God Help Me

There is a god. It is out there. It is beyond our comprehension. Outside of our comprehension. Just on the barely visible edge of our comprehension. The event horizon of our comprehension. But a little bit more beyond. Just a tiny bit. And a little bit more. There. There it is, in exquisite non-existence. That point that’s not a point. That thing that’s not a thing. That existence that does not exist. The Is that Is Not. But Is. Somehow.

But I see it. Somehow. Do I know it? No. I can’t know it. I can’t know what something is that is beyond our life experience. Beyond our universe. Beyond our time and space continuum. Beyond…beyond. How do you know such a thing? How do you comprehend?

Yet there it is. Just barely within our comprehension. Barely knowable. And it takes on a name. It becomes a God! A He! Or a She! And we relate to Him or Her. Or Them. God. It becomes plural. Gods! And they are so like us. Or so like what we think of us. Or them. Or the other. Or the not us. Or the people we love. Or the people we hate. But always in constant contrast of what we think we are. The gods of mirrors. The abyss mirrors back.

So there are so many of them. Gods, I mean. So many gods fanning out of the realm of the incomprehensible. The inconceivable. The…

And what do they mean?

So now there is a god, goddess, gods, and they pull the strings of every aspect of our lives. They are like fleas or tics that inhabit every pore of every facet of every gram of every tiresome and timely step of our existence. Really, god? Do you have to soak up my life like dirt under my nails? Don’t you have anything better to do?

No more gods, please. Enough already. Except for that one that is out there, incomprehensible. Unknowable. Stay there, please. We don’t need you. Stay out there.

And in here? I’ll make my own gods for now. They suit me.

God help me.

The Troll Fells

I'll talk to people. They show themselves to be trolls. I want to call them trolls. But I can't be sure that they are. I think that's the mark of a not-troll. This person who has legitimate concerns that disagree with mine. I need to engage that one. In honest discourse with honest people who have their own honest opinions that are contrary to mine. Who knows in what stone quarry I might find the stone of knowledge? Maybe, by rejecting them, I am the troll!

Who am I to tell what is right and what is wrong? Who am I to call a troll a troll? Troll is as troll does, after all. If I fight a troll using trollish behavior, what does that make me?

So. When I engage in discussion with a similarly educated opponent I assume that they believe what they do for the same well thought out and well researched reasons as I. And that they understand, in the vast fields of knowledge and experience, that no single person can know it all. So we all can learn from the all. We can all engage in polite discourse. We can respect and come away enlightened. A little bit. For the all is greater than the sum of the parts. Or we can pretend to know it all. And be a troll.

The soul of knowledge is humility.

And trolls. There are always trolls.