http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Today’s post is a response to several reader who have been in touch about yesterday’s post on my general blog so readers may want to take a look:
http://rogertab.blogspot.com/
A gay reader who says he enjoys dipping into both blogs says he cannot live without religion and God to the extent that he chose to ‘suppress [my] sexuality and go straight’. He does not say if he has been happy with that decision. Me, I cannot believe that any God would hold a person’s sexuality against them. Religions say God is Love do they not? Since when did love discriminate in such a way…?
Now, yes, I am still on a summer break until October 1st, but sometimes people get in touch and I feel a response on the blog is called for sooner rather than later. The greater part of today’s post (and the poem below) appears on both blogs today.
Several readers expressed dismay that yesterday’s post did not suggest people with any kind of cancer or potentially life-threatening illness put their faith in God. Well, no offence meant to anyone, but (as regular readers will know only too well) I don’t subscribe to a view as conveyed by any of the world religions.
An elderly neighbour asked me how I can ‘live without God’. I am not sure that I do. Although I reject any religious interpretation of God, I do not dismiss the idea that God is Nature and Nature is God in the sense that I derive much spiritual inspiration from a close affinity with nature that I have enjoyed since childhood.
As I have said before on the blogs, religion does not have a monopoly on spirituality.
‘Ah,’ said my neighbour, ‘but what do you mean by spirituality? It implies the existence of God, does it not?’
Well, not to me it doesn’t, at least not in any religious context. Defining a sense of spirituality is all but impossible. I can only say that communing in nature puts me in touch with a sense of identity beyond that which I recognize in any conception I might have of my known self; I am transported in a realm of time and space which may or may not be infinity and in which I feel at home and safe although I don’t understand why. It is enough just to be there a while before returning to the harsher realities of everyday life.
I had to agree with my neighbour that I hadn’t answered and only barely touched upon any kind of answer to her question. However, it was the best I could do. Does she, I asked, have any clear answers to why we are here and where we go once we leave this shell we know as the body? Can she define the human spirit? But all she could say was religion’s great strength is that it answers all such questions. Well, with all due respect, that is not good enough for me. I see nothing in religion but division and disrespect among Believers for those who follow a different religion or none at all.
As for answers to such questions, I well recall what a teacher at my secondary school once told me years ago. ‘Never be afraid of what you don’t understand, Taber ‘but look upon the act of trying to understand as a challenge. Believe me. You’ll be far too preoccupied to be scared.’
This poem is a villanelle.
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
When I leave my body, where will I go?
(I trust neither to Heaver nor Hell);
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
Why is, I wonder, that we fear death so?
(Heart leaping at the tolling of a bell);
When I leave my body, where will I go?
Let my spirit soar high, never fly low;
(far beyond humankind’s battle yell);
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
Where rain spring falls, I would follow
(Earth Mother sounding my knell);
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
Rogue bird at a shoot, spoiling the show?
(As a kindly sandman taught me well)
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
At the call to life, I could not answer, no
to surfing its angrily anxious swell…
When I leave this body, where shall I go?
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
Copyright R. N. Taber 2012
Today’s post is a response to several reader who have been in touch about yesterday’s post on my general blog so readers may want to take a look:
http://rogertab.blogspot.com/
A gay reader who says he enjoys dipping into both blogs says he cannot live without religion and God to the extent that he chose to ‘suppress [my] sexuality and go straight’. He does not say if he has been happy with that decision. Me, I cannot believe that any God would hold a person’s sexuality against them. Religions say God is Love do they not? Since when did love discriminate in such a way…?
Now, yes, I am still on a summer break until October 1st, but sometimes people get in touch and I feel a response on the blog is called for sooner rather than later. The greater part of today’s post (and the poem below) appears on both blogs today.
Several readers expressed dismay that yesterday’s post did not suggest people with any kind of cancer or potentially life-threatening illness put their faith in God. Well, no offence meant to anyone, but (as regular readers will know only too well) I don’t subscribe to a view as conveyed by any of the world religions.
An elderly neighbour asked me how I can ‘live without God’. I am not sure that I do. Although I reject any religious interpretation of God, I do not dismiss the idea that God is Nature and Nature is God in the sense that I derive much spiritual inspiration from a close affinity with nature that I have enjoyed since childhood.
As I have said before on the blogs, religion does not have a monopoly on spirituality.
‘Ah,’ said my neighbour, ‘but what do you mean by spirituality? It implies the existence of God, does it not?’
Well, not to me it doesn’t, at least not in any religious context. Defining a sense of spirituality is all but impossible. I can only say that communing in nature puts me in touch with a sense of identity beyond that which I recognize in any conception I might have of my known self; I am transported in a realm of time and space which may or may not be infinity and in which I feel at home and safe although I don’t understand why. It is enough just to be there a while before returning to the harsher realities of everyday life.
I had to agree with my neighbour that I hadn’t answered and only barely touched upon any kind of answer to her question. However, it was the best I could do. Does she, I asked, have any clear answers to why we are here and where we go once we leave this shell we know as the body? Can she define the human spirit? But all she could say was religion’s great strength is that it answers all such questions. Well, with all due respect, that is not good enough for me. I see nothing in religion but division and disrespect among Believers for those who follow a different religion or none at all.
As for answers to such questions, I well recall what a teacher at my secondary school once told me years ago. ‘Never be afraid of what you don’t understand, Taber ‘but look upon the act of trying to understand as a challenge. Believe me. You’ll be far too preoccupied to be scared.’
This poem is a villanelle.
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
When I leave my body, where will I go?
(I trust neither to Heaver nor Hell);
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
Why is, I wonder, that we fear death so?
(Heart leaping at the tolling of a bell);
When I leave my body, where will I go?
Let my spirit soar high, never fly low;
(far beyond humankind’s battle yell);
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
Where rain spring falls, I would follow
(Earth Mother sounding my knell);
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
Rogue bird at a shoot, spoiling the show?
(As a kindly sandman taught me well)
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
At the call to life, I could not answer, no
to surfing its angrily anxious swell…
When I leave this body, where shall I go?
Does anyone care? Will anyone know?
Copyright R. N. Taber 2012
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