After Life
To begin, I'll state right up front that I'm not really sure what I believe in once physical life ends; I certainly hope that something continues (don't we all, in a sense). But a giant human-like figure...no. For me it would seem that it would be more of a spiritual thing, energy or something; but even that comes into question for me for all of that is imagined in my puny mind which is unable to fathom anything more that a physical and three-dimensional world (even with the elaborate graphics of Dr. Strange who is taught to "see" what possibilities await outside our existence). Planets and atoms and molecules...what if life afterwards is unlike anything we could visualize (after all, eyesight only came to life in the very, very late stages of our known existence of all life on this planet). Don't believe me? What about this, from Ed Yong's book on microbes, I Contain Multitudes. He has you imagine our world's entire existence as a one-year calendar (something quite similar was done with both the old and new versions of the series Cosmos); on that calendar we humans appear in the final thirty minutes of the last day of the entire year (modern upright-walking humanity only appeared a few seconds ago, the year mere seconds away from ending...fireworks were invented nine seconds before midnight), the dinosaurs had passed away some five days earlier, while plants and flowers arrived in November. But the microbes (bacteria and archaea) appeared way back in March and in all that time, did their one and only merger to create cellular life; they oxygenated our world as if prepping it for our arrival and making it ready for us to survive. And guess what, the microbes are still here, the number in each of our bodies far outnumbering the number of stars out there in the cosmos. So back to my belief of a human form for a god of any color, shape or age...no.
This is not to say that I don't believe that there might be something. Do I believe miracles happen?...absolutely. And am I both humbled and respectful of those with strong beliefs?...for certain. But pin me to a rock and demand that I reveal my belief and knowledge and devotion to an organized religion?...truthfully, I know only the very basics. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and the Baha'i faith I know share similar traits in their originating background of Abraham and creating a structure of belief in a single god; but Hinduism, Sufism, Buddhism and the hundreds of others --from Native American to Native African-- almost zero knowledge. And those are only the religions practiced today...what of the peoples who have come and gone. What did they believe in? What did the Anasazi practice, the Gnostics, the early mythologists and paganists...
Some of these thoughts of "what else" are likely coming to me now because of a confluence of sorts with books and movies and people. A friend of mine who is extremely devoted to his Mormon faith told me that most Mormons aren't that afraid of death because of their belief of what awaits them after death, a theme similar to many organized religions. The afterlife is similarly discussed in the new Robert Redford film The Discovery now streaming on Netflix, his role being that of a quirky scientist who feels that he can map our thoughts after death and show that something does happen. But all of that is again our probing, our questioning, perhaps our way of avoiding what we have to face here while we're alive. This reflection popped up in Andrew Forsthoefel's Walking to Listen as he questioned why --even at his young age-- he was so unwilling to look inward: ...I preferred to focus on other peoples' lives in the conversations I had on the road. I didn't share much about my past with most people. Better to listen. That way, I wouldn't have to look at my own role in perpetuating that brokenness by my bitterness and shame, by my reluctance to accepting the reality of it. In deflecting the spotlight to others, I could hide from the task of sharing who I really was, my own story. In some interviews, I would actually shut off the recorder if the conversation turned to me, and then flip is back on when I was able to corral the attention back toward them. I would rationalize it to myself: No need to waste any tape on my stuff. No one needs to hear this part.
Maybe this is all just more clutter for our brains, to think such random thoughts and to imagine that which we cannot prove (the end of time, yet another creation of ours). As author Even Schaub wrote in her book Year of No Clutter*: ...most of the time my house looks neat. Ish. That's likely one of the human qualities of our imaginations, everything nicely placed away in compartments and tidy...ish. But then our minds wander and we ask, what else? Perhaps as with clutter, such thoughts and beliefs become comforts, a wanting to hold onto that which we know be it a thing or a life. But if our gut alone can contain more microbes that all the known stars above, maybe that is where we should be looking...not out there but in here, in ourselves.
*The book is a quirky read that details her obsession with collecting things, eventually filling a living-room size room from wall to wall and top to bottom, even as she denies that she is a hoarder. You might as well call her Doris (from the movie Hello, My Name is Doris).
This is not to say that I don't believe that there might be something. Do I believe miracles happen?...absolutely. And am I both humbled and respectful of those with strong beliefs?...for certain. But pin me to a rock and demand that I reveal my belief and knowledge and devotion to an organized religion?...truthfully, I know only the very basics. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and the Baha'i faith I know share similar traits in their originating background of Abraham and creating a structure of belief in a single god; but Hinduism, Sufism, Buddhism and the hundreds of others --from Native American to Native African-- almost zero knowledge. And those are only the religions practiced today...what of the peoples who have come and gone. What did they believe in? What did the Anasazi practice, the Gnostics, the early mythologists and paganists...
Some of these thoughts of "what else" are likely coming to me now because of a confluence of sorts with books and movies and people. A friend of mine who is extremely devoted to his Mormon faith told me that most Mormons aren't that afraid of death because of their belief of what awaits them after death, a theme similar to many organized religions. The afterlife is similarly discussed in the new Robert Redford film The Discovery now streaming on Netflix, his role being that of a quirky scientist who feels that he can map our thoughts after death and show that something does happen. But all of that is again our probing, our questioning, perhaps our way of avoiding what we have to face here while we're alive. This reflection popped up in Andrew Forsthoefel's Walking to Listen as he questioned why --even at his young age-- he was so unwilling to look inward: ...I preferred to focus on other peoples' lives in the conversations I had on the road. I didn't share much about my past with most people. Better to listen. That way, I wouldn't have to look at my own role in perpetuating that brokenness by my bitterness and shame, by my reluctance to accepting the reality of it. In deflecting the spotlight to others, I could hide from the task of sharing who I really was, my own story. In some interviews, I would actually shut off the recorder if the conversation turned to me, and then flip is back on when I was able to corral the attention back toward them. I would rationalize it to myself: No need to waste any tape on my stuff. No one needs to hear this part.
Maybe this is all just more clutter for our brains, to think such random thoughts and to imagine that which we cannot prove (the end of time, yet another creation of ours). As author Even Schaub wrote in her book Year of No Clutter*: ...most of the time my house looks neat. Ish. That's likely one of the human qualities of our imaginations, everything nicely placed away in compartments and tidy...ish. But then our minds wander and we ask, what else? Perhaps as with clutter, such thoughts and beliefs become comforts, a wanting to hold onto that which we know be it a thing or a life. But if our gut alone can contain more microbes that all the known stars above, maybe that is where we should be looking...not out there but in here, in ourselves.
*The book is a quirky read that details her obsession with collecting things, eventually filling a living-room size room from wall to wall and top to bottom, even as she denies that she is a hoarder. You might as well call her Doris (from the movie Hello, My Name is Doris).
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