Transition from Fundamentalism to Agnosticism, part seven

 

[Rabbi] Kushner [whose book I was reading in 2005] said that prayer is just to remind us to be grateful for things, on a regular schedule, including for things it would not otherwise occur to us to be grateful for. God needs no praise, but He knows we need to feel gratitude. When I wrote about this on 7 March 2005, I felt as if I agreed with him. The answer to our prayers “is not an explanation but an experience. An often-overlooked benefit of prayer is that it changes us, so that we no longer envy the wicked.”

Three days later, I wrote, “My valleys of shadow, compared to others’, are often little mud-walled arroyos, such as I will soon see in the desert, but they seemed pretty dark to me anyway, and if you cannot climb out of them, they are deep enough.” I was already looking forward to my trip out west to see the desert wildflowers.

Transition from Fundamentalism to Agnosticism, part six

Here is a little interlude, which I needed during my heavy thoughts, and which you, the reader (if any) also need. I wrote this on 2 March 2005.

“And, finally, isn’t it past all rational solution? As I have repeatedly pondered, do I not believe in God because Dvorak did? Nietzsche had penetrating questions, or so I who have never read him am told. How to answer him? Kierkegaard’s leap? A scientist resists it but what else is there? What Mahler did was to celebrate evolution in his Resurrection Symphony. The stages of life on Earth: vegetative (second movement), animated (third movement), then to set Nietzsche to music (fourth movement), angels in heaven (fifth movement) as if it were a progression. But really it was just to put atheism and heaven next to each other, then goes on (sixth movement) to celebrate love. He listened, out in his summerhouse in the mountain meadow: ‘What the flowers in the meadow tell me,’ ‘What the animals in the forest tell me,’ ‘What the night tells me,’ ‘What the morning bells tell me,” and ‘What love tells me.’ Maybe these things all contradict one another; all we can do is listen.

 

“It helps to have friends with which to share this. Mahler had gotten over his love for Johanna Richter in the 1880s. He had a friend in the 1890s, Natalie Bauer-Lechner, who traveled with him and wrote down his thoughts. She was the one who wrote down the titles above. What was he thinking, not to embrace her after Alma Schindler had betrayed him. Ah, friendship is better than romance, as Mahler found out too late.”

Transition from Fundamentalism to Agnosticism, Part Five

I wrote on 29 January 2005, “If God is, then God is love, and forgives me when I ask forgiveness for my rage against Him and, in fact, He understands it…I see no God dropping nuggets of revelation from Heaven. That’s because He exists in our wisdom, however obscurely, and since His work is what we do, I can no longer ask for miracles…” There is utterly no evidence of God; the most convincing thing about belief in God is that Antonin Dvorak wrote “thanks be to God” at the end of every one of his pieces of music. I said for a while, I believe in God because Dvorak did.

God, I saw, seems to punish every good deed. I wrote on 6 February 2005, “Jesus is the epitome of every trait that God punishes throughout history…I almost feel I am being punished for loving what is calm, green, and constructive rather than raping the planet like a good consumer…It is enough to make you think that God really does want the lords of the demesne to rule and the rest of us to be serfs.”

I continued suffering, worse and worse despite medication. I thought I would stumble along until sweet death dissolved me. It was almost as if demons were fine-tuning my pain. How would I know? But demons, I figured, were not smart enough to do this. “They would leave a fork-prong or a dab of deviled ham lying around where a scientist would find it” if they caused diseases.

Despite this, I wrote on 12 February, I still had a deep ineradicable joy. “The desire for wisdom is basic to all my perception of the world, no matter how rigidly or fluidly, happily or gloomily, adjectively or adverbially, my physical carnal synapses assemble a model of reality out of the photons, pressures, and chemical compositions of the cosmos around me.” This was the 196^th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth; I imagine he might have thought the same thing were he alive today. In order to maintain my happiness, I had to wear a hard plastron on my breast to protect my heart as I drag myself over the rough earth. “I attained wisdom, and God saw me, and slapped me down into a gray continuum of semi-wakefulness.”

Nevertheless, I continued to write on that same day, “I am ready to be convinced. Sometimes it seems as if the Spirit of love does make some progress. The false spring, the frost killing the fresh verdure of Prague in 1968 was eventually followed by a true Czech spring; however imperfect, it would have inspired some crazy-dancing hemiola and G double sharps from Dvorak. And to me the beauty of science, literature, poetry, and music are inexpressible; confronted by them, as by a burning bush, I cannot remain morose.”

The result, I wrote on the next day, was counter-intuitive: I was laying each moment at God’s altar. “Then, oh this is wondrous strange, I am free to savor each moment, so I stumble along, deeply happy. I have no life, but only a series of moments each of which I make meaningful. If I live another 30 years, it will not be 30 years but 10,950 days at the beginning of each of which I will say, What, I’m still alive? What shall I do today? I no longer if I live, but if I do, I will make another day of progress towards goals which, if completed, will be good.”

I no longer suffer as much, but I still write down the blessings, as well as the setbacks, of each day. I would recommend that you do also. Write it down. You can look back at it and be amazed at how much, or how little, your life has changed.