My soul

When I was young I thought I had a soul
But what is a soul?
I used to think it was a spirit inside me
Descartes thought the pineal gland was its seat
I thought it was in my brain at least
If you lose your arm do you lose your soul?
(Of course not that's silly)
But if your brain is destroyed, what then?
Lights out
Then something happened
-God died-
Part of me died too
I thought it was my soul
When God dies the soul dies with God
Was I an automaton?
(A mechanical monkey)
How terrible I thought and I cried
"I'm like one of those crying statues
I'm like my dad's tractor losing oil from its seams
I'm a heartless tinman rusted from crying"
(That's a hint by the way)

I found my soul again
It wasn't at all what I thought it was
Can you believe it?
It was staring me right in the face
-It was my body-
What the hell?
The same guy who was the first to announce
-God died-
Also said this:

"I," you say, and are proud of the word. But greater is that in which you do not wish to have faith - your body and its great reason: that does not say "I", but does "I."

Ok ok if I switch "I" with "soul" what would I have:

"Soul," you say, and are proud of the word. But greater is that in which you do not wish to have faith - your body and its great reason: that does not say "soul", but does "soul."

Jesus Christ he's on to something!
"Your body... that does not say soul
But does soul!"
He who has ears to hear man
All this time "soul" had been a breath of stale air
I choked on it every time it left my lungs
I said it like a stuck record player:
Soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, click
I said it so many times I mixed it up with my saying it
(Like: God, God, God, God, God, God, burp)
But my body was doing it
Oh was it ever doing it
I am it you see?
Why else would God resurrect a body?
(Ok so they had that part right)

These days I prefer to use "I" instead of "soul"
But they're really the same thing
They always have been actually
When I was young I was taught not to really like my body
"I" was a sinner
My body liked sin you see
(Did it ever)
This started all the confusion though
It created a fake wall between soul and body
(Soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, gag)
"It's got to be something different than my body!
I mean, look how many times I can say it
Bad body!  Go to your room
(With pleasure)
Soul you sit over there
Body you shut up and sit over there
Don't you dare look at soul like that you dirty body
(What, like an amputated limb?)"
What a lot of hooey!

It's built into us you see
When we're little kids our parents take us to learn stuff
Stuff they were taught when they were kids
We don't have a choice
We grow up thinking it's real
Words like "soul" refer to real things
(Well, as real as something that's invisible and can't be found anywhere)
Ok but they just confused things
I can forgive them for teaching me stuff they thought was real

I like the old way of saying things like:
"The boat went down and 30 souls were lost"
Or:
"S.O.S- Save Our Souls!"
(Nobody in Church has a sign with S.O.S on it)
Or:
"I went down to the kitchen and not a soul was there"
You see? 
"Soul" just means "person" or "body"
We've always known it probably
When we're not pretending it's something else

West

It is almost noon

The last post from Gillian Bennett, a woman fighting to end her own life legally in Canada.

With the dark night of dementia closing in she decided to take her own life yesterday at noon, but not before writing this letter on her blog Dead at Noon.

Thank you Gillian for standing up and embodying human dignity.

Winging it

Farm market

Yeast Reflection

This is a rather silly reflection, but nevertheless one I found quite fun to entertain.  As I was making my famous home-made pizza dough, I took the yeast out of the refrigerator, as I've done dozens of times before, and sprinkled it over the warm water and sugar solution I had prepared.  It suddenly struck me how amazing this yeast was, having been transported to this home from our previous two houses, covering a period of roughly four years!  Yet it still becomes active under the conditions I prepare ahead of time.  What does this mean?  The yeast has been stored in its jar, completely inactive in the cold temperatures, as lifeless as the jar it was sitting in.  I've heard of much more simple viruses reviving after being frozen in time for 30,000 years.  The virus sat completely lifeless, frozen solid, a matrix of lipids and proteins until suddenly "animated" by being placed in the right conditions.  Doesn't this start to blur the line between the organic and inorganic?  This is precisely the problem some Creationists have with the earliest evolutionary accounts of life: how does life make the jump between inanimate molecules to animate organisms?  What if part of the answer lies within my pizza dough?  What if it's simply a matter of the proper conditions?

Now who wants a slice?  :)

Dan Barker- On losing faith

On the one hand I was happy with the direction and fulfillment of my Christian life; on the other hand, my intellectual doubts were sprouting all over. Faith and reason began a war within me. And it kept escalating. I would cry out to God for answers, and none would come. Like the lonely heart who keeps waiting for the phone to ring, I kept trusting that God would someday come through. He never did.

The only proposed answer was faith, and I gradually grew to dislike the smell of that word. I finally realized that faith is a cop-out, a defeat—an admission that the truths of religion are unknowable through evidence and reason. It is only indemonstrable assertions that require the suspension of reason, and weak ideas that require faith. Biblical contradictions became more and more discrepant, and apologist arguments became more and more absurd. When I finally discarded faith, things
became more and more clear.

But don't imagine that this was an easy process. It was like tearing my whole frame of reality to pieces, ripping to shreds the fabric of meaning and hope, betraying the values of existence. It hurt badly. It was like spitting on my mother, or like throwing one of my children out a window. It was sacrilege. All of my bases for thinking and values had to be restructured. Adding to that inner conflict was the outer conflict of reputation. Did I really want to discard the respect I had so carefully built over so many years with so many important people? But even so, I couldn't be distracted from the questions that had come to the forefront. Finally, at the far end of my theological migration, I was forced to admit that there is no basis for believing that a god exists, except faith, and faith was not satisfactory to me.  I did not lose my faith—I gave it up purposely. The motivation that drove me into the ministry—to know and speak the truth—is the same that drove me out.

I lost faith in faith.

Robin Williams (1951-2014)

I hope you found your Summerland..
Rest in peace Robin Williams.

Supermoon Saturday

The view from my backyard. 

Hello

Orbweaver

Cross Orbweaver
Araneus diadematus
Region: Almaguin Highlands, Ontario, Canada
August 3, 2014