5. Questions about God
Pre-religion: Source of a Million Questions
As the early years of childhood passed, I began to feel a bit unsettled about my perspective. Forgetting the interconnectedness of life began to seem like a prerequisite for growing up, and I wondered if I was doing something to prevent myself from forgetting.
“How can I forget what I know and remember?” I would ask what I now uneasily called, “God”.
Now there was a puzzle! Why was God so often portrayed as an old man, living in some unknown, apparently far-flung place called “heaven?” I was slightly perturbed when I was urged to say my prayers at night, for I wasn't sure how this “Heavenly Father God” figured into the picture. Was I supposed to believe that God was very much like an old human male? Did other people really believe that? (How could anyone possibly say that they believed that? I wondered.) Or was it a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes? Was it only that no one wanted to say otherwise? If that was the case, why was it the case? Was I supposed to be willing to say that I believed this? Would that not be a lie? How could a lie be right when it was about the very subject that recommends truth?
And where did my own perception of the universe fit in? Was the God described in prayer verses and Bible stories, some kind of middleman? Why did I feel so certain that everyone was already familiar with, what I figured everyone meant by, “God”, including those who had never stepped into a church and had no knowledge of anything religious? While I tried to ask these questions of the adults around me, and they tried to answer, I knew that my questions, childishly phrased, were a black and white articulation of a whole rainbow of curiosity. I was just going to have to learn the language, keep my eyes open, and listen.
Before falling asleep one night, I was playing with such riddles, when a strong impression took form, a very firm idea that I would later return to this sensation of connection. That made no sense, for how was I to return to something that I did not know how to leave? “How can I remember later, if I don't forget now? What should I do to forget?” As I drifted off to sleep, the only answer that popped into my mind was, “Don't try to forget” which made no sense to me at all, until I began to have a recurring dream, or what I’ve also heard called a lucid night terror.
posted by Winter Child @ 10:06 a.m.
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