Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Bridget Moon<\/p>\n
Some people like NASCAR, others quilting, some the middle ages, some middle age.\u00a0 Tastes and attractions vary for often indiscernible reasons.\u00a0 Me, I like religions.\u00a0 Most of them anyhow.\u00a0 Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Shinto, Taoism, Celtic Faery Faith, ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian, Voodoo, Native American, Mayan, Aztec, Hawai’ian, Tibetan Buddhism, Jain.\u00a0 Buddhism, except for its practices like meditation, mindfulness, some how doesn’t attract me.\u00a0 Don’t know why.<\/p>\n
A part of me, a strong, even dominant part never left the young boy stage where why came out at every instance of anything.\u00a0 Why do birds sing?\u00a0 Why do dogs die?\u00a0 Why is the sky blue?\u00a0 Why is Dad grumpy?\u00a0 Why did you make noise last night, Mom?<\/p>\n
Philosophy suited me, fit me like a bespoke suit straight from Saville Row.\u00a0 What is beauty?\u00a0 Why do we love?\u00a0 What is justice?\u00a0 What is the nature of reality?\u00a0 What is reality anyhow?<\/p>\n
Religion is often a folk way of asking–and answering–these same questions.<\/p>\n
Let me give you an example from breakfast.\u00a0 I just experienced transubstantiation.\u00a0 The folks who run the monastery think that happens at the eucharist as the wine and wafer transform themselves into the actual body and blood of Jesus.\u00a0 I”m not sure about that.\u00a0 But, I do know that this morning I ate an apple, a slice of bread with peanut butter and drank some tea.\u00a0 They became me.<\/p>\n
No.\u00a0 I’m not saying I’m Jesus, far from it.\u00a0 I am saying that the apple, the peanut butter, the bread and the tea did transform, through the miracle of my digestive tract and its millions, billions, of host organisms, into me.\u00a0 Think about it.\u00a0 After the big bang and the gradual cooling of the universe, gas clouds gathered, due to gravity and created stars from the initial elements, thinks like hydrogen, iron.\u00a0 The stars themselves, in their fusion furnaces, then combined and transformed those basic elements into the familiar elements making up the periodic table.<\/p>\n
Later still, as the gas clouds and chunks of matter surrounding each star coalesced those elements deposited themselves inside and on the newly born planets, comets and asteroids.\u00a0 Those same elements, the very same elements, then, through more eons, at least here on earth, combined and recombined to form simple organisms like single celled animals and\u00a0 plants. Long after that those simple organisms combined to form multi-celled life forms, among them humans.<\/p>\n
This morning I–consider that I–the end point of a certain historic chain of events traceable to the creation of the universe ate.\u00a0 In eating I took in the products of other organisms, the apple which grew in the air on a tree, wheat which grew in fields across these very plains and peanuts which grew beneath the soil.\u00a0 I also drank water, the same water present on earth for eons, perhaps the same water drunk by dinosaurs.<\/p>\n
And it is, even now, as I write, becoming me.\u00a0 The apple, the wheat, the peanut are also, like me, the end point of a traceable (if we had the instruments and skill) chain from the moment before time until now.\u00a0 So we recombine, sift and shift elements.\u00a0 A miracle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Bridget Moon Some people like NASCAR, others quilting, some the middle ages, some middle age.\u00a0 Tastes and attractions vary for often indiscernible reasons.\u00a0 Me, I like religions.\u00a0 Most of them anyhow.\u00a0 Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Shinto, Taoism, Celtic Faery Faith, ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian, Voodoo, Native American, Mayan, Aztec, Hawai’ian, Tibetan … Continue reading I (heart) Religion<\/span>