Author: WarpedChild

Pretty sure it wasn’t the train’s fault.

When I was about three I was outside on a porch banging on a screen door wanting to go back in the house while my mother and aunt were busy preparing food in the kitchen. I grew frustrated as they ignored me. Finally I cursed at her, something like, “Let me in you son of a bitch of a mommy”. That got immediate results. I found myself unceremoniously dragged inside to the kitchen sink and my mouth washed out with disgusting tasting soap and not gently at all while being admonished to never talk to her like that again. I never did. They didn’t mess around in those days.

Reflecting. On a hilltop. All I can say is, growing up under my father I know what it’s like to live in a totalitarian dictatorship. Of course i exaggerate, but you get the idea. His word was law. He was very strict.

Crazy rain, thunder, the dog is terrified and I say to her, “Don’t worry, God willing we’ll make it through this night…”. Then I think of those in the world right now who have no guarantee at all that they will live through the night at the hands of other people mostly. There is no reason why in 2022 anyone on earth should have to worry about their life at the hands of other people. What are we doing wrong? Are we failing as a species?

And yet, how naive the hope for peace. The earth is a beautiful garden filled with thistles and thorns , hidden fangs and vicious teeth and I ate bacon this morning. How can we expect that humans will ever stop killing one another when we’ve been honed in such a place?

Still, there is more to being Human than being just another highly evolved animal, an organic machine shaped by the flow of trial and error of interacting chains of events and chemical reactions that stream through time, some failing, some succeeding, all constantly changing as the world slides ceaselessly down the energy hill. We can conceive of morals and ethics and what we could and should be even if a God is not there and the world is given to us as brute, uncaring, unforgiving reality. That is remarkable and unexpected. These deeper questions are part of human experience too and if we pay heed to them we begin to understand that it is up to us to find a path of balance between the cruel necessities and realities of this world and higher morality, ethics and goodness, the beautiful and inspiring and uplifting possibilities in existence. That is our unique responsibility as Humans. Our cognizance renders spirituality onto us.