Friday morning, I'm sick in bed with a sinus infection. Not the best way to start the weekend, but a fitting way to end a pretty lousy week. Sick and bored, I decided to create this masterpiece:
I blame the meds.
So here I am, feeling sick, feeling kinda depressed, wrapped in a blanket eating my favorite form of comfort food (cheese and iced tea), watching Rent for the 300th time or so (I like Rent - no day but today), thinking about recent events in my life and wishing some things were different. This week I've felt the adverse effects of not believing in the popular religion (the kind that I had only read about on the Internet), I've seen good friends in pain, questioned my own purpose and have just felt fatigued over all. I may be as manly as a unicorn, but everyone has limits.
I just want to enjoy my life, practicing and promoting kindness and compassion so other people can enjoy life too. It astounds me that, at some point long ago, someone decided that wasn't good enough, and added a list of dos and don'ts and claiming that it came from "on high." Fear, the need to feel correct, the desire to control others, or some combination of the three is what has led to the religious stranglehold that's choking the life out of us.
The "righteous" see me as lost, following the wrong path, and view me through that filter. They don't understand - or care - how their words or actions harm others. I don't see myself as lost. I don't think of myself as on either a right path or a wrong path. I'm just on a path. Naturally, I do what I can to get my path to lead me closer to truth, but I don't have all the answers by any means. All I can do is live my life, walk the path before me, appreciate every moment, enjoy my life, love deeply, have fun, keep learning and keep asking questions.
But that's just not good enough, is it?. You gotta toe the party line, grind all the right axes, hit all the essential talking points and hate all the right (or wrong) people to earn that ticket to heaven.
If god is anything like the god I believed in - the god I proclaimed when I was a minister - then I can't imagine that he would send people to hell because they couldn't figure out the right answers in time. I take issue with the traditional concept of hell anyway, and especially the "us vs. them" mentality ubiquitous among the religious.
I say screw that noise.
— Dead-Logic
