Sunday…

When I get up in the morning, I make my coffee and immediately sit down to write and see what my mind has been brewing all night. I keep thinking of Camus. “Messianism is the basis of all fanaticism”. When I begin to write about the responsibility of peace and if it is an even worthwhile endeavor, I see a shadowy figure sitting in the corner of the room, reading.

I can’t escape the powerful punch of this phrase. I don’t want to. Camus chases me around the room until I am exhausted and when I finally let my hands down, his words knock me on the forehead. “Messianism is the basis of all fanaticism”. Dazed, out of breath — I say, “But I believe in God”, and then I blurt out, …”and I am atheistic”. He looks at me funny of course, he wave smelling salts in front of my nose. He throws a towel at me. I weep, lying on my back looking at the lights.

When I have come to he is sitting, smoking a cigarette looking at me, one leg crossed over the other, shaking his head. “Quel est un rebelle ? Un homme qui dit non . (Who is a rebel, a man who says, ‘no’.)

He goes on, “Look Louis, no more of the mythology. Let it go”.

And so, I say NO to the messianic message because I do not find it anywhere. I say no not because it doesn’t resonate. Many things resonate with me that I do not have and cannot find, that is the nature of fairy tales isn’t it? Because it couldn’t be more obvious that the message of one man or other men, 2000–500o years ago is irrelevant to the mass of humanity in this age. That doesn’t mean they are “wrong”, it means they were the product of thier times.

I can see that you that religious leaders and communitarians — do not have any answers. I am not blind, and the shadows of Plato’s cave don’t interest me.

I have loved yes, and find it enormously difficult, I have forgiven people for heinous acts; I have seen real violence, and bloodshed and the myth that somehow all this painful loving is going to succor me or anyone one day, no longer feel appropriate or intelligent. We are witnessing the unfoldment of incredible violence, perpetuated by the power structure as a result of proxy wars against the some of the poorest and most ignorant people who live on the planet. Endless violence is NOT the flourishing of Peace, the advent of love or the unfoldment of scripture! We are witnessing humanity moving at light speed from love! I will not trail that outbound train, and take the distance, and wait. I will have strong opinions; I will fight for justice. We need so much now more than words. We need action.

I don’t know if there is real meaning in this world. There does not appear to be beyond what I can extract watching love battle hatred. I have long eclipsed the point as a younger man where I felt meaning was going to found on a drug-trip where I fooled around with my neurochemistry or as a result of a system of prayer or exercise, or in the form of a myth of one man or one teaching. I am an atheistin the truest sense, I am anti-theology but even that is only half-true, a weak jab, because I find religion fascinating — and ultimately distressing and antiquated.

The moment of enlightenment people keeping looking for in others or the planet as a whole is as illusory as the myth of a Messiah being born in a barn or a Grand Iman coming to restore the Caliphate.

No one is coming to save us, or solve our problems. Nor is there going to be one global “cosmic shift” induced by an alien race or a global war. The world we live in is populated and comprised of the struggles, tribulations and joys of all of it’s people. If you cannot see the very generic, but incredible power in that, well then, I’m sorry, you must feel lost. So today go to church, synagogue, mosque or temple and be with others, weep with them, hold them, console them, but do not wait for someone else to solve your problems or the world’s.

That is our responsibility.