Matter of Faith

2007-05-14

Life has continued on its trajectory, the sun and moon tracing paths across the heavens, births and deaths marking the waxing and waning of other worlds.

Anger besets me at this moment, an anger white-hot and searing. Yet beyond the anger is another sense, an assurance that this is not all and it will ultimately be unimportant.

My brother has chosen to follow in the blackened footsteps of his pater, preferring uncaring hostility over healing. It is his choice and will be his karma to reap. I cannot prevent the wash of anger; my only decision is whether to pursue the matter further through legal means. The variables are many and not all are money and law.

That my brother is alienated is no longer an issue. That was his decision and will be to his charge. My own response is more at question. By standing down, am I perpetuating my own victimization? Or by standing up, will I invite a meaner karma in this or another life? It is an age-old question. There are no true advisers at my ear. Spiritual leaders argue which is the better path, while my feet strike against the sharp stones; mine, and my children's and my husband's.

But these things are transitory and will be resolved in their time, whichever path we elect.

There was a time when I was a child. In some respects, I spoke and saw as a child. Yet Christ said we should come as a little child, and I wonder what wisdoms and miracles we have reasoned into oblivion.

My feet once took steps without touching the earth. I can remember. I can describe the process. I raised one foot, and before it fell I raised the other, and raised the first again before it reached the ground, and so on. I know I normally strode through air when walking alone, though I remember once a friend who asked in shock how I was able to do something so remarkable.

I thought the ability merely another way of walking. Reflecting now, I doubt what my memory tells me. And then I read another, similar account by someone else. The specifics varied a bit. The principle was the same. He did the impossible as a child because he knew he could.

We are all psychics, whether or not we categorize ourselves in that manner. When we elect to walk across the floor to collect an apple, we are predicting the path we'll take and the taste of the fruit on our lips. We achieve the impossible daily, just by living and accepting that the future we see is reality.

Thought cannot be quantified. Sentience is intangible. By science, therefore, those aspects of humanity cannot exist.

Of course they do. Without thought there would be no science, no sentience, no cognizance. Yet we deny other intangible aspects of existence on the basis of their non-corporeal nature.

Thousands of questions have aligned before me in my lifetime. Those more recent have followed this existential lineage, however. A belief in life after death becomes a matter of semantics. A pure scientist puts his faith only in tangibles, his belief system hinging on the immutability of matter as we know it.

Yet that system has glaring gaps, for it cannot encompass the thought that he employs to believe.

Now and then, the universe is ever so eloquent in dispensing its droll humor through those who least suspect it.

Yesterday - Tomorrow