Of Gods and ___

“Truth cannot be out there – cannot exist independently of the human mind – because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own – unaided by the describing activities of human beings – cannot.” 

Richard Rorty

When I was six, I brought home a children’s Bible, distributed at school – beautiful stuff with gorgeous illustrations. My dad saw it, and told me that Gagarin was up there, and found nothing. And that was that – my first, rather one-sided discussion about religion.

What followed was years of secular education and, with that, the systematic deconstruction of faith, belief, and religion. I did get a hold of the Bible though, a ragged copy of the first Hungarian translation, but the concept of the holy keeps escaping me, and what remains are stories of gods and men.

It’s awfully difficult to (lie if one doesn’t know the truth) discuss the spiritual, having been indoctrinated with post-structural ideas. I have a fleeting sense of its meaning, but it always stays out of grasp. I have no god: I have no science to oppose him to. I have no belief, for I do not care for the dichotomy between real and mystical.

It’s awfully difficult to discuss anything transcendental, and, for the first time, I experience it as a struggle. This is not my discourse – my language is inadequate, and my vocabulary falls short. For the first time, I am out of words.

Before I committed to this project, a friend had told me it would be difficult, which is why I needed it. To put it quite simply: this is not the place where being a smartass gets you friends. Academia gets you only so far – and then you’re facing people who’ve been through hell and back, and you should be there to offer a hand, and it simply won’t do to tell them, dude, your identities are so fragmented. I will look them in the eye, and I will find that I have absolutely nothing to say to them.

So, I’m here to learn, and humility pulls no punches. My brain feels like a panzer tank. 

So what is inner peace anyways? 

I will embrace all doubt, insecurity, confusion, assess and reassess. It is time for reconciliation, I think; let this be my credo for the following months, and then pain shall be my rite of passage.

- Thuy

God has pity on kindergarten children,
He pities school children -- less.
But adults he pities not at all.

He abandons them,
And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours
In the scorching sand
To reach the dressing station,
Streaming with blood.

But perhaps
He will have pity on those who love truly
And take care of them
And shade them
Like a tree over the sleeper on the public bench.

Perhaps even we will spend on them
Our last pennies of kindness
Inherited from mother,

So that their own happiness will protect us
Now and other days.

Yehuda Amichai