Belief, Current, from a number of Letters to My Friend, Jamey Nyberg, Star-Guide

I'm not much for male versions of the Deity any more. I think that comes from a hundred years or so (I know it was only ten+) of the Our Father and reading in the Old Testament. That particular Father God was such a complete asshole. And petulant?! My way or the highway! Jesus, or as I like to call him (his actual name) Yeshua, seemed like a pretty decent sort, though it is hard to say, so many people, particularly that spiritual samurai warrior Paul, having fucked with the source material. But, most Father Gods are kind of stuck in pride central. Still, gotta love the ultimate vision of today's (Wednesday's) father god, the All Father is own self, Odin. He has that Gandalf vibe going for him, and doesn't seem to be all about ego, like so many Popes and Rabbis.

You didn't respond to my brief statement on the actuality of dying. I thought it was pretty lyric and somewhat accurate, at least as regards my own timber. But statements of religion are always kind of hunky for all of us. For one thing, what exactly is it all about within one's self? That for me is the failure of organized religion: People wanting to tell you what is what and have it be entirely their vision with no room for the very complexity of detail that is the defining characteristic of biological life. Humans like to turn things into simple structures and then define them as either positive or negative.

As to the New Testament and the Jesus (Yeshua) story: but the sorry truth is that there are enormous holes in that story and the whole thing is now a shill run by a cult-like group that takes money and makes statements that veer ever farther away from the lives of the people they supposedly are serving. The xtian churches have a pretty mixed reality going these days. The ones that say they are the most xtian tend to be entirely focused on issues of sex and reproduction. The Roman church talks about the poor and acts of grace and mercy, but it puts its money into controlling people's sex lives. This is ignored more and more. As it should be. The priesthood has never really controlled its own sex lives. Just gotten good at making statements about it all. Load of shit, of course.

There are some okay xtian denominations: some Methodists, the Episcopalians, church of the brethren. But they all fail for me because they are all based on the lie that is the story of the new testament. It's a good story, and you can see how people could come to believe it, in an era where the concept of magic was a given. It's a better version of the old Corn King stories. And it is put together in a way that allows it to use ancient texts to support its conclusions. And it has the first really well done horror movie at the end, the Apocalypse of St. John. And named for a john, the common name for men that hookers use.

Well, I spent years trying to justify a version of Yeshua's story. I read all the Nag Hammadi materials, and the great library at Qumran. And I already knew I hated the reasoning that informs The City of God (Augustine, a nasty little prick if there ever was one). Phil Dick's Valis and the other books from that period that he wrote, certainly supported some concepts that I thought could be so. But ultimately it was the years I spent reading and re-reading the White Goddess (Robert Graves; who also wrote King Jesus and the I, Claudius novels), and speaking within myself to the plethora of stories about the Circle, the waxing and the waning moons, the repetitions of actual reality, that led me, inexorably to defining the Deity as essentially female. A creator, and of course, a destroyer. But the creation and destruction are not in the service of power or acquisition or ego. More like art is in its very existence. What did Baba Ram Doss say? Be Here Now. He was Richard Alpert, Leary's associate in the earliest acid days. In a way he is absolutely right, be here now and pay fucking attention to here, now, and being.

Well, is god personified? Damned if I know. Do we live on after death? Seems like the fact of spirits existing gives some credibility to this concept. Why do some dead people stick around? I refer to Colin Wilson's traumatic death causes some sort of electrical recording in objects or buildings that is replayed by water running/or rain. Does not account for all spirits, only ghosts in hauntings. The fact that things exist in a way that is not accounted for by physical science guys gives us to believe that

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Thanks Hamlet. Once again you've hit the nail on the head, data-collection-wise.

Well, you know that I already believe in an after-life of some nature. And you know I believe in a version of the old religions judgement concept. You know, Peter with the big Book, but more like Maat weighing your soul against the Feather of Truth, the Egyptian version of judgement day. I believe you are forced to recognise in your own consciousness what the truth really is, and since the greatest of all sins is essentially the lies we tell ourselves, the real pain of judgement is being forced to accept the actual truth and with it all that happened because of your lies to yourself and to everyone else in existence. A dark vision, I understand. I do think that's why most people don't actually get a second chance on the wheel. I myself think this is not my first run, as I have pointed out in my Janne poems. I know that I have known her before. Not that it seems to have ever gone all that well. So it goes. There is always a chance I have deceived myself into thinking that there was something important there, merely because I wanted it to be. Pride is the sin that creates the need to lie to yourself.


Death

I am the breath that leaves the shell behind, the husk that once held me, gave me movement and voice. In the night when my mind slips away there is that light at the far end of the valley. The warmth of the delta returns me as a wind in a temperate zone. She is always there, for me, and for you. We are always in Her belly, that belly which is the 14 billion year old universe. I myself won't let the husk be buried in the ground (though that is fine), but rather I will send it to the fire that turns matter into energy. And what is left of my husk will be scattered in forests of New England, or on the waters of a glacier lake.

Always grateful for these days and nights, always glad for Her mercy, always true to the search for the truth. What else is there?