« Another One Not to Miss | OK, back to home | Dive bars, clay masks, rock climbing and trains »

Friday, October 7, 2005

The Best is Today

Last night I walked through Loring Park in the Thursday darkness of 10 p.m. The air was sharp and clear, like all the particles of dust and oxygen and carbon monoxide were sucked away — where I don’t know — and what remained was pure air. A vacuum of fortifying cold.

Inside the restaurants lining the park I watched people eating by candlelight, huge fronds of leaves framing their tables. I wanted to push my face against the windows and observe, to listen to their stories by reading their lips, my hot breath steaming the glass.

I was alone. After just participating in an intense story of comradeship, hope and despair, the aloneness bit at my skin, not painful but evident.

On the sidewalk I passed a young man carrying a FedEx package. He unlocked the door of his building and pushed it open with his foot. We looked at each other. We made eye contact.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he said.

In the absence of air and of light beyond that which came from the closed clothing shop, we were alone together. For 1/8th of a second, we both hesitated. Is there more to say? A remark on the coldness, perhaps? An invitation for hot chocolate?

But in that 1/8th of a second of deliberation, my momentum had already carried me by. The opportunity was lost, the connection broken.

Silently, I wished him a good night.

Lately in these moments of aloneness and quietness and clarity I’ve been thinking about and recognizing the shifts in beliefs and values that have recently taken place in me. You could call it “defining the boundaries of beliefs” or “exploring the self.”

At the center of these shifts is one main revelation that I’ve come to terms with over the last few months, that I’ve first tested in my own mind, and then with one or two friends, and now, with you:

To put it simply, I do not believe in God.

I am not Christian, or pagan, or Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim.

But that does not mean I am without faith. No, the faith is stronger than ever, as is the hope, and the joy, and yes, the contentedness of being.

And it does not mean that I am not spiritual. I believe very strongly in the spirit as a combination of will, emotion, grit, personality, and mystery that is somehow bigger than the combination of atoms that are the physical makeup of our world.

But I do not believe in the supernatural.

For years I have called myself Christian. At times the term was a warm blanket, comforting me and providing shelter. Other times it was a rulebook, providing order among the chaos, or a fraternity, providing a ready-made community of friends and activities. At still other times Christianity was an escape from the parts of me I wasn’t ready to deal with.

That is not to say that I only used Christianity as a selfish tool and that I never believed in God, or at least that I never wanted God to exist, high and mighty with wisdom and power and a master plan. I wanted very much to believe in something higher than me, greater than me. And for that something to define goodness and love.

Today, though, I cannot bring myself to believe in God, or anything supernatural. What I believe we have is what you see around you. In the basest sense: Nature. And then: People and the natural. And then: People and the natural and man-made objects. And then another element, all on its own: Human behavior.

These are the things that exist, without question.

I’ve looked up the term that describes this belief. We do indeed have a label for everything, because labels enable the reduction of individuals into groups and this classification prevents being overwhelmed by chaos. This label is simple: Humanism.

If you need a formal definiton, from the American Humanist Association: “Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.”

It means that morality is defined not by God but by people. What hurts others or nature is immoral because they are the only things we have. What enriches the lives of others or the state of nature is moral because it benefits us all.

This belief requires accepting ambiguity, inconsistencies and paradoxes. People are, if anything, inconsistent. Words do not match actions. The internal personality does not match the external behavior.

And — as we have seen recently — nature, too, is unpredictable and uncontrollable. That is a factor of its beauty, just as the ambiguity of man is a source of beauty, as well.

Prayers do no good here. What creates change is not sending a thought into the wilderness, but action. Goodwill and best wishes and “I’m praying for you” are worthless unless they are communicated with the intention of encouraging the spirit of another to continue, to strive, to go. The action of communicating is the key.

And when I die, I do not expect to go to heaven. Nor do I expect to go to hell. I expect simply to, as they say, pass away. What remains is the hope and the love and the good that I can share in the few years I have. To me, enjoying and sharing the good and the beauty of today is infinitely better than waiting for the best to come.

Posted by Aaron on October 7, 2005 1:05 PM