I am attempting to involve myself in an inpatient medical study in California. 31 days in an observed facility – I can’t leave, I can have visitors, but my movements will be restricted.
This feels risky, but the reward would be significant.
We shall see.
Very few people mention the bombing of the USS Cole when discussing September 11. I’ve seen it a few times, but not often.
I was a young man when the Cole was bombed. It startled me, but it didn’t stick with me. I didn’t grasp what Sam Harris recently called ‘the jolt of history.’ That was saved for September 11, 2001. But in the first moments of 9/11, when I first realized the scale and scope of what was happening, I knew that the two were inextricable. The first had been but the prelude to the second. I don’t believe they were performed by the same exact group, but the motivations were clearly the same.
And yet at the time I missed the point once again. I thought it was political. I didn’t understand the full scope of the religious motivation behind it.
As time has passed I have grown to synthesize these ideas more and more, to see the unifying threads beneath them. Again and again, it’s the same motivation.
It really does poison everything.
On this wonderful community called Grief Beyond Belief, there was recently a discussion of songs that people find have helped with their grieving process. GBB is a facebook group dedicated to providing a faith-free grief support community, because the last thing a grieving atheist or agnostic needs to hear is that their loved ones will ‘certainly’ be somewhere, be it heaven, hell, or the next turn of the karmic wheel.
As is usually the case, much music that is used to inspire people is religious, and let’s be frank, how could religious music not be inspiring in some cases? Songs of victory over personal demons, triumph over the darkness, and peace given to those who seek it are uplifting to many people.
They are not to us.
I have always loved flying, even though I have a terrific fear of heights. I wouldn’t call it a phobia per se, but I do find myself frightened when driving through the mountains around my home in California. But there’s just something about flying. The bustle as everyone tries to seat themselves, the quiet discussions among family members who have been forced into different sections of the plane because of last minute changes, the roar of the engines as the plane drives itself into the sky – all of these speak to me, and are part of my meditation process now that I’ve begun practicing mindfulness exercises.
We all need it when we grieve. We needed those people who brought us food and drink and help around the house when Mom died. I needed to hear Hitch 22 again when Christopher Hitchens died late last year. We are a society that spurns it. “No, I’ve got this,” seem to be the words that sum up our culture, the strength mindset is our go-to mode. I come to you today to argue that this is pure, unadulterated bullshit.
Errant Liberal 