thoughts on the sky

I am walking outside on a january day. The snow is still fresh, therefore it is white and not stained with filth. My footsteps break through the crust on the surface and sink about 6 inches, making each step a small effort. Looking up at the sky I see a mix of blues and cloud. The number of different shades of blue is not within my ability to number. The colour changes with the sun and cloud movements.
As often happens to me on these walks I feel a surge of joy mixed with gratitude. My body wants to adopt a posture of worship. Yet I am always left wondering who to say it all to. Why am I satisfied with no name for a god to thank? It is a good question for me.

For some reason or reasons men and women have named all the Gods we form relationships with. Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah are some of the biggies. Lesser Gods have marched through history, with their name often the only piece of them they leave behind. Isis, Ra, Beloch, Morrigan, Odin and many others form the list. I supopose giving god a name is a social sort of thing to do. I cannot very well go around calling god "what's your name' or other variations? That part I get, but that is about the end of what i get. The fact that so many of us say we know what god thinks is the death of spirituality for this worshipper.

"Wait wait" they say, holding a hand up to signal me there are more nuggets on the way. Not only do they know what god thinks, but they also know what he (he is a man apparently, judging by the use of pronouns when god is referenced) wants all of us to do and not to do. The muslims have Sharia. At least they are not shy or duplicitous about the subject. They come right out and say all of us need to bend our selves to Allah, and that our everyday life should be governed by the law of Islam. The judges who interpret this law will be holy men (there is that male thing again) and their sentence will be based upon the Koran which is their holy book. Chop a hand off here and stone an adulterer there and before we know it we will be in synch with Allah and his prophet Mohammed.

Then there are the Ten Commandments which represent the Judeo-Christian take on the meaning of all things. Here, God is a god. He can be our father or a mysterious being made up of a trilogy named the father the son and the holy ghost. Confession, amends, and charity co-exist with harlots, doomed homosexuals, heterosexual marriage and the indisputable claim to a few square miles of what is often called 'the holy land'. Answers to universal questions are abundant. When missing easy answers all of this lot fall back on the will of the diety and whatever that turns out to be. After all is said and done it is the winner who records history.

Over and over again I read of men and women who know gods will and have all the answers for anything to do with spiritus mundi or the spiritual world. I suspect they are full of shit. Consider this: we live on a beautiful planet that is one of many. Sort of like a grain of sand on a long beach is one of many, so let's us go with that image. We will seperate this grain of sand to stand in for Earth. It is not a reach if you really look at he Universe. I was recently impressed by the newest Hubble pictures that claim to show the oldest galaxy yet discoverd. For the light from there to reach this grain of sand takes about 13 billion light years. This means 13 billion years with the light moving at 186,000 miles per second or about six orbits around the speck of sand we call home and that is every second. To say it is a distant neighbour is to overdo undersatement.

On this speck of sand exist a number of organisms that have seen the way to all the truth of existence, and most of all when it concerns god or any of his or her aliases. They are so certain of their point of view they are willing to kill for it or to hate for it. They have developed a cute bag of tricks to justify their actions. After all, they remain human with a capacity for empathy, and need at least the intoxicant of righteousness to help get over the hurdle of compassion. Just a few examples. The Crusades, Catholic versus Protestant, Jew versus Palestinians, Palestinians versus Jews, Muslim versus non-muslim, Shiaa versus Shi'ite (both muslim), Hindu versus muslim, Protestant versus Muslim, Catholic, and everyone else, and on and on it goes. If it seems loaded to muslim it is simply a reflection of today. We have all been at it like dogs on a bone.

So I look at the sky and am full of gratitude mixed with love for this physical and spritual home of ours. Certainly in our solar system not one other place will support our life for a second. Maybe we could last a couple of minutes holding our breath on Mars but that is it. What if this is heaven? What if this beautful perfect planet is as good as anything ever gets? Imagine that the messages that count are found in the wind, the sunset or rise, a child's smile or cry. As I gaze at the blue patches and am filled with emotion am I looking at the face of God, whoever they are? Why is it even needed to put a name to all? Let me be clear about this much; when I feel grateful I am as close to spiritual as I will ever get. When I feel glad to be alive and surrounded by this beautiful home I am in a place where I am more likely to help than hurt. More likely to love than hate. More likely to take care of my home because it is greater than me but needs my stewadship.

Putting a name on god and then giving loyalty and absolute belief to all the written content of religion allows me to be a destroyer of everything that counts. I will kill, maim, rape and be carried off into rapture by the smell of blood. The majority of the named ones ask for blood while they whine around the ideas of nobility, charity and love. There is no love. Only a stupid insistence upon their thoughts and beliefs being correct. Only the ignorant intoxicated face with eyes looking up, preaching absolute faith. I say no no no. What arrogance. On this speck of sand these limited short lived critters make life for the rest of us more unpleasant and dangerous than it has to be.

The entire concept of an eight pound soup of cells called the brain understanding the sacred is so silly except 'silly ' is the wrong description for something so dangerous. We would be infinitely better off with a grateful population who worked at keeping an open mind rather than a convinced one. Being absolutely certain is proof of low intelligence, or at least I think so. I also believe that the emotion we call love is the force given to us to evolve on a spiritual plane. All of this could easily be wrong, but not completely, and it is inside our inner conflicts and our ambiguous nature where any god worth their salt could be found.