I had a conversation with a friend last night, while I was waiting to sing at the Karaoke place. My friend was telling me about how he had started a non-denominational evangelical Christian youth group whose ministry featured a major component based on heavy metal music, because he felt moved by the spirit after he had performed Christian Heavy Metal with face-melting awesomeness in a music festival. I was proud of him, and said as much. Well, not in words, but this isn’t exactly the point of this blog entry.
God is still there, even when you don’t got to church. This is my point.
God is in your conversations at the karaoke place. God is within your most banal interactions, and can surprise you with joy.
My atheist friends (which would be most of my friends) are offended/freaked out by this idea. And I think some of my Christian friends aren’t always comfortable with the idea that God exists even when they are not in church or prayin’.
Here are a set of limericks that I learned as an undergraduate, to help understand the metaphysical and epistemological significance of an ever-present God, who sustains us even when we have to miss church. It also summarizes the philosophy of George Berkeley (pronounced Bark-a-lay):
A skeptical sophomore wrote God:
“I find it exceedingly odd
that there yonder tree
dost not ceaseth be
When no one’s about in the quad.”
“Dear Sir: Your bewilderment’s odd;
For I am about in the quad.
And thusly, yon tree
shall continue to be;
observed by… Yours faithfully, God.”
I had something else to say to my friend, but the KJ called me to sing. So, I got up and sang “The Rainbow Connection”. When the intro started, I gave him a shout-out, saying that this song was dedicated to him. When I finished my song, I realized it was after midnight and that it was now Father’s Day. I decided to pay my tab, and go home.
Today, a bunch of my Facebook friends are posting about their fathers here and passed. I don’t really need to try very hard to imagine what my Dad would say about my whole situation, were he still alive. I am fairly sure that I have access those thoughts, and I am certain that I do access those feelings.
That’s maybe the more interesting epistemological trick. My parents are gone, I know that. This knowledge lacks understanding. Metaphysically, I don’t know where they went to. I seem to think that they are gone but somehow still with me; and not in the sense “that God dwells in all of us.” I feel it as a corporeal reality. I am made up of their DNA. The repeated aphorisms of their nurturing years trained and shaped the chemistry and physiology of my brain. Echos of their utterances run through my thoughts and the language that I use; especially as I nurture my kids.
Neither is the relationship purely static. There is a lasting dynamism that survives in the relationship. As I move through the ages my life, and my experiences come into phase with their corresponding ages and experiences, I feel the strength of their vicarious impulses within me. Mother and Father duel within my psyche, urging me both to correct their mistakes, while also urging me to repeat their same choices. I wonder if my kids will have the same paradoxical feelings? That’s rhetorical. I know they will.
Ok. here are some TMBG lyrics:
You’ll always miss my big old body
In its prime and never shoddy,
While bloodhounds wait down in the lobby you’ll eulogize my big old body
You’ll miss me with effigies
Lighting up your house like Xmas trees
As tears roll down below your knees
You’ll miss me with effigies
...All my darkest hours talking like this... 