Wandering Watcher

By: Gus Victoria

Wandering watcher,

Dissatisfied with life once,

You began to walk

And never stopped,

Through dark forested hills,

Over wind carved mountains,

In valleys and caves,

There you were most content,

A calmness bestowed

By Nature granted

As you observed

Life’s rhythms.

A purity of thought

Filtered through the sieve

Of rationality;

A mystic distillation.

You departed one day

From that sacred path,

To share, to show,

Seeking wisdom

With others to learn,

To grow.

Wandering watcher,

When you spoke

Of life and existence,

Of wonder and awe,

Of death and disease,

In that moment,

Did they listen?

Wandering watcher,

You found by observation

The deep depths

Penetrated by deeper reflection,

In humility you became great,

In love you sought to share,

In arrogance we failed to care.

Not Quite the Atheist - Yet

With an admitted touch of irony, it is a leap of faith to disbelieve the ancient belief of Deity. It is a mark of courage to go forth in this world without the support of old dogmas and oft-repeated myths to guide and to reassure. Evil is as universal as good so long as there is a will to promote thought and exercise action. There is no hidden or apparent moral compass in religion that did not first find its creation in human thought. Why use the kaleidoscopic vision of a created divinity to filter back down what was ours always?

Religion might have once had its use. To unify and to create identities that allowed ancient peoples to understand and interact in their world with each other and various mysterious forces. Forces that have in that long march across history been explained, understood and re-understood time and again as we grow in knowledge, driven by our insatiable curiosity. As we have discovered much we have also realized there is much more that we do not know. That gap in knowledge no longer creates new myths that require strict adherence to some moral, civic, or social code. We carry around our inheritance of religion as ancient baggage that with each successive generation becomes heavier.

I am not yet brave enough nor strong enough in faith to jettison completely the millennia-old deities of my forebears, but I’m close. I look to the stars with the same wonder man did 5,000 years ago and before. The gods have changed, but that basic wonder never will. God may be out there, but I do not seek him out here. The universe is so vast it would be arrogance to limit what was created limitless. 

For another rant on the subject, check out Sorry John it Took Me So Long, But I'm a Dreamer Now

Chasing the Fairy #9

By: Gus  Victoria

A bird of a feather lost

On the path taken most

To a confession given freely

To him that asked.

A stranger hidden

From the truth given

On an empty plain

To sit on a barren pedestal

Of marble cold.

An inscription of gold

And the silken glance

Of the admiring youth

Give honor

Where ignorance is due.

Lack is surplus

When we worship

The lost empty space

Of unknown faithless frivolity.

God is greater than god

For man is more than men.

And woman mother of both. 

Jesus, Santa Claus, and Thoreau.

By: Gus Victoria

The comparisons to Jesus and Santa have been made before and not all are nice. In fact there are more than a few books and websites that do nothing but expound upon the similarities of Santa to Satan and his usurping of Christ’s role in the world particularly at Christmas time.

But what does a 19^th century American essayist/philosopher/rebel have to do with either of them? The truth is, depending on your personal beliefs, nothing or everything. Contrary to popular belief I hold a degree in Religion. It is a degree that, though I enjoyed earning, means very little in the “real world.” I do not regret my decision in pursuing such a degree and I only make mention of it because I can’t help but notice that many of my friends that studied alongside me have all followed paths much different than my own.  That is not to say I am alone in my beliefs, not at all. Simply that the community that I was part of whether through similarities of study, interest, disposition, or even convenience I no longer feel a part of. There is a restlessness of spirit that no amount of study of scripture was able to fix and which has at least in my private thoughts ostracized me from that community. Yet, there is no mourning on my part. Rather I feel as a prisoner let free from the confines of a prison. I have a newfound freedom that neither study nor experience has fully prepared me for.

Yes, I know, as Socrates once said “I know that I know nothing.” Without getting into Greek semantics and syntax I first acknowledge that I do not possess all the knowledge that would allow me comfortably to make all the right decisions every single time. Also I am honest enough to say that even at times that I do have the required knowledge to make the right choice I may, for whatever reason, choose not to. This is I believe my right as a human to be able to choose. However it is my duty as a neighbor living amongst others and in a world that I share with others to choose to do right.

Now again, what does Thoreau have to do with this? And Jesus and Santa for that matter? To me Thoreau stands as a rare ideal. Not in that his beliefs are mine though yes some of them are. What I see in Thoreau that I do not see in Jesus is freedom. I don’t mean to blaspheme here…or perhaps I do. I haven’t quite decided. Jesus; those teachings of his that are transmitted down to us are what I cherish and value. Yes I admit even those can never be fully accepted either without some amount of faith. Yet, even if those teachings are myth attributed to legend they are still very valuable and instructive. And were we still to assume that the Jesus in the scriptures is the real Jesus it is not hard to find many places where he has been taken up as an icon and idol to be worshiped blindly with little regard, if any, to his actual teachings. We seek salvation through gestures and prescribed readings while the evil in the world festers through indifference and a lack of courage to act.

Santa is an even more perfect example though perhaps not as devastating as the empty Jesus. Here is a figure that represents all the good we would like to see in the world manifested precisely in the manner by which we prevent that good from being fully realized. The commercialism is a problem yes that distracts us from doing good unto others. However the general atmosphere does have the ancillary effect of promoting a spirit of goodwill that one finds less common in the general population on a daily basis outside of the season. The real problem I believe lies at the fact that it is the material goods that keep us from attaining that full awareness of the other. We do enough to appease our conscience and little more. What happens when the trees are taken down, the toys forgotten, the lights put away? Is Santa that figure that promotes the good we are capable of beyond the season in ways beyond the material? Is he a leader or a myth we create and expand upon because it makes us feel good? Or does he represent more.

Both the modern Jesus and Santa are to me of little import when discussing matters of good and evil simply because they are constructs of a society created to serve that society not the other way around. I am not saying that we should open a church of Santa (as funny as that sounds to me). Nor am I saying that to enjoy our traditions makes us an outright agent of evil. But it is very easy to get distracted and forget what is really important.

And that leads me back to Thoreau. I don’t know what is really important and I am one of the biggest fans of our current Christmas season; to such a degree that I have been playing Harry for the Holidays since mid-September.  Is that normal? Probably not. What I find appealing about Thoreau and others like him is the rebellious nature. He questions as easily as he breathes, and I suspect that to him it is just as necessary to existence. I love the freedom of thought, to challenge an idea and not fight against the friction created by the reproach of centuries of orthodoxy. The God I choose to believe in does not look down on this freedom of thought, but rather encourages it. How can we better understand his greatness if we are not allowed to discover all that we don’t know?