Have you performed the impossible today?

“…if you have faith the size of a mustard seed...nothing will be impossible to you.” Jesus

Even love is a delusion unless it’s built upon truth, and so it follows that the same applies to faith. The truth is that my wife (pictured) has shown herself to be a person of loyalty and integrity for the 42 years I’ve known her. Hence comes my faith in my wife. It couldn’t have worked the other way. I couldn’t have had faith in her from the time my best friend introduced us in the summer of 1971, although I could have had credulity. 

Many people lose faith in Christ because he doesn’t keep his promises, and I haven’t observed that those who remain faithful seem to expect much. Otherwise, they would ask for things that couldn’t happen anyway, things like raising the dead, reversing tsunami damage, replacing amputated limbs, giving sight to the eyeless, and making quadriplegics walk. Jesus said, “…the person who believes in me will perform the miraculous deeds that I am doing, and will perform greater deeds than these.” Greater deeds than walking on water, killing a tree with words, turning demons loose in a herd of swine, restoring life to a stinking corpse, and rising from the dead? I don’t think so.

I have occasionally been asked why I criticize religion so much. Aside from the fact that it interests me, my belief that it’s destructive combined with the fact that I know more about it than most people, make me obligated. There are seven countries in the world in which I could be put to death for writing this blog,* many more in which I could be imprisoned, eight states in America in which I couldn’t run for public office,** and at least one state (Arkansas) in which I couldn’t testify in court. I have been reviled, struck on the head, and dismissed from jury duty because of my unbelief, but these things were nothing compared to the assaults, vandalism, death threats, house-burnings, pet killings, child beatings,  job losses, rape threats, and other abuses that American atheists suffer for speaking out against the intrusion of religious practices, symbols, and dogma, into schools, government, and the military. There’s not a day that the sun comes up but what it doesn’t set on the corpses, broken homes, and prison cells of those who were abused in the name of one god or another. Not all religious people are vicious, but the truth is that millions of them behave that way while millions more remain silent in the face of the oppression.

This link (http://uuastoria.org/ffrf.pdf) is to the March issue of Freethought Today, a 24-page monthly newspaper that is filled with articles about the abuse that critics of religion suffer. I’m not sure that religion does much good, but even if I’m wrong, no amount of good can make up for so much meanness by so many people in the name of their God.

*http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/10/the-seven-countries-where-the-state-can-execute-you-for-being-atheist/

** http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2009/12/15/which-states-ban-atheists-from-holding-public-office/

She all but slammed me into the wall!

Every time I go the dentist, whichever hygienist I get gives me hell about the coffee stains on my teeth. Some of them get so worked up, that I expect them to burst forth in sermon, something along the lines of, “Your teeth are a personal affront to God Almighty, and I’m going to make you give up your 14-hour a day coffee habit or know the reason why—praise the Lord.” 

It’s a source of wonder to me that these women care so much—a lot more than I do. All I care about is leaving that place without spending a thousand or more dollars in expiation for the sins of my childhood and my decades of life. As for looks, stained teeth are my last problem in that area, but I guess it makes sense that teeth would be what a dental hygienist would complain about, and, come to think of it, it would hurt my feelings if they criticized my thinning hair and old age spots the way they criticize my teeth.

Lonely in the present

Sometimes, I’m lonely with a loneliness that people can’t fill, and so it is that the lonelier I am, the more I desire solitude. Solitude allows me to reflect on things that don’t seem that interesting to most people, a fact which increases my desire for solitude...

In Buddhism and Taoism, there’s an emphasis on being in the present. I’ve never understood this because it seems to me that if I’m doing something boring that it’s an excellent time to not be in the present, but to think of things more profound than, let’s say, doing dishes. I’m not saying that doing dishes can’t be profound, but why would I make it my goal to become completely absorbed by the chore of doing dishes every time I wash dishes? Yet, I’ve seen this recommended in many books (Be Here Now, Chop Wood Carry Water, the writings of Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, Thích Nhất Hạn, and others). As to why, they only say that the present is where we are, so if our minds are someplace else, then we’re not completely alive. We’re half dead then? I don’t see myself as ever being incompletely alive; it’s simply that some things energize me, and other things enervate me, and a focus upon the present isn’t always the most energizing option.

The painting is Three Friends in Winter by Ma Yuan (1160-1225).

Time goes, you say? Ah no! Alas, time stays, we go*

I imagine myself standing on a conveyer belt like the ones people walk on at airports, only I can neither hasten nor retard the progress of this belt for it is carrying me through time. I wave goodbye forever to the passing moments: to my 64^th birthday last Friday; to the sad face of my beloved neighbor who left a half hour ago for a new home in another state; and to the newness of a baby girl named Sidney who was born less than two days ago. As I held Sidney, I thought back to 1949 when I was born, to the people who were in their sixties then who saw me as I was seeing her, knowing that they would die as I was coming into maturity. So does each generation watch its successor enter the world helpless, and its successor watch it leave the world helpless. If only the helplessness of the old could be as cherished as the helplessness of the young. But even for the young there is the foreboding of sorrow, for who can contemplate the pain that they will know and not grieve for them and wish in vain to protect them? 

*Henry Austin Dobson

The wisdom of Rodney

The following post consists of quotations from Rodney Dangerfield’s book: RODNEY DANGERFIELD It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me.

I began writing jokes when I was fifteen. I think I was so unhappy all the time that I was trying to forget reality with jokes. I was always depressed, but I could tell a joke and get a laugh. But not from my mother…

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I guess that’s why I went into show business—to get some love. I wanted people to tell me I was good, tell me I’m okay…. I’ll take love anyway I can get it.

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Show business was my escape from life. I had to have it. It was like a fix. I needed it to survive.

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At twenty-eight, I decided to quit show business…. To give you an idea of how well I was doing at the time I quit, I was the only one who knew I quit.

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I sold aluminum siding for twelve years. I made a decent living, but I wasn’t living. I was out of show business, but show business wasn’t out of me, so I did the only thing that made sense—I created a character based upon my feeling that nothing goes right.

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…I remember sitting in my dressing room waiting for the show to start. I looked out the window. It was raining, but the streets of midtown Manhattan were crowded, and I thought to myself. Look at all those people who are going to miss seeing me tonight on the Ed Sullivan Show.

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Forty years ago, I was feeling really depressed even more than I usually do, so Joe recommended a famous psychologist…. I still remember two things he told me:  “People are all fucking crazy, and most of them are unethical.”

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I’ve talked with many psychologists and psychiatrists. It has cost me a lot of money, but at least I got a few jokes out of it.

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…I didn’t go because I knew I couldn’t be myself with Jack Benny…. Can you picture me saying to Jack Benny, “Man, I’m so depressed. It’s all too fucking much.”

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The worst depression I had was when I was in my seventies…. For two years, I couldn’t function.

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I first started smoking pot back in 1942. I was twenty-one…

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All the stories you hear about being getting wild on marijuana are ridiculous…. Booze is the real culprit in our society.

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When you’re high, you become an avid reader…. one night I smoked some pot, then started reading the newspaper. An hour later, I said to myself, What am I doing? I was reading about fishing conditions in Anchorage. And I don’t even fish. And the paper was a month old.

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I was sitting in an airport…. There was no one around, so I lit up a joint…. Suddenly a cop came running toward me.

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…I ended up in intensive care…. I thought, Hey, there aren’t too many people here, and it’s dark. I’ll light up a joint… Two minutes later, a security guard came over….

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…I now have written authorization from a California doctor that allows me to smoke pot…. Wish I’d had that prescription thirty years ago; life would have been easier.

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It’s hard for me to accept the fact that soon my life will be over. No more Super Bowls. No more Chinese food. No more sex. And the big one, no more smoking pot.

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One time I said to him [Rodney’s father], “You’ve travelled all over the country, must have slept with a hundred women. You’ve done everything, been through it all. What’s life all about? What’s the answer?”

He twirled his cigar and said, “It’s all bullshit.”

You can’t fully appreciate that line until you’re old.

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Living as long as I have, you can’t help but look back on life and wonder what does it all mean. Sometimes I don’t even think I’ve made it. Even today, if I check into a hotel and the bellman picks up my suitcase, I feel awkward.

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I can accept getting older. I can even accept getting old, but dying? Man, that’s a tough one to accept.

Life’s a short trip. You’ll find out.

You were seventeen yesterday. You’ll be fifty tomorrow. Life is tough…. 

What do you think life is? Moonlight and canoes? That’s not life. That’s in the movies.

Life is fear and tension and worry and disappointments.

Life. I’ll tell you what life is. Life is having a mother-in-law who sucks and a wife who don’t. That’s what life is.

Photo by Alan Light