The Autumn
Autumn is one of my favorite seasons because it is the most refined. There is a gentle quality to the autumn, how the heat fades as gradually as the colors on the leaves. Death is beautiful, none as beautiful as that of the summer.
At this time I ask myself if I am happy. I am not unhappy. But there seems to be something more that could be happening, something that has always been missing from my life and something that remains missing despite moments of joy and the gray stretch of daily diversions. What is it? What is missing?
Maybe it is God. When S was suffering I turned to her God for strength and solace. As it says in the Bible, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evident of things unseen." But, to offer a crass counter (from one of our esteemed Founding Fathers, no less): "He who lives on hope dies farting."
(That's Ben Franklin, in case you were wondering.)
It's interesting, this notion of her God and my God and their God and our God. This possessiveness towards God who, if He exists, owns us and is not, as it were, owned by us. If there were a God, there would be no other Gods. There would be no hers, nor his, nor theirs--our God would be the most appropriate phrase.
It is audacious to think that a human being could accept or deny God if there were God. Believers say that the evidence is all around us--is self-evident--while non-believers look around them and see no proof of a divine presence.
In autumn, is there evidence of a higher being? Can the turning of the leaves be part of His work, or are they just the sign of a slow and graceful aging?
At this time I ask myself if I am happy. I am not unhappy. But there seems to be something more that could be happening, something that has always been missing from my life and something that remains missing despite moments of joy and the gray stretch of daily diversions. What is it? What is missing?
Maybe it is God. When S was suffering I turned to her God for strength and solace. As it says in the Bible, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evident of things unseen." But, to offer a crass counter (from one of our esteemed Founding Fathers, no less): "He who lives on hope dies farting."
(That's Ben Franklin, in case you were wondering.)
It's interesting, this notion of her God and my God and their God and our God. This possessiveness towards God who, if He exists, owns us and is not, as it were, owned by us. If there were a God, there would be no other Gods. There would be no hers, nor his, nor theirs--our God would be the most appropriate phrase.
It is audacious to think that a human being could accept or deny God if there were God. Believers say that the evidence is all around us--is self-evident--while non-believers look around them and see no proof of a divine presence.
In autumn, is there evidence of a higher being? Can the turning of the leaves be part of His work, or are they just the sign of a slow and graceful aging?