Where the road tilts away
everything
moves toward itself
at once
Here
I am a watercolor figure
shades of blue pool at my feet
and blossoming from hands
form a limp umbrella
I fall from me until
I am the road I walk on
On God
I've been thinking about religion. Not the philosophy of religion -- although I am very much interested in that, I don't think it matters much. It all comes down to belief anyway, which is a single pearl, not a chain, and always threaded onto a leap of faith, however short or long that thread may be.
So I don't seek to prove that it is or is not plausible to believe in a God. Instead I ask, what is it about the concept of God that makes people want to believe in him?
I think it's because of this. God is some people's Mozart.
He is their Michelangelo, Aristotle, Einstein. What T.S. Eliot is to the poet, God is to his followers. We are human; we idolize, we follow, we worship. We have to see in our minds the figure we aspire to become; it keeps us moving forward, protects us against the thought that unlike these great figures, we are not here for a reason. We hold their ideas in our minds like statues, talismans -- but we are always looking for something better. Sooner or later worshipers of Eliot will discover Ashbery; people who are still in awe over Einstein will hear about M-theory and it will be all over.
Here is where the religious differ -- nothing, they say, is so great as God.
I want to know how true they are being to themselves. Or is this an ultimate truth us lesser people are still seeking? Is God at the top of some philosophical ladder we can't climb, made too heavy by our ideological baggage? Is it the other way around? Is Mozart some people's God? Something we feel we have to settle for in his stead?
So I don't seek to prove that it is or is not plausible to believe in a God. Instead I ask, what is it about the concept of God that makes people want to believe in him?
I think it's because of this. God is some people's Mozart.
He is their Michelangelo, Aristotle, Einstein. What T.S. Eliot is to the poet, God is to his followers. We are human; we idolize, we follow, we worship. We have to see in our minds the figure we aspire to become; it keeps us moving forward, protects us against the thought that unlike these great figures, we are not here for a reason. We hold their ideas in our minds like statues, talismans -- but we are always looking for something better. Sooner or later worshipers of Eliot will discover Ashbery; people who are still in awe over Einstein will hear about M-theory and it will be all over.
Here is where the religious differ -- nothing, they say, is so great as God.
I want to know how true they are being to themselves. Or is this an ultimate truth us lesser people are still seeking? Is God at the top of some philosophical ladder we can't climb, made too heavy by our ideological baggage? Is it the other way around? Is Mozart some people's God? Something we feel we have to settle for in his stead?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
