The Big Magic

((Author’s note:  Of course I do not wish to offend anyone.  What follows is just where my brain can wander and sometimes it rants just a bit.  Like calling somebody a *&^%*, when they cut you off at an intersection; you don’t really mean it.))

The Big Magic

I live in an area, a region, of the country where being a Christian is like – well, it’s like a religion.   Which is fine, I guess, good for them.  As I’ve said before, I tried, seriously tried … just never stuck.  (Okay, I’ll admit it … I’m still trying.)

The most common book, by far, you see on the table at Starbucks, next to their coffee latté cappuccino frappé triple espresso milkshake, is a bible. 

No lie there is a guy who comes in here, covered with tattoos, earrings in both ears, with a big pistol (handgun) strapped to his hip.  He always orders some big frothy whipped thing in the largest size they serve.  Sits at a table and takes out a huge bible and starts writing sermons.

I’ve talked to him.  Nice guy actually.  I just don’t get the handgun thing.  He’s a big guy.  Tattoos and stuff, what’s he need a gun on his hip all the time for.  It’s Starbucks! 

In all reality, let’s get real.  Everything man is, was or will ever be; the earth as a huge chunk of dirt whirling around in the cosmos, the massive ball of fire we call the sun; all of it is less than a molecule in the infinity of everything.  Life is a marvelous experience.  The human mind could be said to be the most powerful force of which humans can conceive.  But even the human mind is a thing of just more cosmic material.

The Big Magic is that we can even conceive of it!  Like the pistol-toting pastor I marvel at this concept.  What I don’t get is where the idea that their Jesus would ever even consider packing or putting a bumper sticker on his pick-up that says, “Security by Smith and Wesson”; or, mess with my stuff and I’ll kill you. 

Dust to dust it says in their novel of magical mystical nostalgia.  (Yes, I’ve read it.  Like three times.  Honestly, other than the New part, I can’t make any sense out of it.) Nothing could be truer.  What is all the anger and pummeling of others over this bit of mystical puffery?  God is a three-letter word that has resulted in more destruction, death, horror, torture and the worst of the worst behavior of human kind.  And it’s just a word. 

That one combination of letters (God) has often allowed me to think that maybe written language wasn’t such a good idea.  Stupidity is another word.  Evil is another.  One word (God) won’t make a man a better man than any other word, if he doesn’t truly comprehend it’s definition.  Neither will it prevent him from committing acts of dishonesty, dishonor and/or even destruction.

Now the New part I get.  It’s just that I don’t really see anybody paying that much attention to the plot-line message.

Whatever God a person may choose to believe in, or deny the existence of, must, by logical conclusion, be less than the awareness of the Word.  You can’t even deny a thing unless you acknowledge the word that symbolizes, linguistically, that thing.  That is part and parcel of awareness.  Once a thought occurs, to my thinking, it becomes like a radio wave, neither to be retracted or destroyed.  It cannot be unthought – or unthunk (as it were).

Therefore, once thought it becomes a thing.  It is a person’s right to say, “That thing is not a real thing.”  Or, “I deny the existence of that thing.”  Or, “My life is based on the belief in that thing.”  Which is awareness, as previously stated.

Now, this means that once you attach a word to a thing, or a thought, it has meaning – a definition.  And that cannot be undone either.  To me this means, and it may seem to be a big jump here, that a man (human) lives for a microspeck of time on the universal clock and that man can choose a moral life or an immoral life. 

The definitions of moral and immoral would be based not on that person’s definition of The Big Magic, but on the manner in which that microspeck of time is spent.  “If the universal cosmos has not been improved by the tiny fragmentary existance of your awareness, then you have lived an immoral life.”  And the definition of moral is derived from that statement.  This is The Big Magic. 

(I have weighed the options heavily about posting this blog.  But “I gotta be me.”  That and mostly not a whole lot of people pay that much attention to me … historically, anyway.)

(c) Copyright 2014 by Dale Clarence Peterson