What is Religion All About?

Within the animal kingdom, human beings have taken to the belief that among our conscious and animated brethren, we bi-ped homo sapiens are the most sentient and/or cerebral. In other words, we think. We don't just "do" life, we contemplate it. We wonder about it. We have questions about it. We want to learn about it and investigate it and discover it. We are endlessly curious about our physical, metaphysical, paranormal, sensorial, cognitive, affective and spiritual boundaries. We want to know what's what.

Most of all, however, we want to know*WHY*. Why are we here? What happened before I was born to facilitate this..this miracle of circumstances and coincidences that ended up producing ME? What if that student hadn't wandered into the stax on his way to the humanities area to find that book on Freud, and what if he hadn't been so fixated on the Dewey numbers that he bumped into that young woman, herself
engrossed in all things Jung?

"Oh, man! I'm such a doofus! God, are you okay? Sorry about that."

"I'm fine, relax. You're in Professor Screwloose's Psych of Personality class, aren't you?"

"Y-yeah. Let me get that. Here. You too, huh? Boy, talk about a human sleeping pill! Hhhhhnnnnnkkkkkkk....kk...zzzzzZZZZZZ!!!"

Giggle. SNORT! "No kiddin', right?", (chuckle). "I'm Debby."

Staightening up, with a broadening smile, "I'm Biff."

And what if "Biff" hadn't found "Debby's" snort intoxicating enough to ask her if she would like to study together? And then have either the meatloaf of the Chef's Surprise a la Leftovers at the student cafe? And maybe again the next day. And then...

And then... ...happpily ever after, blah blah blah. Would I have been born to another random pairing of goo-goo-eyed fornicaters to be? Would I NOT have been born? Would I never have BEEN? BRrrrrr!!!!!!

It is also a truth I have come to accept that change is constant and will not stop. Everything - EVERYTHING - is cyclical and finite, and the latter is a logical certainty by the very*definition* of change. Equally defining of change is that should*it* stop, everything stops. Living is action. We live because we breathe in air (CO2, O2, and, among many other gasses, probably some Su if uncle Eddie eats another chili dog). Assuming
"Unkie's" sulfuric contribution doesn't kill us, we live on to expel CO2 and other stuff. Our bodies use the oxygen to help facilitate the other biological funcitons that, too, have cycles - beginnings and ends. Uncle Ed's chili dog is dead. Still, matter is neither created nor destroyed and thus, the food is used and the waste eliminated.

It eventually returns to earth and helps compose the fertilizer that nature just knows how to balance. A**es to ashes, butts to dust. One things ends SO THAT another can begin.

Right now, it's my turn. Someday, it won't be. My material will be metabolized and used by nature to give the next newborn baby HER turn. Life ends. We end. The great nothing.

But why? What is the point of going through all of that? Because the alternative is so mind-blowingly horrific? I can certainly understand and buy that. But what if there is something more? What if being born and living and dying isn't the means to its own end? What if there is a greater purpose?

That seems credible to me as well. I do not know. What I do know is that I am very drawn to the idea that the ME of me won't just go "caput" when my body has gone through its cycle and returned eventually to earth. I'd like to think that that quaint and lovely courtship between "Debby" and "Biff" wasn't just an emotionless, unspiritual necessary function of nature to just "keep on keeping on".

I'd like to believe that LOVE is as real as my flesh. I'll settle for the wonder. I guess I'll have to. As I don't know how my miraculous birth (hey, it's miraculous to me!) could POSSIBLY have happened, maybe it wasn't by chance. I'm not a fan or devotee to some cheesy notion of anything "Holy" about life, just as a matter of "just in case" piety. I am in true wonder as to how I could possibly have come to be!

And, I am equally wondrous, captivated, and okay, maybe a little frightened, by the uncertainty of what will come of "me" at the time of my biological death, and ever after. I wanna believe in SOMETHING continuing. Some afterlife or paradise of even just the continuation of a new cycle. I do hope my ashes, and maybe Uncle Eddie's "contribution" can be of some use to Mother Earth. And I hope that "Mom" might be able to find me another sentient existence. Maybe one where I get to have wings?

Does a new consciousness become "me" after my death? If so, why THEN? What is so special about RIGHT THEN? Why not before then? Oh, right - there cannot be two of me at once - and God help you all in that case, heh heh. Why then not some period of latency - silence - nothing? Oh, right. The great nothing. BRRR!!!

Is it something called a soul? And, if there is a soul, maybe it does not "reimplant" into another body, although I have decided that that is a perfectly legitimate possibility and if so, a beautiful gift of grace.

Is there a heave? Is there an almighty savior and protector? Does there need to be? I don't know. I wrestle with it all the time. I think that that is one of the crucial essences of being sentient and human. We question. We ask. We yearn. We want. And we pray?

Alas, religionn is indeed BORN.