Beyond Words

It has been my experience that a great many people whose lives revolve around religion have more than a tinny, not quite real way about them, and I think that's because they have adopted a belief system that doesn't really match the core of who they are. They sound half alive when they prattle on with their authorized cliches, and you know that they're not really letting you in. They're not really letting you see the real person behind the professed dogma. And often times they've been hiding behind a wall of dogma for so long, they don't even know who they are anymore.

My advice would be to let it all go. Start over. People are sometimes so afraid of living without an ideology. They think that's the only thing stopping them from going crazy and living in chaos. But you don't have to pretend to have all the answers to get up in the morning and go to work, do what you need to do, be supportive of your friends and family, avoid being selfish and hurtful, etc. You don't really need dogma to guide you through the day. You have your heart.

We're not perfect. We make mistakes. But being a Stepford Wife for Jesus doesn't really make life any less messy. It just prevents us from being real.

Someone once said that the best things in life we can't even think about. We can think about the second best things, but we can't talk about them. The third best things are the things we talk about.

Those who get tied down by dogma are hung up on words. They take everything too seriously, too literally. The poetry is missing for them, as is the awareness that nothing anyone ever says is really complete.

When sincere people talk or write about their experience, their beliefs, the things that gives their lives meaning, the words they offer are only shadows of what they actually feel. They genenerally take it for granted that those listening will understand this. And if there is more to life than meets the eye, then their experience of...whatever it is, which they can only talk about using the clumsy, blunt instrument of language, is surely only a shadow of that ultimate reality, if there truly is such a reality.

I think that if there is a meaning to life, it is beyond words.