Still Waters

It's fair to say I haven't got a religious bone in my body - but that's not to say that I'm without faith, that I don't believe there's something more - both within & without. The brain is a fantastical chemical computer, the heart an engine and our muscles & twine the coil that animates us - but without a soul where would our emotions live? & without emotions do we really live?

For the first few decades of my life that faith was mostly in myself, I believed early on that no-one else was looking out for me, the arms wrapped around me for protection, the ones that pushed me back up, they were mine, that was the world I understood. But a harsh start can also teach you that you have it in you to be the captain of your own destiny, to choose to sink or swim. To stay with a metaphor that will quickly lose the wind; Like any captain I built a crew - the friends that fill your sails, those that shout the distant lands - the ones that stay through the storm and the ones who run for the lifeboats. But it took me a long time to trust the other ships, to see the lighthouse keepers, to welcome strange cargo on board.
I think I'd have been in my early twenties when I first read the words of the American hipster Lord Buckley , who (paraphrased) rapped that whenever he'd been in a bind nothing mystical came to help him, but someone, some little god or goddess stepped up. As he says; I know a few of them, I'm sure you do too. I can look back and see their beacons pointing the way, I can see the arms that did as much as they could, whether enough or not. I now give thanks for those who went into the storm to help save me.
Buckley's beautiful beatnick words have always stayed with me; the realisation not just that we can or should make a difference - but the knowledge that we do. Nowadays my faith is in people - I know that there is a profound theological argument that the actions of man might well be nugded along by a greater unknown - but I like to think that collectively we are that unknown. There's good and bad in the world because there's good and bad in us - we just have to make sure we tip the scales, that we light the fires when we can.

I've really struggled this week to fill in forms that try to grasp the who what and when, in the hope that someone will fathom a why. Surely why is the point of the journey?
It's fair to say I don't like boxes.

Philosophy Friday
Pain is just weakness leaving the body.
The US Marines

Well in that case this week I've felt very weak!