Concepts of God and God’s functionality in the universe are as often derived from experience and feeling as any formal philosophizing or theologizing. Darwin, for example, was as much influenced in his agnosticism by the evangelists’ images of hellfire and the tragic death of his daughter as by anything to do with evolution and natural selection. Our reflections on nature can dwell on “tooth and claw” as much as on the butterfly and the sunset. Likewise our reflections on humanity may dwell as much on love and mutual aid as on the cruel destruction of innocent life. The theories spun by thinkers never resolve the dichotomies, nor does society ever seem to progress in addressing them. But the solitary can pursue the necessary path: slowing the cultural influences in one’s life, reducing the ego’s affinities for easy social solutions, and awaiting a pattern of silence from which will emerge at least a modest personal equanimity. This is a life-time’s work, to be sure, but it is the only work we need pursue.
journal of reflections by the resident of the Hermitary