There are days, many of them, when I seriously consider atheism, when I see churches turned in upon themselves, congregations united on the surface, only, of an illusory euphoria they dare call shared inside a house of hollow stones and leaded glass ready to collapse in upon itself with the barest of breaths – a question asked with sincerity, out of a desire to learn more, learn deeply, is enough to unleash the implosion of whispers and slander, murmurs of shamefulness, condemnations, and gasps of corruption for only doubt could lead to questioning and questing for something more, and it is this congregation that to the world is faith’s face, a countenance with pretty lips and prettier tongue that sings words of Love and all that is to all with ears that would hear.
It sickens me,
their crass assumptions – broad strokes drawn by aspiring artists whose aim to animate truth is foiled by their imitating images drawn by others, drawn by others, drawn by others, until the origin is lost to time and the imitations so ingrained within all thought that nothing else is as good or true as the fabled first image which captured truth (for reproductions always pass on the essence of the original unaltered) – their willful blindness to other possibilities concerning right- and wrongness, that no one knows or even tries to know the “Why”s outside what has been laid before them.
They sing of Love with honeyed voices, of eternal compassion, forgiveness, and peace, like a choir of shepherds heaven sent to minister to lost sheep scattered and scarred by wolves, even as they yap like a pack of hungry dogs that have lost their master, slavering and snapping at one another’s too-hollow ribs to see who is most worthy, who can herd more sheep than whom.
They howl to the moon, having lost sight of, scent of, sound of their heart and shepherd,
long ago – I learned the ways of self-deception, and not long after, I learned as well self-righteousness and selfishness, and these I learned not from a man who shunned one God, but from a man who spread His word and from the men and women who followed him, blind, and growing blinder with each passing sermon.
I learned that faith could be abused,
used by those with no faith themselves, and that oftentimes the pretenders do a better job of living the lives they espouse than those who claim not to pretend (for they pretend nothing),
and I wonder if it would be better to not have faith myself.
But then I realize,
I have allowed other people – brothers and sisters so far estranged, we no longer know each other as kin, who are lost without knowing they are lost – to play my belief when none should play it but me, that it is the actions of the failures that I take issue with rather than the source of their ideals, that I want to believe,
for although there is undeniable ugliness in the world, in her people, there is also great beauty to be found – the sound and smell of rain after the chest-rattling rumble of a thunder, coiled; the blushing skies at sunrise and -set; the land itself and all creatures upon it, above it, within it, beside it; the flow of forces and of time; relationships in form and number;
and I would know the source of all this beauty, of all beauty that ever was and will ever be,
for if there is no source, how did it come to be, and
if there is no Love, what is the point of being?
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