This blog seems to be drifting in a more overtly spiritual direction. I'm not sure whether that's a trend of things to come, or a quirk of the moment. Either way, I'm sure to "go with the flow," which is my main mode. Not really, but for the sake of argument: "Go with the flow."
When I posted yesterday's entry, it was only because I happened to stumble across the Prayer of St. Francis, and I read it, and it was Sunday, and for some reason the whole ambience of it all just got me nostalgic for my Church days. And then I read it again and I said to myself, "wow, that's practically Buddhist in its simplicity, in its yielding-oneself-up-to-the-will-of-the-cosmos." Which of course, isn't a particularly Buddhist stance. But heck with them anyway, I bet they all get reincarnated as Scientologists*.
Anyhow, after I posted it, I read it again, like 3 times through. It's a beautiful sentiment, Buddhist or not. I wish I could be like that. It's not that I doubt the existence of God, per se. Actually I don't at all, which is weird. I never have. Even though - there's no evidence really. None! But I think that's kind of the clincher, in a strange way. I've always felt that if I were God, I wouldn't have left a seam or a fingerprint anywhere in creation. I would have left no evidence. A perfect creation would have to stand up to any amount of scrutiny, and still appear as if it could plausibly have created itself. If the existence of God could be proved, from all sorts of strings and levers left behind in the mechanics of reality; or if the machine couldn't work without regular and periodic divine intervention and maintenance...well, that'd be a real shit job then, wouldn't it? Of creation! A shit job.
But that's a separate blog topic ("Good Job, God!" slated for mid-December). This is about the Prayer of St. Francis.
The funniest thing I remember about the Prayer of St. Francis is that at some point they made it into a hymn, and of course to do that they had to add in extra words here and there to even out the flow. At one point, they have the line as "...and where there's doubt, true faith in You." Now, this was one of the hymns that was sung pretty frequently at St. Thomas Parish (I bet a "The Prayer of St. Thomas" would have been pretty funny!). I had pretty much absorbed the whole words already by the time I could read. So naturally, I never bothered to follow along reading the lyrics. Consequently, from a very young age, I thought the line was, "...and where there's doubtrude, faith in You." I thought that "doubtrude" was a special nounier version of "doubt", along the lines of "hatred" for "hate". I continued believing in this right on up through high school and possibly beyond, and occasionally the word found its way into test essays and papers!
It's funny the things you accept uncritically, if you absorb them early enough in life. There's a wider lesson in that, somewhere. I'm sure of it.
*just kidding. I love Buddhists, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
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