Life - the pull into Being

We might think of life or culture as some sort of "pull" into Being - the attraction of life - what we lose ourselves in. This could be relationships, nature, ethics, work, art, culture, sport, politics, science, superstition, religion, hobbies, care of the self, the home, comedy, music, drugs, families, friendship, peers, travel, achievement, education, film, creation, shopping, reading, dreaming, sleep, driving, subcultures, dancing, cooking, playing video games... the list goes on. All these activities call out to us, some we listen to, some we like the way they call us.

So our life is overloaded with good things, we don't have enough time for them all. Then "religion" - which is itself one of these activities - is presented to us as something more important than these other activities. In other words, we now have to swap something we like doing for this new activity. What is the deal? What is the exchange? What can I give up to have time for religion? What will religion give me?

I know what cooking gives me, what walks in the country give me, what playing video games give me... or do I? Am I able to articulate and explain why I do things? Do I just do them because I feel a some desire, some pull towards that activity?

We have lost time - we have no time for what we want. Reality is too complex for us to understand it - there is a fractalization of our taxonomy of reality. Is it even healthy to give up something for religion?

But perhaps a better paradigm is the story. We explain what we do to ourselves with a story. We have a story about any activity and our life we try to make into a story of all these stories. We have a story of our political activity, a story of our family life, a story of our career, so we also try to make a story out of all these stories, to make our life understandable - if not understandable at least communicable to some imaginary other.

To err is to wake up. It is to come across a reality that we didn't anticipate or didn't know existed. When we err, we bump into something, and have at last an opportunity to engage with a new reality. Mostly we never take it, we try to ignore our errors, but error can be the source of art, our imagination, of a new story. We need a new story to make sense of the error. We have to be careful in case we stop looking at the error - "I wasn't really so wrong, I was nearly right" - the error can be fresh air, it can be a doorway to some new world.

Sometimes we are overcome with our life story - Richard Dawkins has a vision of a world without religious differences - or at least without religious bigotry. The story possesses him and animates him. He has a clear vision and is able to communicate that vision with passion and certainty.

The nihil is the lack of a story. It is not being able to put a story together - to narrate what is happening - we might have the pieces, we don't have the narrative.

With realist religion the story comes from God or it is written in the stars - everyone has the same story and the story never changes.

With non-realism we discover our own story, the story is a creative process of discovery - we appropriate our story, we all have different stories, the story changes, it is told and retold and changes in the telling.

Perhaps there are two paths to the light of the world - to the vision - to your story. One is a blinding light - the angels appearing to the shepherds, the road to Damascus - the sudden dawning realisation of what the story is.

The other is the slow journey of the wise men, following the star - not sure where it will lead. At first they are led to the wrong palace - they take a wrong turn. Eventually they arrive, to behold the light - the truth, to know their story.

Perhaps both ways end in a sort of worship, an awe of the numinous, the sublime experience of being. The ineffable where the truth of the story overcomes you and words are no longer enough.