When Music Speaks

One of my most cherished Wyoming vacation traditions—two years in practice now—is the acquisition of new music for the journey. While I tried to be mature and considerate in my selections this year, purchasing several guided meditations that I have yet to listen to even in part, what I really wanted—and what I got in spades—was new metal.

Surprise, surprise.

It so happens that I've been so distracted by my assorted and sundry stress-induced health ailments—thanks, Corporate, you heartless bitch—that I had no idea whatsoever that Dream Theater was putting out a new album, timing its release to absolute perfection by selecting the very day that I am doomed to return to my desk job from the sanctified alpine vistas of Wyoming.

You know when I discovered that, I had to have me that first release off of the new album for my travels!

I have a fairly long fixation on Dream Theater, though I've not yet managed to see them in concert. I believe the album of theirs which I first purchased was the mainstream offering, Images and Words; this, for those of you imaginary souls who may be tragically uninitiated to the delicious world of alternative metal and yet are still trudging along through this scary forest of obsessive/compulsive metal veneration, is the album that spawned the "Pull Me Under" single.

From that modest beginning, I rapidly collected more Dream Theater albums, though I was at a loss to explain the appeal until I noticed, at a Rush concert, a significant number of attendees sporting Dream Theater shirts. Upon returning home and exercising my right to Google, I read a number of analyses that smartly compared Rush and Dream Theater, with their tendency to switch key and alternate beat, explaining that the two bands shared a tenacious appeal to the attention-deficit-disordered.

Basically, the suggestion was that there is so much contained with Rush and Dream Theater songs, that people who might otherwise be bored with music, cannot become so—making them supermagnetically attracted to the two bands. Between the two, of course, Dream Theater has a heavier edge, but the similarities are nevertheless many.

Anyway, while I am not at all the sort of person who holds court on musical discussion boards—being that I tend to slouch down in the corner with the rest of the slovenly and "musically illiterate", despite the fact that I am very vocal in my personal musical preferences ... I simply cannot defend them in terms utilized by the musical elite—I am nevertheless a fairly rabid Dream Theater fan. To me, their lyrics provoke thought, their melodies incite chills, and their stylings demand repeated play—all of which I am deliriously pleased to provide.

There will be argument and debate, of course—there always is, even amongst the most devoted of fans—regarding the quality and innovativeness of Dream Theater's newest production. However, regardless of whether the experts or the laymen or the random listener concur on the merits (or lack thereof) of this latest effort from Dream Theater, I've already made my assessment of the first fledged track. I have all I need to know in what I've read into the lyrics and what I've extracted from the surging trills and crescendoing plunges, and I like it. I like it rather a lot, particularly when the refrain speaks to me so abundantly and appropriately:

Turn the key
walk through the gate
The great ascent
to reach a higher state
A rite of passage

The final stage
a sacred home
Unlock the door
and lay the cornerstone
A rite of passage

There's some sort of of cliché about how you find what you're looking for ... I believe it's made out to be a bad thing, and certainly it can be. But in regards to something as personal as music, if you find what you're looking for, then you've done a damn fine job as a seeker. And part of the beauty of music is that there is so much more to it than its simple literal and tonal speech—music also has in it what you bring to it.

So bring a lot, my invisible friends ... and bring it often.

I Remember Now

We are back in Wyoming, for a too-limited time, but back, nevertheless. The air is as fresh and eminently breathable as I recall, and the spaces are as vast and freeing. Through the restricted miracle of a laptop computer—recharged by batteries powered by solar cells—I am able to blog, though due to the remoteness of our location, I will not be able to post my rantings until we've returned to the Internet-connected world at large, about a week from the time I write this.

On the last portion of our travels, which brought us to the sanctity of our home away from home (and away from pretty much everything else), we were conveyed by a neighboring rancher's Range Rover. This generosity saved us a lengthy hike, which we made a few days later just for fun (and it is all the more fun when you are not weighted down with the gear required for a week in isolation).

During the unexpectedly quick, final part of our journey, I overheard the rancher's wife telling the story of some native Wyoming son, away during the Vietnam War, and how his parents sent him a package to ease his homesickness. The scent of sagebrush, crushed under the wheels of the Range Rover, reminded her of this, as it was sagebrush that the soldier received.

And I inhaled to the point of inebriation the scent as I listened to the tale. I remembered collecting snips of sagebrush myself, when we moved from Wyoming to that other place, and I remembered my parents bringing it back to me in subsequent years, when they traveled to Wyoming but I could not.

I expect it's not something most people would find soothing, but I knew how it must have made that soldier feel. It was an odd reassurance, to be so connected to so small a thing as the smell of a tenacious, wiry plant, but it is there as sure as air in my lungs and blood in my veins—though not born to it, I am still a Wyomingite myself ... an adopted child of my chosen homeland. Inextricably, it is there to come back to; inexplicably, it is never far away—even when it is.

I remember now.

Mind v. Matter

It recently occurred to me that I have never considered my "self" to be my physical self. I don't mean that I don't consider my physical being to be all of me—because of course it is not, although I am undecided as to whether the mental/emotional/whateveral rest of me qualifies as what some term a "soul", or whether it is a more benign, amorphous mess generated by various biological processes and held together with the tenuous connections forged by personal memory—but rather, I mean that I do not consider my physical self part of ME at all.

On the surface, this is a totally irrational position to take; clearly, the physical framework within which we all operate as human beings is a large part of who we are and what we become. We may exist as "spiritual"—for lack of a better word—beings, but even if some of us may claim to have experienced multiple trips to this terrestrial existence, I do not know of anyone who has claimed to be able to recall existence entirely outside of the physical realm.

If, indeed, there is such a thing at all.

While I accept that my feeling that my body is not part of "me"—though I do accept that it's my property for the duration of my lifespan—is a ridiculous one, I still can't escape the notion. If, for example, someone compliments my appearance, I do not take it as a credit to me. This is above and beyond whether I feel the compliment is valid—I really do not feel that my face or my body are components of my whole "self" ... my physical person to me, is more or less an illusion—a fable of a thing that, while not precisely a prison, is still so sadly restricting that it tips the blessing/burden scales quite distinctly down on the side of being a trial.

In this way, I think, I identify with some of the early Gnostic ideas that the physical realm is a necessarily evil one. It's not that I'm so closely sympathsizing that I could make the transition to conversion—not by any stretch of the Gumby personna of imagination—but I do relate in the basic notion that the physical and the "spiritual" are essentially disconnected entities, and the spiritual one is the "good" and real of the two. I do not find the idea that the material realm is a confinement, of sorts, to be extreme, or uncomfortable.

Because of this underlying (if irrational) conviction, I am finding myself at increasingly distressing odds with my shrink, who seems to be of opposing sentiments, and is increasingly encouraging me to become more in touch with my physical body—yes, yes, let's get the adolescent snickering out of the way on that phrasing right now—and to connect with it via meditation. I've been putting this off for so long now that it's fairly routine, but I do think the reason for my evasion has less to do with my general tendency towards procrastination and a lot more to do with my feeling that the material world is scraping the sub-basement of idealism ... in short, my physical body is not something of which I wish to have an increased and in depth awareness.

Sure, there are physical pleasures to be had, and it's tatamount to insanity to wish to be removed from what happiness the material realm holds. But there's also a full-black rainbow of physical discomforts out there, and the idea of increasing my sensitivity to and acknowledgment of the gamut of ickiness that runs from mildly irritating menstrual cramps to near-completely debilitating migraines—even if I could possibly catch such attacks in earlier stages—quite simply revolts me. And that doesn't even touch on the truly horrific opportunities for material hell that reside in "this world": illnesses that kill instead of merely discomfort, and worse, ones that make death seem like a blessing.

Anyway, having established what's holding me back and loosely chained it to an historical theology that I find fascinating—albeit abstractly so—where do I go from this walled-off dead-end street? That's hard to say. I haven't gone anywhere yet, though I am getting damn sick of staring at the bricks in front of me. I've packed a number of guided meditations with me on a variety of portable devices—my mp3 player, this sweet little Dell Mini, and even my cellphone—and yet I still continue to avoid even attempting to try to meditate my way into a new relationship with the physical "me" I've so long denied.

Gnosticism, for all of its independent flavors—mostly lost to history—is centered on knowledge. It occurred to me, though, when I made the connection between the disdain I've felt for my physical self for at least a quarter of a century and these long-lost spiritual philosophies, that to avoid knowledge is to desecrate that "spiritual" self which I do identify with and hold as truly "me". And that means that even if it is hideously uncomfortable—or merely just awkward and weird—I need to advance my ideas and make new connections.

And maybe I do need to start seeing myself in the duality of the non-physical and the physical ... even if the non-physical is clearly the superior part. Especially considering that, given that I do not consider my physical self "me", I seem to have forgotten or neglected to realize at all that all of the trials and tribulations that the material world presents cannot—if I do not permit them—touch the part of myself that I consider my true "self". Perhaps what improvement of the tenuous connection between the immaterial and the material can actually strengthen both components.

It's an interesting idea, I guess. But only time will tell if this particular odd notion will prove stronger than my ability to put off meditating entirely!

Every Last Word

A momentous thing has occurred, dear Internet! Well, perhaps not so much "momentous" as "ludicrous", or perhaps "irrational", but regardless of the exact classification of said THING, it was a precious moment in my Internet life—very precious indeed!

(Not quite as precious as when I managed to elicit a rare and treasured comment from The ListMaker, mind you, but it was still special. But on with the story, lest you never discover what "it" was, or lose all interest in even trying.)

I've long made occasional, random mention of my unorthodox "Bike-n-Blog" apparatus—a shockingly heavy Toshiba "Satellite Pro" laptop with an external, 3.5" floppy disk drive, running Windows 95 atop a Professional Engineer custom-crafted desk, under which sits an archaic 10-speed bike that no longer shifts quite right but runs nicely in one high gear, fitted into a very nice Blackburn TrakStand—at which I do pretty much all of my blog writing. Of late, I have also made rising-frequency something of the increasingly uncooperative "R" key of said Toshiba laptop.

Now, while what I've said with respect to this setup might certainly be taken for "whining"—in particular, regarding the near-constant backspacing necessitated by the rrrrrrrecalcitrant "R" key—I really do like my non-standard blogging situation. I like that I'm getting a fairly respectable workout while I write, I like that I'm doing it on hand-me-down (aka, recycled) and hand-built (aka, creative) materials, and even though I'm enough of a geek to long for the latest and greatest in high-tech gadgetry, I like that I'm not beholden to it, or hampered by lack of it.

(In short, I like the illusion of adaptability, which is what my "Bike-n-Blog" workspace provides me as a bonus to the ability to maintain some semblance of fitness while I tickle the alpha-numeric keyboard to my wee heart's content.)

But I'll also freely admit that the "R" key conniptions were making writing unusually trying, and as any writer can tell you, writing is generally difficult enough that additional "challenges" are really most unwelcome. I certainly could have endeavored to crack open the Toshiba—unencumbered by an operating manual—and attempted to repair its stickiness, and I did try the less-invasive procedure of evicting years of dust-bunny accumulation and a few chunkier particulates from the immediate vicinity of the "R" key with strategic blasts of canned air, but that changed the key's stubborn-teenager behavior not a whit.

I'm fairly decent with computers in that I am not afraid to experiment with them, trying new menu options and even the occasional registry tinkering with only a modicum or so of cringing. However, when it comes to gutting the beasts and working with their fragile, electro-delicate innards, I really would rather never go there. Ever. Like, in a bazillion years or so! Particularly when, as I realized one day when looking for an old entry on my new-ish, Internet-ready desktop computer, there was no where in the world—save the Internet itself—that the entirety of my blog was stored EXCEPT for that ancient, "R"-irritable Toshiba laptop, snuggled cozily over my bicycle, right next to my lonely weight bench.

(You can see why I refrained from attacking the underbelly of the "R" key now, can't you?)

Yes, somehow, in the transfer of files from one desktop computer to another, I managed to NOT carryover the years of text files that have translated into so much Internet light pollution, and while I understand that at least half the world goes merrily along with less than half of its files backed up, I've been the victim of two hard-drive failures and numerous minor incidents that leave me almost rabid with back-up fever. And although I do suffer from back-up constipation—you know, no regularity to speak of—it's extremely rare that I have NO BACK-UP AT ALL, and because I had been operating under the delusion that my desktop computer contained all of the same files as the trusty old Toshiba—"R" key notwithstanding—it was quite a shock to discover that I was actually 399 files short of a full blog back-up.

The process of transferring data from the Bike-n-Blog computer to my desktop is harrowing enough, involving as it does the archaic 3.5" floppy disk so rightfully mocked by Jeff at Side Salad in this here entertaining blog entry. But to transfer from there to my adorable, purse-sized Dell Mini—mine thanks to my marvelous Writing Sponsors—requires the additional step of a USB jump drive (something the old Toshiba remains quite gleefully ignorant of). And while that step went perfectly fine, I can't say that the process of extracting my near-400 missing files via 3.5" floppy did the same.

Hell, it seems, hath no fury like a 3.5" external floppy disk scorned, or even one which has been called gently upon to accept files for transfer via totally functional—not at all corrupt or even looked at sideways!—and the process resulted in multiple blue screens of death, which frightened me and probably caused me to turn a little blue myself. While I can certainly extract my files from their current Internet residence, copy-pasting them—even three times each—was preferable not only from the laziness aspect, but likewise from that exotic viewpoint of "efficiency".

(As you might imagine, it was with a copious quantity of relief—if not an alliterative allusion to the same—that I matched file totals on the crutch-supported Toshiba and the baby-fresh Mini at the end of the day and found that, YES! All files had, eventually, survived and made a successful ship-to-ship transfer.)

And, miracle of minor technological miracles, here I am, blogging with a FULL and even accessible backup again! And an "R" key that does not self-activate, leaving a trail of "R"-slime across "R"-unfriendly words! AND I can use a standard USB jump drive to hop and skip my latest—if not greatest—bloggy messes right from my Bike-n-Blog computer directly onto the Internets!

It's nothing to the world at large, I imagine, which will go merrily on regardless of my convenience or efficiency. But to me, today is momentous indeed, and if it is true that the largest triumphs are really the smallest, then this is a really big one, baby.

Either way, I'm going to enjoy every last word of it.

Why I'm Not Quitting My Day Job*

I don't think I've written about it yet, but for the past seven months, I have been an unwilling member of the migraine-afflicted. The doctor who diagnosed me—on the ass end of a three-day bitch of a headache, so brutal that it kept me from sleeping for the hugely better part of that time frame—surmised that I'd had migraines longer than that, claiming that most people do, but they think they have a sinus infection, or allergies, or whatever other ailment that doesn't necessarily RETURN on them with the general unwelcome-visitorness of a migraine.

Anyway, while I do enjoy spending time along the lovely shores of Denial, there are times when I have to suck it up and seek medical assistance, regardless. That migraine-diagnosing three-day crack whore of a headache in November was one such case, and so was this week, wherein I finally overcame my fear and loathing of the warnings in the label of the generic Imitrex my doctor prescribed ... because I had not one, not two, not three, but four—FOUR!—migraines in the expanse of a single week.

Fuck you, Migraine Fairy, and that's all I've got to say about THAT.

On the subject of pharmaceuticals, however, I have rather a lot more to say. Now, while I can certainly see why some people live in a perpetual state of "natural cure seeking", I prefer, if I'm going to be ingesting non-food items ANYWAY, to have something that has at least a bit of scientific research to back it up. That being said (with apologies to The Righter, as always, for that stupid, Big Brother-esque phrase), I don't purport to enjoy adding pills and sprays and whatever other format the medication du jour comes in to my health regime ... no, not in the slightest! But when the alternative is lying flat on my back for up to 72 hours at a time, with no books, no music, NO INTERNETS, and not even a wee little bit of entertainment of any sort (unless you count refreshing my flax-seed cold pack as "entertainment"—I do not), well.

Pass the damn pills, thankyouverymuch!

So after the fourth magic anti-migraine pill of the week—and I'll give them this, the makers of Dr. Reddy's abundantly over-packaged Sumatriptan Succinate Tables, they make a MOST effective migraine stopping potion!—I phoned My Lovely Lady Doctor (her nurse, actually), and after a lengthy discussion of my symptoms, treatments, and mitigating circumstances (hello, Age and Hormone Fairies! please help yourself to a nice big cup of arsenic! BITCHES!), the nurse consulted with My Lovely Lady Doctor and they came up with this brilliant plan: MORE. MEDICATION.

Mind you, it makes sense, and there IS, per my request, research to back it up. But. Given that part of my query involved hesitancy to take "too much" (whatever that might be) of Dr. Reddy's individually-wrapped silver migraine bullets, why anyone expected me to be delighted at the notion of adding ANOTHER set of machine-pressed pills to my arsenal is beyond me. Yeah, yeah, I'll be delighted when I've physically heard the door hitting the Migraine Fairy's ass and knocking her to the ground in a crumpled heap, sure. But meantime, it just means another trip to Drugs.com's Drug Interaction Checker to check interactions between the growing list of my meds—and also my supplements, because that's important to check, too—and oh my gosh, I am LAZY, people! And this is going to put a cramp in my weekend America's Next Top Model viewing!

*Ahem!*

So. Once The Exotic Neurotic defused my neuroses with a few neat links, including this one to Mayo Clinic's "Migraine guide", I was on board with the steroid prescription, albeit still somewhat unwillingly.

"You'd better freaking work," I told the box of medications, drawing at least one odd stare from passers-by as I exited the pharmacy.

Fortunately—for me, if not anyone who reads this blather—I then started seeing the warped side of the situation.

As I drove home, you see, I was happily recollecting the fact that the pharmacist—not as cute as the one I used to have, but still rather adorable, and quite likely fresh out of pharmacy school (and therefore young enough to be my biological offspring, BUT HE WASN'T)—was fetchingly close to knowing my name. This is quite appealing, because it implies that I'm adorable, too (or, yeah, the pharmacist might be good with the names of HIS BEST CUSTOMERS—shut up, KILLJOY!).

ANYway, I was thinking that if I was a pharmacist, I'd be more likely to memorize people's pharmacy code numbers than their names, being as I am: 1) THAT big of a geek, and 2) better with numbers than names (see #1). Then it occurred to me that, rather than numbers, it would be SO much fun to see if people could be classified by loosely-beaded combination-names of their various pharmaceuticals, which would take me from my standard name to something like: Norflutilevomethyltriptan.

Which, while it doesn't precisely trip off the tongue, is still a damn site better than it would be, if I were still on the anti-depressants and muscle relaxants in addition: Norflutibuprolevocyclomethyltriptan

This nonsense led me to the next logical—"logical", in my twisted little screw of a side-bar universe—step, which would be to make up stories about my imaginary clientele (the ones I would have if I was a pharmacist, that is). For example, in the case of Norflutibuprolevocyclomethyltriptan, I could certainly be glad if she'd lost the terrible muscle tension she used to suffer (that would be the "cyclo" part of the name), and hey! Isn't it marvelous that she's no longer depressed (that's the "bupro")—at least for the season?

Think about it! If I worked at a large enough pharmacy, I'd soon have the background for a veritable pharmacological soap opera: "As The Pillbox Turns", perhaps, or maybe "General Pharmacy", or ... ooh! I've got it! "The Sick and The Healthy"! Except, let's face it, what fun are the healthy?

It all went on inside the thankfully-confined confines of my mind for much longer than I'd like to admit, even here, in the fairly anonymous security of my blog anonymity. But! The end result of it all was that I did get over myself enough to take the medication, and it even seems to be working—with nary a side-effect to be seen, and part of the credit for that has to go directly to My Cute Pharmacist, who kindly pointed out that if I didn't want to be staring at the insomniacal ceiling, I'd take my doses of the "meythl" bit of my revised pharmacological moniker "as early in the day as possible". Also, you'll be relieved to know—as funny as I found it all to be when I was thinking of it—that writing it all out has convinced me of one overwhelming fact: it's very important that I do not quit my day job.

*At least, not in order to become a pharmacist!

Copying a Master

As things turned out they need hardly have bothered, for by this time, the "Dawn Treader" was gliding over a part of the sea which seemed to be uninhabited. No one except Lucy saw anything more of the People and even she had only one short glimpse. All the morning on the following day they sailed in fairly shallow water and the bottom was weedy. Just before midday Lucy saw a large shoal of fishes grazing on the weed. They were all eating steadily and all moving in the same direction. "Just like a flock of sheep," thought Lucy. Suddenly she saw a little Sea Girl of about her own age in the middle of them—a quiet, lonely looking girl with a sort of crook in her hand. Lucy felt sure that this girl must be a sheepherdess—or perhaps a fish-herdess—and that the shoal was really a flock at pasture. Both the fishes and the girl were quite close to the surface. And just as the girl, gliding in the shallow water, and Lucy, leaning over the bulwark, came opposite to one another, the girl looked up and stared straight into Lucy's face. Neither could speak to the other and in a moment the Sea Girl dropped astern. But Lucy will never forget her face. It did not look frightened or angry like those of the other Sea People. Lucy had liked that girl and she felt certain that the girl had liked her. In that one moment they had somehow become friends. There does not seem to be much change of their meeting again in that world or any other. But if they ever do they will rush together with their hands held out.

I stumbled onto this passage entirely by random chance. My women's writing group—fresh from the triumph of hosting our first, highly-successful writing conference—is now becoming more focused in our writing, which has led to our Fearless Leader actually doling out assignments between meetings! (The better to focus our efforts, my dears.) Our first assignment (part one) was to locate a paragraph of writing by one of our favorite authors, copy it, and explain why it was so good.

Having had little difficulty arriving at C. S. Lewis as one of my greatest favorites of long-standing, I had similar ease in selecting a work from which to make my one-paragraph pick: The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader", my favorite in the classic series The Chronicles of Narnia.

But selecting a single, excellent paragraph to discuss ... that was something more of a challenge. What paragraph to pick? Much as I would like, I did not have time to spare re-reading the entire book—besides, there would be far too many wonderful options from which to choose. I thought of various scenes, and spent a little time debating the merits of this one or that one, but then I flipped through the book and randomly (?) stopped on page 202, which, in my battered old copy, happens to be the beginning of Chapter XVI, aka, "The Very End of the World".

If you're not familiar with the book—and if you're not, by golly, you should be! Go read it! GO READ THE WHOLE SERIES!—you should know that it's not at all the Armageddon-esque chapter that the title may make it appear. Actually, you may have gathered that from the excerpt, which I have just now decided to leave oddly situated at the top of this here blather, rather than relocate it more towards the interior, which would likely make more sense.

Anyway, it's a lovely, descriptive chapter, largely—and strongly—detailing all of the marvelous trimmings of a physically flat world, as our heroes explore the outer-most edge of it. And as the second paragraph in the chapter—the one I selected—shows, C. S. Lewis has a remarkable gift of being able to tell stories within a story, rendering what is a very small part of the WHOLE story—and, strictly speaking, not a "necessary" part—as vivid and beautiful a memory as the story itself.

It's an under-rated skill, perhaps, but a vital one, I think. A story—any story—is not a self-contained system, after all ... it's not a unit unto itself. A story is a viewpoint, and it intersects other stories in too many junctures to possibly do justice to them all, but likewise, an occasional sidebar can make the whole story ever so much more intimate, full, and enriching. And it at least hints at the fact that there are so many other viewpoints that could be equally enthralling, if only there were time and space to include them all.

It's like if you're on your way to the grocery store—hardly "The Very End of The World", but bear with me—and you're stuck in traffic and the baby is screaming and you can't stop thinking about the fact that your lovely new house has been horribly damaged by water because that jackass of a plumber managed to fuck up the piping to the washer, and then because he WALKED OUT during the test run, the resulting water damage from a full load's worth of "test" laundry is probably going to result in you having to get the floor of the laundry room (aka, the ceiling of the guest room) redone, and then you turn your head out of traffic and out of the chaos of thought and nap-resistant child, and you see this old woman cradling a bouquet of daffodils and smiling ... smiling like those flowers meant more than anything right at that moment ... and then, you realize, you are smiling too ... just a little, but a true smile nevertheless!

That sort of detail, albeit not strictly necessary to telling the main story—or, anyway, the story you set out to tell—is VITAL. It's something C. S. Lewis is so incredibly good at, and it sucks the reader in more deeply, and the more deeply the reader is involved, the more real the story feels. You can be skimming over the sea of a flat world—a FLAT WORLD—and looking at Sea People and it STILL feels more real, because of the connections that we are accustomed to making in the daily stories of our own lives are also to be found within this story ... connections of detail, people, and yes, even digressions. ;)

One thing that bothered me, though, as I was re-typing my chosen paragraph, was the way that C. S. Lewis seems generally opposed to the use of commas. I, myself, would have included so many more throughout that paragraph, that it occurred to me to wonder why—which, I have to say, made me clearly see the reason that our Fearless Leader had very explicitly said to COPY the paragraph; copying has a way of focusing attention to the details of writing not unlike the way that the details of the story have a way of focusing attention to involvement.

It seemed to me, as I considered why C. S. Lewis would choose not to put a comma after, say, "As things turned out" or "Just before midday" or "Suddenly", that this, too, was another technique by which he entrapped his reader in his creation. When I read the sentences in question without typing them, they do not scream to my editing sensibilities about missing commas—that only happens when I'm typing them out. When I'm READING, I'm moving faster because those commas aren't around to slow me down. I'm not speed-bumped by the time of day, or delayed by the information conveyed by "Suddenly"—everything moves along quite quickly, despite the length of the paragraph, until I get to the point where C. S. Lewis wants me to slow down:

And just as the girl, gliding in the shallow water, and Lucy, leaning over the bulwark, came opposite to one another, the girl looked up and stared straight into Lucy's face.

Here, C. S. Lewis goes from zero to sixty in terms of comma use. He's brought the reader along on the journey—a necessarily lengthy journey—and now he wants the reader to be caught in the moment where Lucy, across the divide between air and water, somehow recognizes a kindred spirit and latches on, in an unbreakable bond, even though she never actually "meets" her friend.

For a paragraph that took a surprising amount of time to type out, the wealth of information and feeling that is conveyed makes it seem actually compact ... and that, too, is a masterful technique worth emulating.

Our Fearless Leader explained, when she assigned this exercise, that one way artists learn is from copying the masters, and after trying the writing equivalent, I can certainly see why. It's but one of many ways to learn more about the craft that is my passion, and I'm glad to have made the effort.

Kicking my comma habit is a bit of a humongous goal to set, but anything that supports my natural tendency to digress, THAT I can fully support!

Conversion or Coercion?

Note: This blog entry is on the subject of abortion. I realize my postings have ranged a bit on the heavy side lately, so hopefully there will be more about fluffy kitties and frolicking bunnies in the near future, but sometimes, I just have to go with what's on my mind. Please drive safely, and obey all traffic signs.

There's a gap the size of the Grand Canyon between being pregnant and not, but the next gap—the one between a safe pregnancy and a dangerous one—is even larger. The distance is so great, in fact, that some people standing on the (fortunately) highly-populated "safe" side have no idea that the dangerous side even exists, much less has any residents.

When I'm feeling calm and understanding, I have a fair amount of sympathy for the short-sighted viewpoint that broadly states there is "NEVER" valid reason for abortion—particularly those abortions known as "late-term" abortions. I'd like to believe that, myself, but I'm afraid I have a bit too much of an understanding of basic biology to do so. There is so much that can go wrong ... even catastrophically so!

That's as good a reason as any to call any healthy birth a "miracle".

But ignorance, while it may give people the capability to dismiss statistics with a single wave of their hands, is no means at all of dealing with actual people. As Thud describes, there is a pain I find agonizing to simply imagine in hearing the story of a woman reviled as a "baby killer" for seeking the services of an "abortion provider" after her child died in utero.

That story, by the way, is not an exception to the rule—that story IS the rule, and simple Internet research will lead the honest seeker to heartbreaking stories seemingly without number. (I'm not giving links here this time, lest someone of an unshakable "Pro-Life" position—distinguished, at least in my mind, from "pro-life" by the vehemence and flammability of their rhetoric—use that link to further their own goals.)

Thud is so very correct when he states that those who choose to protest at the offices of doctors who provide abortions—among other things!—have no idea what has brought patients to those doors. They presume to know, by virtue of the generic "procedure" practiced within, but they do not know. They do not know, and more importantly, they do not want to know.

George Tiller, a physician known more for providing late-term abortion services than for anything else—though that was not at all the extent of his work—was gunned down on Sunday, May 31, 2009, in his church as he served as an usher. His wife of 45 years was sitting with the choir. And within 24 hours, blogs and comments I could barely stand to read—here are Google search results if you have a stronger stomach than I—described his murder as a "really late-term abortion".

There is no excuse for this magnitude unconscionable cruelty. If you do not understand the legal distinction between "murder" and "abortion", then you need to read a dictionary. If you do not LIKE the legal distinction between the two, then you need to try to work to change it through methods that are less like those of a terrorist and more like those of a rational adult. One person acting outside of the law—and outside of the vast, silent majority of otherwise similar belief-holders—does far more damage than the obvious ... extremists cripple the cause that they believe they support and moreover, their use of fear as a conversion tool backfires more often than not.

Coercion is, after all, a far cry from conversion.

If this entry seems disjointed, that's because it is: I've struggled for days to put it together, despairing of finding just the right words and just the right tack—rightfully so, because some of the sites I've been reading at would lead me to conclude that there is not one person on the pro-life side who would not dismiss me outright simply because I stand on the side of choice. This is another casualty of extremism—it gives the false impression that there is only one flavor of a position to hold, and only one type of person who holds it. When I realized that I was falling into that impressionable trap, I crawled back out to try again.

Then, my own history on the issue stopped me. After I gave birth to Little Girl, you see, I flipped from loosely pro-choice to loosely pro-life. I was not able to articulate the change beyond stating that while I still thought abortion should remain legal, I could not fathom availing myself of the option. Reading the many personal and painful stories of "late-term" abortion now, however, brought my views of bygone days into sharp and unmistakable focus: basking in the rosy glow of a wanted pregnancy with a life partner, a HEALTHY pregnancy for both me and my child, I was quite plainly unable to so much as imagine a pregnancy created out of violence, or a pregnancy that carried no possibility for life outside of the womb, or a pregnancy that endangered my life.

The poverty of my imagination—holding my much-wanted baby, the product of a textbook-perfect pregnancy that caused me only one single twinge of nausea and a few weeks of grossly-swollen ankles—made me rich beyond the wildest dreams of women who have not been in that position. Women who have suffered horrific and over-simplified genetic diagnoses such as "incompatible with life" or worse—and yes, there is worse than that. How could I—how could anyone?—be more capable to determine the best of no good options than the woman in question, her doctor, and as many second opinions as she needed?

And how did I get to this point, to realizing that I am not only pro-choice, but STRONGLY pro-choice? Because someone who misguidedly and mistakenly believed himself to be "pro-life" murdered a medical professional, George Tiller, who was performing LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURES at the risk of HIS OWN LIFE. Because the violent act that caused George Tiller's death led me to do my own research, and now I have some small understanding of the agony behind decisions that are so far from the simple word of "choice" that there are no canyons wide enough to characterize it.

George Tiller was helping women who few other people are truly willing to help—and he was helping them in a way that few other people are willing to do: he was trusting these women to make their own choices among horrific options, with not one outcome among them as happy and healthy and WHOLE as the one that I was lucky enough to enjoy (without having to make a single decision myself). And while I wouldn't wish that sort of decision on my worst enemy, I am absolutely certain that the decision MUST remain that of the woman, along with the advice of her doctors.

We all live in an imperfect world—a "fallen" world, if you prefer that terminology—through which we all muddle as best we can. If nothing else, I would hope that we could agree that we should all advance our causes and beliefs without trampling on the lives of others like ourselves, going about our all too-brief existences legally and with careful thought and thorough consideration.

If anyone among us, like the man who murdered George Tiller, cannot do this, we all suffer the consequences—the diminishment of those who do not see things the way we do as human beings and the elevation of those who do: the US versus THEM mentality that invariably results in women losing husbands, men losing wives, and children losing parents.

The "Pro-Life" camp may well argue that the developing child in utero is already losing, but I believe they fail to see the forest for the trees. As much as I would love to have a second child—and I would, but I cannot, for reasons that I do not wish to share here—if a second pregnancy threatened my life, I would consider my born child FIRST, and yes, myself, and I would want to have the option at MY discretion (and my doctor and partner). There is no one more qualified than THAT set of people to make any decisions that need to be made—indeed, no one else is qualified at all. And if that is true for me, then I must extend that it is logically true for other reasoning and mentally healthy adults.

I've gotten too far off track to tie this entry neatly up with a bow, and it seems appropriate enough, because there is nothing neat at all about this topic. As an imperfect solution, it corresponds to the world around it—but the same cannot be said of the murder of those who either agree or disagree ... although my words may not convert anyone, I will never so much as attempt to coerce anyone, either.

"You Are Not Fully Human"

Having neatly—or not so neatly—made my stand regarding "Standing Down" (see last entry; it seems a little silly to link to it when it's just down the page, even though I know I've done that before) in the religious Facebook wars, I am now in the awkward position of re-evaluating my opinion on the subject. All it took was one precious little 58-second BBC "Sunday" soundbyte to make me do an abrupt about-face.

"All it took", indeed ... it wasn't some random blahdiblahdiblah pontificating on how atheists—and other non-believers—"are not fully human": it was a sitting Cardinal of the Catholic Church saying just that. So, really, it was a bit of a huge something that arrested and reversed my consideration, even if it was short in duration and unsweet in flavor.

But let me try to describe what happened in my mind in as cold a manner as Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor did when he explained how he was quite confident in his denigration of non-believers.

I read about what the Cardinal said on my favorite religious discussion board, and I wasn't much impressed, really. Honestly, all it takes is a quick scan-through of the comment section in my local paper—where the "Faith" pages are trolled by religious and non-religious snipers alike, and every one of them seems to be of the opinion that shooting first and asking barbed questions later is the most reasonable way to "debate" sensitive topics—for me to understand that there are scores of high-schoolers living with basement access to the Internet who alternately despise both believers and non-believers.

So here was a real, live Church official who apparently finds non-believers to be less-than-actualized as human beings. So what? There are rotten apples under most trees, but I truly do believe that people are basically good, and most misunderstandings are simply that: misunderstandings. And you can't resolve a misunderstanding by calling people names; therefore, calm discussion (aka, the road far, far less taken) must certainly prevail, and thus I set out to obtain the entirety of the BBC show in which the Cardinal was purported to slam atheists, so that I could gain complete context, and not make an ass of myself (unlike the Cardinal, and the nameless, faceless posters who besiege my local paper's "Faith" section).

What I hadn't counted on was how the sound of someone relegating me to the ranks of the "not fully human" would feel. Words on a page—virtual or real—are, it turns out, substantially less personal to me than a voice—even a disembodied voice. And when the voice of the BBC announcer wound its way pleasantly along the various other voices, all addressing the "Sunday" issues of that particular day, mingled genteelly with the Cardinal's equally—if a little sleepy-sounding—pleasant voice, and then abruptly gave way to that oh-so-very denigrating expression, well. It was so surprisingly like getting smacked in the face and spat upon all at once that I started to cry.

Yes, I really did, right there in the parking lot, with beautiful British accents streaming out my window, and a particularly mellifluous one callously consigning PEOPLE LIKE ME to a lesser, reduced humanity.

And I realized, though the choke of emotion, that while Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor clearly has no understanding of what atheism is—perhaps being of the belief of other misinformed individuals that a true atheist doesn't even really exist—that he honestly and sincerely does believe what he is saying. He doesn't think it's hurtful or offensive; he simply thinks "what I said was true". He delivered a down-graded status of humanity—of all things!—to a set of people who are enclosed by nothing more minor than the brackets of the word "non-believer" and he did it as casually as one might pat a dog on the head: there, there, you're not human. Here, have a biscuit.

(Sorry; it appears that I am not even part Vulcan—I cannot explain how I wound up with so much shattered glass inside my head without explaining the way it felt when it cut me.)

It really got to me, in that tiny expanse of time, how Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor doesn't just think that atheists are of a different opinion than he is regarding the existence of a deity in the universe, but he thinks that we are NOT FULLY HUMAN because of our non-belief. I can honestly say I've never questioned the humanity of people I disagree with, on this or any other subject. It would never occur to me to do so, no matter my beliefs on religion, for even if the Cardinal did have a Biblical understanding of what human beings were "meant" to be, his God—HIS GOD—has clearly permitted human beings to be what THEY wish to be.

What, then, could possibly be more human than a human being self-actualizing?

This notion that Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor has that atheists (and other "secularists") don't bother to consider—or outright dismiss—"the transcendent", too, is misguided at best, and misleading at worst. Being a non-believer does not preclude a very thorough understanding of religion; even us atheists are perfectly capable of understanding religion, and in my experience, those who have become atheist by way of leaving a religion (or two) quite often understand their ex-religions very well indeed. To suggest that non-believers simply "leave out" the supernatural is likewise ridiculous—while certainly one might dismiss that in which they do not believe, it is not at all necessary to do so. The polar opposite of a lack of consideration is, instead, what frequently results in atheistic belief, particularly for atheists who began as believers of one stripe or another.

But I don't want to digress too far today from the knife-point that the Cardinal so deftly wielded on the BBC "Sunday" program, because that IS what cuts, shreds, and tears. Denigrating the very humanity of a group of people is not only shocking, cruel, and pitiful—particularly for one who is charged with caretaking for what he believes to be the ETERNAL SOULS of humanity—but the very casual, almost blasé, way in which Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor goes about it makes it all the more offensive. It is as if he is discussing the nature of carrots rather than human beings—albeit human beings that the Cardinal believes are not QUITE completely human. What is next, sir? Do you simply toss non-believers upon the compost heap? We are not, after all, FULLY HUMAN ... why would you not "leave us out" entirely?

I have managed to work my way past grief at Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor's attitude and have progressed neatly into anger (as you might have noticed). This is good, for it means that I am working my way nicely through the time-honored traditions of processing something upsetting—which is, too, one of the purposes of my blog (for me).

But there is a down-side, and that is the additional mourning that I have yet to accomplish. Because while I can certainly hold on to the notion that people are, basically, good, I'm going to have to temper it with the fact that there are some people who—general nature aside—are never going to care enough to listen to a rebuttal like this, and even if they did, would not allow themselves to be reached. It is this level of willful ignorance that I hope never to attain, and so I will continue to read viewpoints that are nothing like my own. I will continue to try to consider them with care, and actually listen to them. Where appropriate, I will even do my utmost to RESPECT them, including those I can never understand, or perhaps, "fully appreciate".

If that is not enough to render me "fully human" in the eyes of some, then so be it ... it is more than enough for me.

Standing Down

Contrary to what reading this blog might lead you to believe—especially lately!—I really don't spend much time advertising my atheism in real life. It even took me awhile to admit to being an atheist on my Facebook page, and not because I'm afraid of being judged by my faithlessness—although I am.

But another inherent problem with atheism is that, too often, talking about non-belief is seen as an attack on belief. While the two may indeed come together, it's hardly the case that they are equivalent. But while a believing soul stating "I love God!"—or, on Facebook, becoming a "fan" of God—is taken simply as a statement of faith, a non-believing individual stating "I don't believe in God" is too often interpreted to mean one or more of the following:

• I'm annoyed that you believe in God.
  
• I hate God.
  
• I believe in God but am flaunting His authority by saying that I don't.
  
• I can't believe that you believe in God.
  
• I think you're an idiot for believing in God.
  
• I worship Satan.
  
• I am an amoral, unethical freak who should never hold any sort of public office.
  
• I drink milk straight from the carton.
  
• I have sexual intercourse with sheep.
  

While one or more of these statements could certainly be hypothetically true of some infitesimally small proportion of the entirety of the human population that currently exists—or, for that matter, has ever existed—I would think that this could also be said of equally minute proportions of the believing population, with some minor adjustments as follows:

• I'm annoyed that you don't believe in God.
  
• I hate that you don't believe in God.
  
• I don't believe in God but am pretending that I do.
  
• I can't believe that you don't believe in God.
  
• I think you're an idiot for not believing in God.
  
• I am an amoral, unethical freak who should never hold any sort of public office.
  
• I drink milk straight from the carton.
  
• I have sexual intercourse with sheep.
  

Now. Leaving out the fact that I couldn't think of a believing corollary to "I believe in Satan", it seems safe to surmise that there are weirdos on both sides of the fence, just as there are loud-mouthed and poor representatives out making fools of the general non-believing and believing populations as well.

That being said, if disdain is an appropriate or even marginally acceptable response to a non-believer stating: "I am an atheist." then it necessarily follows that the same response must be (at least somewhat) appropriate in the case of a believer stating: "I believe in God." And THAT being said, if a believer says, "I don't see how people get through life without God." and other believers nod and smile or give them a nice big Facebook "thumbs up", then is it not fair that non-believers may likewise support one of their own who says, "I don't see how people go through life believing in God."?

Granted, the preceding were rhetorical questions predicated on matters of opinion—and not only that, the opinions hypothesized as acceptable (or otherwise) here have not at all been established as such. But there is no question in my mind that there is a greater proportion of believers who feel that they can state what they like about their deity with impunity, vocal support from their peers, and face-value acceptance than is true of non-believers and their non-deities.

I think that this needs to change. Believers of any stripe and non-believers without stripes—or, if you prefer, the religious equivalent of Star-Bellied and Plain-Bellied Sneetches—should feel free to respectfully exchange ideas without reflexive pre-judgment or hyperbolic extrapolation beyond the clearly-stated obvious. Of course, the operative word here is "respectful", and I cannot imagine how some of the "leading" voices in atheism today feel that they're being even remotely respectful when they denounce believers as fools for believing, any more than the converse is true (and that also includes cases where "the Bible says so")!

Too often, strongly-held beliefs are treated as indisputable facts, but the fact is (as I've said before) that I can no more prove there is a God—or a god, or gods, or a goddess, or ... but you get the idea—than a believer can prove that there is. All either one of us have is our beliefs and feelings on the subject, and while that is a powerful lot—from our own, individual perspectives—it just isn't much to anyone else. It's something we can base our personal behaviors on, certainly, but it's not necessarily something on which any of us should base the rules for the behaviors of others, lest we find ourselves squirming under someone else's interpretation of what a deity wants of us.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, remember?

I have not put "I don't know how people go through life believing in the Christian God, or any other 'god'." on my Facebook page. I sincerely do not understand, but that's not reason enough for me to say so, particularly since in my case, flashing that statement up on my Facebook info would be more of a reactionary stance than anything else.

And now that I've taken the time to consider both sides, I realize that there's one thing the religious/non-religious discussion does NOT need more of, and that's implicative posturing—aggressive, passive/aggressive, or otherwise.

Beyond Belief

Considering how much Oprah annoys me, it should be no surprise that I have also been annoyed reading her magazine, the glossy path to self-improvement, O. (It might be surprising that I chose to read the magazine at all, but when such things are provided as bathroom readers at Corporate—no kidding, though I am sure it's not actually sanctioned—it's hard to pass up a little flip-through during a longish wait for, well, for nature to take its course.)

Anyway, so I happened upon an article in a fairly recent issue of O that featured a labyrinth, in which I have more than a passing interest due to the eloquence of a fellow writer from my women's writing group, who has a labyrinth of her own. I was lured in by both the photograph of the article's author standing in her labyrinth, as well as by the article's title: "Charmed Circles" (from the November 2008 issue).

And then I got to the summary/lead-in paragraph, immediately below the title, and I was hooked; I'm always interesed when "believers" stop believing, or conversely—as was the case in this article—when someone who previously didn't believe starts believing. Given that I have never been even the loosest form of believer, it's an abstract fascination for me—like theoretical physics, it's far enough out there that I just can't seem to grasp it. But nevertheless, I had to read on, and since I preferred to do so at my leisure and comfort, I ripped the article from the magazine and took it home.

I have to say, while hardly what I expected—no conversion to Christianity was to be had, despite the implications that seemed rampant throughout the piece—there was one, brief section that did pique my irritation. This sort of annoyance has come to be, for me, an invitation to explore the whys and wherefores of such red-shaded emoting, and like my train-wreck of absorption in religion, I likewise can't seem to avoid introspecting on my pissed-offedness.

So here we are!

The time at which I read the few sentences of the article that poked me in the eye happened to coincide almost jigsaw puzzle-piece matchingly with a very similar bit of jabbing that occurred in the religion forums at which I have lurked for, oh, around about five years now. I was drawn out of my firmly-held lurkdom to post in those forums for the very first time by then, and while I've not similarly managed to draft my first-ever letter to Oprah's magazine, I figure a blog post on the subject comes pretty close ... in fact, I wouldn't doubt that my blather has a far better chance of getting read—at least in part—here.

The problem, as I see it, is two-fold: first, there are believers who have the notion that people who do not believe simply don't exist. I'm not certain this was the case in the bothersome section of the article I read, but it has cropped up on the religion debate board; the idea is that someone who professes to be an atheist, well, isn't. Apparently, us atheists are actually just theists in denial. Furthermore, the charge may continue as it did in "Charmed Circles":

"You don't know anything about religion. If you're going to be an atheist, you should learn about religion and make an informed decision."

Now, leaving aside for just a moment the fact that the person making this particular charge appears to at least grant that atheists DO EXIST—simply that the author of "Charmed Circles" was not "one of them"—this being my blog and all, I'd like to indulge in my own little free-form rant:

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? "IF" I'm going to be an atheist, why in the hell should I be required to "learn about religion and make an informed decision"? How many theists have learned about religions other than their own? How, then, is THEIR "decision" informed? How does this whole decision-making process actually occur when more than a few of the theists I know profess that they can FEEL God in their lives—is there any decision to be made when you "sense" the presence of a deity? OR WHEN YOU DON'T?

And how is it, exactly, that theists are so lofty and quick to proclaim that atheists ought to know what they don't believe in when they don't go around to other theists and feed THEM the same line of holier-than-thou bull? I'm not just talking about atheism here, either, as the vast majority of theists of whom I am personally aware likewise do not believe in all but ONE religion. Your God, people, except for the one deity in which you do believe, YOU ARE ATHEISTS YOURSELVES!

You know what I think? I think that if you single-deitied theists are going to be single-deitied theists, you should learn about religion—and non-religion, because there seem to be a great many people out there who are operating under a great many misconceptions about atheism, not to mention agnosticism—and make an informed decision. That, my invisible friends, is what I think ... IF you are, in fact, a theist who is also a proponent of atheists "learning about religion" in order to make "an informed decision".

I realize that the snippet of the O article to which I was privy was not directed at me personally. I also realize that the full context of said citation was likely not presented—such things rarely are, particularly within the restricted word count of a magazine article—and that there is more to every story ever told than that which is actually told.

At the same time, it is the height of arrogance to tell someone else what s/he does or does not believe. It is likewise presumptuous—at best!—to suggest that said belief or non-belief must be thoroughly researched ... UNLESS you, yourself, are willing to follow your own advice. And in my experience, there are many more people willing to dish out this sort of most excellent advice than there are who follow it.

For example, the flap at the religion debate board to which I alluded earlier: a poster who did not "believe" presented the scenario that her likewise non-believing offspring was being harassed by believing classmates. The poster's position was that these classmates, having presented their childish understanding of their beliefs to her child (which they had, with at least one dire threat of her child's hell-boundedness) should now cease and desist their discussions, which was the request of her child. The poster also expressed her desire to educate her child in "all religions".

A fervent believer then suggested that the original poster arrange for her child to spend some time with a trusted, believing adult—and not just any trusted, believing adult, but one specifically of this poster's own, fervent beliefs—in order that the child be presented with "the truth". So, being finally pushed to posting, I asked: what about "the truth" of other beliefs? And was not surprised to be informed, eventually, that there is only ONE truth when it comes to religious beliefs.

I beg to differ, and moreover, I suggest that believers who believe this particular bit have not "learned about religion and made an informed decision".

Beliefs are not truths in the sense that they are absolute. Certainly, you may believe that your beliefs ARE absolute, but unless you have bothered to put yourself in the position of another believer—or a non-believer—you really cannot say that anyone else's belief-truths are not just as true as your own. It is imperative, in my opinion, that this concept—if nothing else—be imparted to every single human being, because without it, some believing souls (well-meaning though they may be) are going to denigrate people who have JUST AS MUCH PROOF OF THEIR BELIEFS AS ANYONE ELSE as "wrong".

Like it or not, in matters of belief, "truth" is exactly equal to opinion.

Holding on to this notion is something that I pride myself in—even though I struggle with it. And I frequently struggle with it! But it is so important to remember that as deeply as I feel that there is no "higher power" in the universe—which I feel not only with what limited brain power I possess, but also with my cold, black, shriveled little atheist's heart (we don't have "souls", you know)—there are people out there who feel just as strongly that there is. That our diamond-hard beliefs are polar opposites does not lessen their powers on us; we believe what we believe, and that is at once nothing and everything.

There was one other pronouncement made in "Charmed Circles" that did not charm me. With regard to the author's statement that she was an atheist, her believing friend—in addition to telling her no, she was not, and she really needed to do religion research—said:

"You don't ever want to define yourself negatively."

Overlooking the literal interpretation of this remark—and believe it or not, that's what I did, instead lurching forward to seize the figurative explanation by the throat and give it a double-negative death shake, à la, "What do you mean? Being an atheist IS NOT a negative thing!"—I have to say, the notion that atheism is a bad thing is quite pervasive, and strongly held. For example, in a recent NEWSWEEK poll, "only 30 percent [of respondents] said they'd ever vote for an atheist" (as cited in this NEWSWEEK article). Check that out ... politics don't even matter—if you're an atheist, 70% of people don't need to know anything else about you to know they won't EVER vote for you.

The stigma attached to atheism is unpleasant enough to make many of us atheists to feel as if we must choose our words carefully around those we do not know very well, lest we reveal something that is a pretty fundamental part of who we are and how we view the world around us. Incidentally, there are certain loud-mouthed, vehement "non-believing fundamentalists" who feel compelled to bash all believers with the same big bat, without discretion about the specifics of their beliefs—something they would be sure to revile, if only a believing fundamentalist were the one doing the bashing.

But, all of this figurative negativity aside, when I considered the accusation of "negative definition" from the literal perspective, it does carry some merit: atheism is, after all, defined as "disbelief in the existence of a deity". On the other hand, that IS what atheism IS—is it really necessary to create new terminology at the behest of a non-atheist? Again, this seems presumptuous in the extreme, and more than a little silly, for to extend it beyond religiously correctness and on to all facets of life, we would have to come up with new terminology for "apolitical", "asymmetrical", "atypical", and even "asexual organisms".

Oh, and what about "depression"? Is there ANY word in the world with a more negative definition than depression?

I fear that the challenge of arriving at a non-depressing term for characterizing "depression" is quite beyond me, but I do have a suggestion for a more uplifting classification for "atheism"—even though it is sure to fall prey to the sharp talons of the believing hawks who are as quick to seek offense in atheistic attempts at positivity, seeing them as flimsily-clad cover-ups of believer-denigration (not to mention, someone else is sure to have tried this before me)—and here it is: "atheism" should now be referred to as "beyond belief"*. Because it isn't as if atheists generally go round and discuss our atheism—there isn't really an alternative interpretation the singular scripture, "Thou shalt have no god."

We truly are "beyond belief", and even some believers have said so, suggesting that we do not exist. It is not a implication of an exalted level of existence—though there will be some bad apples on both sides who will taste that rotten flavor—but belief is beyond us ... just plain beyond!

And I, for one, feel very positive about that.


*Although I did arrive at this idea independently—at least as far as I can consciously recall—I did NOT originate this term. I don't know who did, either, but I did happen across this article about a week after beginning this blog entry. The article describes the use of the "beyond belief" in reference to nonbelievers beginning at least three years ago, when "... Dale McGowan, the Atlanta-based author of 'Parenting Beyond Belief' set out to write his book."