Woke up one minute before the alarm went off at 7. I was still tired, despite having gone to bed early. While walking Elsa, I pushed my right hip further back and over to the left using my right psoas muscle. It challenges the groin and hip muscles in the left hip. I’m working on the theory that those muscles are compromised because of poor alignment, which caused atrophy of the muscles and dehydration of the connective tissue, rather than the lack of cartilage in the hip. So far, so good.
While in savasana, I had the image that Mike needed me to petition the guards of heaven so he could get in. I will storm those gates. This man was as wonderful as any human being could be. I know everyone is going to think of their idea of a perfect partner as I describe Mike. Probably not. He could be as annoying and disappointing as any other human being. It’s just that most of the ways he was annoying didn’t push my buttons, and I deeply appreciated the things that were delightful about him. I will start arguing with St. Peter if he is indeed the ones guarding those Pearly Gates. Either way, I can file a pretty convincing petition about his merits and entitlement to the best that any afterlife has to offer. I want the best for Michael.
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Musings: I’m putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.
Brooks talks about how religious beliefs teach us about the human condition. I agree; our religious beliefs and teaching tell us a lot about ourselves. I believe we create religions to address our needs. Saying this does not mean I’m arguing for or against the existence of God. I could say that we create God or that God created us so we would develop these beliefs. I don’t believe that any one religion is the correct one. If there is a God, I prefer thinking that He/She is so generous to offer all these ways of connecting with Him/Her.
Mike’s book includes a lot about the need to return to the sacred and not be seduced by the secular. I’ve been thinking about the difference between pagan religions and those that speak of one God. (I’m do not hold myself up as an expert on world religions. If I say something wrong about what some religion advocates, please let me know. Do not offer an opinion that one belief system is superior to another.)
I think that the pagan religions represented the deities as more powerful, magical even, human beings. With the belief in one God, religious views became more abstract, less modeled after human beings. As societies became more materially secure and more diverse, it was necessary to develop systems governing behavior that was more abstract so people from different cultural groups could relate to it.
Before that, there was no difference between the secular and the sacred in society. Everything was secular, having to do with the community, and everything was sacred, having to do with powers greater than human, implicitly if not explicitly. There was no need to speak of how the secular and the sacred differed. The term sacred and secular probably had no place in anyone’s vocabulary until diverse cultural groups lived side-by-side with different values and different ways of doing things. Since they either didn’t share a religion or each group had their variation on the same faith, the need to develop secular rules of behavior arose. Following that, the development of religions with more abstract deities, less human, developed. All the world’s great religions I know of believe in one God, or some Oversoul.
The various representation of God, or even no God as in Buddhism, is an undefined something that is greater than whatever it means to be human. All these religions have some sense that God is vast, much greater than any individual or group of individuals.
People talk about how to bring the sacred back into our lives. This is the great challenge of the 21st century. How do we bring it back without creating tribalism, without denigrating the ‘others,’ those who are not just like? Ah, there’s the rub — poor us. We yearn to belong to something larger than ourselves, and yet we fear both losing our individualism or fear the development of ethnocentric tribalism.
