purposes, as they have for thousands of years for wars, political campaigns, bumper stickers, etc. Let's think bigger. Let's think more freely. Let your God be a wild concept beyond all imagination. And maybe then my generation won't hate religion so much. Maybe then we can start a religion based on love.

Please argue with me about this. I like being called out when I'm spouting bullshit.