02/12/2006
I'm gonna throw away all stylistic flair and just speak freely for a moment. If you've noticed in my blog, I refer to God as The BIG Homie. This is for 2 reasons. 1) I feel like he really is my friend like I consider any of my peoples my friend. 2) The word "God" has so many connotations, preconceived notions and possible misconceptions tied to it that to use it, I feel, would cloud the nature of the relationship I've established w/ him when talking about him to other people.
I grew up in a very religious household and have been taught about God from a very early age. For reasons that aren't worth discussing right now I became an atheist around the age 22. Soon after that, for the first time I experienced for myself the presence of God in a most humbling and unique way.
The story that comes to mind to describe this period in my life is:
There was an old fish that was swimming in the ocean. When he ran upon 2 young fish he stopped and said to them, "Good morning, boys. The water's good this morning." and then swam off. One of the young fish then turns to the other one and asks him, "What the fuck is water?"
It's only when I threw away what I had been taught about God that I could see and experience the water for myself. So I believe in God, but there are entire sections of both the Bible and my Christian faith that I consider irrelevant. Not saying I know best what to throw away and what to keep but I just don't accept things that make no fucking rational sense whatsoever. My attitude towards Christianity is throw it all in the crucible, let the bullshit burn up and the truth remain. If this means I'm going to burn in hell ... well, personally I don't believe in heaven or hell as it was taught to me as a child. Besides, no human being can know what happens to us after death, period. It's impossible. That being said I put my focus on how to best live this life and not necessarily preparing for the next.
Wierd thing is I got into this conversation with The Mouthpiece and Gizzle tonight while riding down I-285 with open containers. I guess this would be a good time to mention that it's 8:49 a.m. when I'm writing this and I'm just getting home. These are probably 2 of the last people I would expect to have a conversation about religion with, because... well, what great theologians have you known to sell used cars? Conversation, eventually turns to the inevitable question "Why are we here?" To which my response is "Honestly, I just think God wants a playmate." I tell 'em if you look at nature, as you progress up, life seems to become friendlier and friendlier (or at least has the capacity to). At this point, we walk into Vegas Nights and proceed to get smashed, so the conversation pretty much was over.
Fast Fwd to a very DRUNK yours truly, sitting in his car, oustide The Mouthpiece's apt. with an empty gas tank and his car will start but keeps quickly cutting off. I manage to get the car about a half mile down the road and the car completely stalls out on me & because it's 6:15 am noone's pickin up there phone. I put on the hazards, grab my gas can & start to troop to the gas station. It's colder than a witches tit in a steel bra, outside. There are snow flurries which in GA is the equivalent to a an arctic snowstorm somewhere else. As I'm walking up the road I'm 1) thankful for my coat, hat & gloves and 2) praying for someone to have mercy upon me and give me a ride to the gas station. I then begin to doubt this request because I figure who would ever be dumb enough to give a 5' 11" 250lbs black man walking down the side of the road a ride this far outside of the metropolitan area. With the popularity of CSI and Law & Order most people believe that Good Samaritan behavior leads to you being abducted and held in a basement with some wierd dude yelling at you, "It puts the lotion on its skin. It does what its told." (Shawn, I promise I will update more frequently.) I'm the only person I know that would pick up strangers on the side of the road. After about a minute of this I shut all these thoughts out of my head and think, "God, It's very cold please just send me some one dumb enough to give my black ass a ride to the gas station."
Less than 5 min later, my Samaritan shows up. She asks me if I need a ride to the gas station. I hop in and we both acknowledge that its pretty dumb for her to be picking up strangers while we're still in single digit a.m. She gives me a ride to the gas station, & back to my car, I put gas & antifreeze in my car. Because the hazard lights had all but ran the battery down (don't ask cuz I dunno either) she even helped me jump my car. When my car srarted, I kissed my hands and raised them to the sky. She invited me to her church and I'm gonna go as soon as I'm done typing this.
This is my sermonette.
I don't know a lot about God. There are a lot of things I don't understand about who or what he is, how to live, how I should behave or the best way to live in harmony with him.
I do know this, though. God loves all of us more that we can ever fathom.
I know this too. God, whatever God is, likes it when we love each other.
I can't prove it but I can't prove the sun is gonna rise tomorrow either I just know it will
So, if you see somebody in need help 'em out. That's it. I promise I'll get back to writing some funny shit soon. Be blessed. - AS
I grew up in a very religious household and have been taught about God from a very early age. For reasons that aren't worth discussing right now I became an atheist around the age 22. Soon after that, for the first time I experienced for myself the presence of God in a most humbling and unique way.
The story that comes to mind to describe this period in my life is:
There was an old fish that was swimming in the ocean. When he ran upon 2 young fish he stopped and said to them, "Good morning, boys. The water's good this morning." and then swam off. One of the young fish then turns to the other one and asks him, "What the fuck is water?"
It's only when I threw away what I had been taught about God that I could see and experience the water for myself. So I believe in God, but there are entire sections of both the Bible and my Christian faith that I consider irrelevant. Not saying I know best what to throw away and what to keep but I just don't accept things that make no fucking rational sense whatsoever. My attitude towards Christianity is throw it all in the crucible, let the bullshit burn up and the truth remain. If this means I'm going to burn in hell ... well, personally I don't believe in heaven or hell as it was taught to me as a child. Besides, no human being can know what happens to us after death, period. It's impossible. That being said I put my focus on how to best live this life and not necessarily preparing for the next.
Wierd thing is I got into this conversation with The Mouthpiece and Gizzle tonight while riding down I-285 with open containers. I guess this would be a good time to mention that it's 8:49 a.m. when I'm writing this and I'm just getting home. These are probably 2 of the last people I would expect to have a conversation about religion with, because... well, what great theologians have you known to sell used cars? Conversation, eventually turns to the inevitable question "Why are we here?" To which my response is "Honestly, I just think God wants a playmate." I tell 'em if you look at nature, as you progress up, life seems to become friendlier and friendlier (or at least has the capacity to). At this point, we walk into Vegas Nights and proceed to get smashed, so the conversation pretty much was over.
Fast Fwd to a very DRUNK yours truly, sitting in his car, oustide The Mouthpiece's apt. with an empty gas tank and his car will start but keeps quickly cutting off. I manage to get the car about a half mile down the road and the car completely stalls out on me & because it's 6:15 am noone's pickin up there phone. I put on the hazards, grab my gas can & start to troop to the gas station. It's colder than a witches tit in a steel bra, outside. There are snow flurries which in GA is the equivalent to a an arctic snowstorm somewhere else. As I'm walking up the road I'm 1) thankful for my coat, hat & gloves and 2) praying for someone to have mercy upon me and give me a ride to the gas station. I then begin to doubt this request because I figure who would ever be dumb enough to give a 5' 11" 250lbs black man walking down the side of the road a ride this far outside of the metropolitan area. With the popularity of CSI and Law & Order most people believe that Good Samaritan behavior leads to you being abducted and held in a basement with some wierd dude yelling at you, "It puts the lotion on its skin. It does what its told." (Shawn, I promise I will update more frequently.) I'm the only person I know that would pick up strangers on the side of the road. After about a minute of this I shut all these thoughts out of my head and think, "God, It's very cold please just send me some one dumb enough to give my black ass a ride to the gas station."
Less than 5 min later, my Samaritan shows up. She asks me if I need a ride to the gas station. I hop in and we both acknowledge that its pretty dumb for her to be picking up strangers while we're still in single digit a.m. She gives me a ride to the gas station, & back to my car, I put gas & antifreeze in my car. Because the hazard lights had all but ran the battery down (don't ask cuz I dunno either) she even helped me jump my car. When my car srarted, I kissed my hands and raised them to the sky. She invited me to her church and I'm gonna go as soon as I'm done typing this.
This is my sermonette.
I don't know a lot about God. There are a lot of things I don't understand about who or what he is, how to live, how I should behave or the best way to live in harmony with him.
I do know this, though. God loves all of us more that we can ever fathom.
I know this too. God, whatever God is, likes it when we love each other.
I can't prove it but I can't prove the sun is gonna rise tomorrow either I just know it will
So, if you see somebody in need help 'em out. That's it. I promise I'll get back to writing some funny shit soon. Be blessed. - AS
posted by heathen saint at 5:16 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home