The God Machine

Watched BBC's Beautiful Minds: Richard Dawkins, and was driven, this morning, to pen the following. To my religious friends, of all faiths, this is not meant to denigrate your beliefs, simply to clarify mine. Enjoy, and be open.

The God Machine

There dwells, deep within our minds,
a thought that, in many ways,
we share with our ancestors,
way back in caveman days.

Our lives were short and brutal then,
as we struggled to survive:
we grasped at anything that might
just help us stay alive.

Our elders wove fables
of supernatural beings,
who directed our fragile lives,
all-knowing and all-seeing.

We took all of our wise men,
prophets and visionaries,
and lifted them to godhood,
with the zeal of missionaries.

Gautama was the first to go,
with his gentle ways and thought:
his acolytes worshipped the man,
not the wisdom he had brought.

Sweet Jesus, with his love for all,
and message of personal peace,
was elevated to the godhead
by greedy Nicaea’s priests.

Muhammad, the great unifier,
and social engineer,
was glorified by united tribes,
who listened but did not hear.

Thus it goes, on and on,
passed down through the ages:
we disregard the message,
but deify the sages.

We possess a mighty intellect
but are condemned to perdition,
by disdaining common sense,
and embracing superstition.

~James Douglas Fanning, 23 May, 2012 at Greyhavens

Flirting With The Past

We all speak of the way things were,
the way things used to be,
but we must beware distortion
in the lens through which we see.

Events and people in our past,
coloured by passing years,
are glorified by love and respect:
we forget their pain and fears.

Those people and events define
who we’ve become today,
and tint our thoughts and actions
in each and every way.

Consider though, they were like us,
and products of their age:
they struggled, loved, lived and died,
each of them, rogue or sage.

The danger is to glorify
those who have gone before;
to think that things were better
in those distant days of yore.

They gave to us genetic gifts
so we’d evolve and grow,
and walk proudly in this future
that they would never know.

To yearn for return to a simpler past
is dangerously atavistic,
and dishonours those genetic gifts
with a view far too simplistic.

Like Biblical talents, our inheritance
should be to honour our traditions,
and not be buried, deep in time,
but to better our conditions.

Remember fondly those who have passed,
and love and praise them well,
but what atavism sees as Utopia,
may have been a personal hell.

Old Man, At Peace

In this winter of my life
I have no need to seek
relief in tropic climes.
RVing to Arizona
is not where I would be,
for canopied visits with my peers,
none of whom think like me.
Neither a golfing trip
to Florida with fellow codgers
driving bellies round groomed tees,
nor a visit to the Legion
to relive foreign wars,
reviving ancient wounds.
Tearing through pristine wood
on an ATV, whose energy output
would power a third world village...
not the life for me.

Instead, the introspective way,
reflection, thought, and peace,
where seasonal winds speak
in my pines, 
and sunsets break my heart.
Exploring walks with my dog,
through alternate realities,
and reflecting on where we are,
compared to where we could be.
Family and friends visit here,
and leave as much as they take away:
warm memories, and a sense of “us”,
sustaining through our days.

I stand here, in a cosmic Now,
with illusions as my friends,
contemplating the possibility
that Reality never ends.