i fell asleep last night remembering these words:

'And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
[...]

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.'

-from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran.

(i didn't remember it all word-for word. i'm not a machine, people. )

and then i remembered when it was most true. it was 2002, and i had my first, dribbling, taste of love. and i wrote a piece that still stands out as one of my best. i wrote it for him. more importantly, i wrote it like he was watching.

all my best work has been done hoping someone was watching.

vonnegut says as much in one of his autobiographical works. which one it is precisely escapes me, for which i am not embarrassed, because he repeats a lot between the various non-fictional tomes.
he emphasises the importance of having one listener. just one. one listener who you, the writer, believes is always reading, regardless of whether she/he is. for him, it was his sister. he wrote every joke knowing she would laugh at it.

the greeks, in a roundabout and somewhat more pantheological way, called them muses, and assigned them to various artforms.

my writing lacks grit, lacks some raw breed of beauty when i don't have a muse in mind. when who is watching is less important than writing something, anything down.

these days, i care who is reading. but the muscle is not conditioned.

(i am also much a dunce with computers. how to rid the first line of crappy font? maybe not copy and paste in future...)

cause i gotta have faith

and then, i'm not sure how, the conversation turned to religion.

he, unlike so many of us, was not inculcated at a tender age into a rigid set of beliefs. instead, at the age of 19, the pieces fell together. he, unlike so many of us, was able to choose his beliefs after assessing the evidence and his own moral fabric.

and, i, bashfully, sat adjacent, a raised-catholic-turned-secular-humanist. explained that i didn't choose secular humanism; rather, i read what secular humanism, generally, was, and noticed that it also described me.

but i don't call myself any one particular thing when it comes to faith, or belief, or religion. if anything, i feel i am defined by what i am not, in spiritual terms. i am not someone who attends services. i do not pray. i don't really feel compelled to behave in a certain way due to the promise of a consequence in the afterlife. i believe my consequences are as terrestrial as my actions. if i touch a flame, i will be burned.
i feel compelled to be decent to other people overall, which most would argue is a holdover from a christian upbringing. maybe so. don't most faith systems implore us to be 'good,' in order that society may be harmonious, productive, and pleasant? don't most systems contain tenets of social interaction which will benefit economic harmony as well as psychological welfare? isn't the social fabric intertwined with the harvest and the hunt?

i feel we often forget the roots of belief, or never knew them to begin with. animist faiths ascribe a spirit to every shrub, rodent, and tree, and acknowledge the failure of a hunt or crop as a failing on the part of the human community as participants in the interconnected web of existence. atonement is often, by modern standards, extreme. but necessary for the health of the community and its natural surroundings.

in some societies, spirituality and social harmony aide and abet one another. if a wrong has been committed within the community, every single member must participate in the subsequent penance in order for society to be healed. the cohesive factor of commonly held beliefs is, in this case, intrinsic to the health of society.

our contemporary interconnectedness, the ability to access information, to examine a thing from all sides, makes us incapable of understanding a community with limited information. are we happier now, with our infinite choices? or were we better off then, when everyone prayed to the same gods and hunted the same beasts? is a diversity of beliefs too divisive?

faith is something that has always fascinated, bewildered, and angered me. somewhere along the way during adolescence, i found the sheer amount of faiths in the world intensely fascinating, as though i had been raised eating only chocolate chip ice cream, had been slowly made aware of the other flavours in existence, and one day strolled into a large ice cream parlour, with a marble counter and big, crystal serving goblets. there was mint chocolate chip, so very much like chocolate chip but with a little something extra. there was vanilla, considered the classic, the most versatile, the most widely used in making the other ice creams. there was chocolate, the controversial one. my adolescent self considered it appalling to not even educate oneself about these other flavours before discussing their respective merits.

ice cream metaphors aside, spirituality has always interested me without necessarily inspiring me. i read up on other religions not because i was looking for something to believe in, but because i wanted to be educated. i wanted to converse intelligently rather than emotionally about faith, which is the trap so many fall into. the more i read, the more patterns began to emerge between the various structures, and my ability to ever subscribe to just one ebbed away. paired with the increasing tension over holy lands and holy words, my faith in faith waned.

asked what i believe in, i often respond that i believe in people. i have faith in the ultimate goodness of others, motivations aside. i do not always respond with this. nowadays i may not, and not because i have lost faith in people, but because perhaps today that is too simplistic for how i feel about my surroundings. if i ask someone for directions, i do not think that they ponder to themselves 'what would jesus do?' before answering me. no, they give the directions if they know them. maybe afterwards they think they behaved as jesus would have. but it wasn't their initial reason for helping me. that was just them, operating on reflex. is a reflex humanity or religion? nature or nurture? the giving of directions is a simple, perhaps banal, example. individuals consider their beliefs before a more monumental decision, perhaps. but aren't the every day exchanges between strangers as valuable as the big decisions?

perhaps that is ultimately what i mean when i say i believe in people. i believe that their humanity is their default setting, and not their set of beliefs which dictates they behave humanistically.

this train of logic demands a definition of what 'humanity' is and what behaving 'humanistically' means, which is a train i am too tired to board.



our conversation wheeled around similar cul-de-sacs and roundabouts, turning and twisting so often as one of us explained his beliefs and the other defended herself against what she felt were indirect accusations of being misguided, and without morals. he never explicitly said how he felt about those who do not subscribe to a particular faith; she foolishly never mentioned that she has an immense amount of respect for the faithful, in the same way that she respects long distance swimmers: with something akin to awe.

she didn't say that she was especially anxious about his opinion of her morals, or apparent lack of them. she did say, defensively, that she doesn't like it when people tell her what she should believe in (a sin he had not committed.) she didn't tell him that she was so anxious about his opinion because she wanted it to be positive. she didn't tell him that he made her head turn the first time she saw him. she didn't tell him that. she didn't ask how far his faith extends-will he touch a female? will he kiss one, or spend the night with one? she didn't even consider telling him that these are things she would like to do with him.

she did create metaphors, about the ocean, and its place as a deity in her life. a thing to command respect, but to also enjoy. to use as a compass, a navigational device. to fear, and observe, and indulge, and obey, and pray to.

she didn't say that she wanted to take him to her ocean. she hoped that the postcards, letters, visits, and now dinner had at least hinted at that. she didn't say that she hoped he had said yes for a reason other than some company and a meal.

she did say that she liked the painting he gave her. she did accept when he claimed it was 'his turn' to cook dinner. she didn't ask if that could be called a second date.

she didn't use terms like date. or like. or love.

she didn't say that her image of 'love' was as skewed as a kaleidoscope, constantly changing, sometimes beautiful and colourful, often dark and chaotic. she didn't manage to include that her parents are divorced, a fact that has always coloured her relationships, friendships, opinions. she didn't mention that she fears commitment as much as she does venomous snakes (both entities she feels she could get used to in the right context.) she didn't divulge that she adores her freedom and independence, but finds it often weighed down by an inescapable need to be held. she definitely didn't mention how skilled she is at keeping casual sex casual. how callously she can treat men when she wants to. she didn't admit that it's due to a fear of being vulnerable. and hurt.

she didn't tell him that she had chosen this opportunity to be vulnerable to him. that he was priviliged.

she didn't tell him that her breed of faith in humankind was radiant and glowing and alive in him.