I love driving from the Eisenhower tunnel, down through the Rocky Mountains and into Denver (my home town). As you go barreling down I-70, you round one mountain, just to see another, and another and another. And just when you think that you are forever trapped in this rocky landscape, you round a curve and see this vast open plain. On clear days you can see not only the suburbs, but downtown Denver itself. It is an amazing view.
One of my favorite Beatles songs is “A Day in the Life.” It starts as a very ethereal morose tune where John Lennon describes his mourning. At a certain point, the song completely changes and becomes almost a cheerful list of Paul McCartney recounting his morning. The song ends in a cacophony as if the two micro songs collide.
When I was a kid and church, I noticed that in every song service began with Hymns slow at first and building to a hymn with a very fast tempo. Then quite suddenly, the final hymn would dramatically change into a slow repetitive chorus like Alleluia (the same word sung over and over to different cords).
Each of these things have one theme in common that I love: Transitions. I choose my word carefully. I like transitions, not metamorphosis. Metamorphosis implies a permanent change from one state into another. Religion is very big on Metamorphosis. They want to change one thing into something else entirely. Transition on the other hand, suggest a more fluid state, where one thing becomes another and can easily move back and forth.
For a long while now, I have been in self imposed isolation. I was afraid that I had gone through a metamorphosis from being a Christian to being an atheist. Fear prevented me from letting anyone know this. It was a well guarded secret. I did not want others to think I was no longer, well, Ben.
But over the last month or so, I have started letting down my guard and openly sharing my doubts and sometimes revulsion to religion. The more I share, the more I realize that I have not gone through a metamorphosis at all. I am in a more active period of transition. I am at various times both sinner and saint. I am full of faith and an atheist. Wise and yet really stupid. Nice but occasionally cruel.
The great recent development is that I don’t worry as much about defining myself as one thing or another. I am seeking, discovering, trying, failing, growing and dying. I don’t want to be defined by any one thing.
Tada! Now let me begin…
Your distinction between transition (shifting positions) vs metamorphisis (changing forms) is interesting — never thought about that. I imagine it could be comforting to imagine yourself as doing one thing rather than the other. Images we use for ourselves are important — yet they are very individualist: one’s favorite image may be another’s hated image.
In light of that, you may enjoy my post on the distinction between the label of “Seeker vs Explorer“. I’d be curious where you fall.
PS — I LOVE the photoshopped pic. You and I have that in common, it seems, we both love to play with the pics we put on our sites. Yours is very nice. Where did you find the guy with such an ugly face?
😉 (male humor)
I have a zillion old photos like that. I used to blog on yahoo 360 and did the photos all the time. I have just recently started abusing my visage again.
(1) You really really suck at Photoshop, but it seems to work for you and it makes me laugh, so that’s okay. 😛
(2) I think you were always in transition (at least the last several years) and didn’t realize it. The church wants people to metamorphose. “I’m a new creation; I’m a brand new man,” the song goes.
(3) I’ve only driven out of the Rockies at I70 into Denver once. I had the opposite reaction: “Well there goes everything that made Colorado worthwhile. I guess we’re in Kansas now, for the next 600 miles…” is more or less what I said to Judi. We did have good steak that night, though.
(4) Going back to Photoshop, I played with the color mixing tool once. I found it scientifically fascinating, and absolutely frustrating to use. Everything is in equilibrium. If your picture is an ugly shade of yellow (like an old scanned photo that’s been around since the 60s), and you want to get rid of the tint, SURE… dial down the yellow. What few people know is that the way this is done is by *increasing* the Cyan and Magenta. In Photoshop, like life, I suspect, everything is in equilibrium. You don’t can’t a religion out of your life without adding things to your life somewhere else, or you end up just empty. I don’t know what this means, but I just thought of it and had to share.
(5) I’ll shut up now.
1) To play on the words of Hallmark…when you care enough to do the very least.
2) Agreed, but I think I was transitioning out of Christianity into a void. Now it feels like I am coming out of the void into something else.
3) That is my reaction to I-80 coming out of the Sierra’s and into Nevada.
4) Wow…I am going to have to chew on this for awhile.
5) Ditto
(1) Comment hierarchies are a pain: Read here
(2) @ bjanecarp
You said,
I imagine you meant “cut”, right? In which case, if you cut dressing up and going to church out, you get more time to do things on Sunday (or Saturday) that are more valuable or pleasant. If you cut Bible reading, it opens more books to read. I you cut thinking you are morally superior to others, all of a sudden you relate better to tons of folks. If you cut thinking nonChristians are going to hell, you may make new, sincere friends. If you stop thinking the world was made in 6 days, you might actually start understanding science books.
So, it seems that you don’t have to replace it with anything — healthy things will just fill the void. Well, that is, if you do healthy things. Cutting off a gangrenous finger saves a life — well, unless you needed to cut higher. 🙂
Exactly. That’s kind of what I meant. The disease of making a debacle of a sentence, rewriting it, and then adding a spare typo from the arsenal. And I agree with you, Sabio. The thing is, religion is so all-consuming. Especially Pentecostalism–the religibeast can occupy easily 1/3-1/2 of your waking hours. And if you exorcise the beast–if you’re not ‘ready’–all you can do is mourn. Something’s gotta fill the void apart from mourning. Like, say, Photoshop. 😛
Laughing ! Very good!