Nonsense Realm

Maybe it's just the archetypal/mythological/dreamlike class called "Social Poetry" I'm taking right now, but I've been thinking quite a bit about not just religion in general, but about our need for it in society. I'll be writing a paper on it soon, though in the more academic realm than I mean to touch on here.

My professor's ideology is this: That there is a serious deficiency in our ability to think 'metaphorically,' in any way other than the literal. This can be evidenced in society's way of finding other ways to see the world alternatively: Altered states.

In an article I read today, Jeremy Taylor says, "Whenever an individual, or a society as a whole, begins to seriously entertain the notion that everything that needs to be known is known and that the only remaining tasks are 'refinements of administration,' that is hubris." (The Living Labyrinth).

I worry for the future of religion. I worry not because I think people are doomed to hell without it. I worry because a vital part of our lives - the subconscious, the metaphorical, the imaginatory - seems to be quite dead.

There seems to be quite a bit of religiosity in my writing, whether I'm aware of it or not. My (not-quite) finished novel from last year was based generally around the search of a demigod for his ancestry, a desperate chase after gods. I hear deities, spirits in thunder and dry spells.

I think we're all looking for religion - not in an organized religion, hell and brimfire, regulation and damnation way, but in a deep-meaning kind of way. Something that'll make us understand the World with a capital W. Not just our world, not just what to get our parents for Christmas, or when we need to get tickets to the concert, or why did the boss move up the deadline, or maybe I can sleep at night if I send 25 cents a day to help a starving kid....

The World. The Cosmos, if you will.

Anyone who's had a precognitive dream will tell you there are things we just can't understand. There are things beyond our experience of the world. Trying to explain this would be like trying to hold water in a funnel.

This does not mean you leave it up to fate. This does not mean that because you can't know things, you don't involved yourself at all with them. This is a defense mechanism: "I don't get it" is not an excuse for "It's not worth my time." Because we live in a logical world is not an excuse to not think on terms of emotions and metaphors.

You need religion. Whether you like it or not.

Janine Fitzgerald (the professor in my first paragraphs) said succinctly what I have only been trying to say to both friends of devout religion and friends without religion. (I paraphrase instead. Theft is the craft of artists). We're wasting our time arguing over whether the Christ story is fact or fiction. It doesn't matter - that's not the point. Breaking things down into logical or illogical parts steals the power from any story. If it moves you - it is real.

Perhaps this doesn't make any sense. That's alright. Lack of understanding is a humbling thing, isn't it? Not only that, but inexplicable things often make more sense in the nonsense realm. After all, who would dare explain why a joke is funny? Once you explain it, doesn't it lose all its humor?