Superstitious Hallucinations

Think about the funny things people say or do that make you laugh. Besides watching a comedy sketch on tv or listening to a comedian.

Things in everyday life. Like being at the clinic for my Covid booster and telling the young woman giving me the shot that I remember polio. Her eyes flew wide in surprise and she told me I don’t look that old. I snickered quietly behind my mask.

That sort of funny thing.

Or the first time I was in a store and a high school kid called me “sir”. As in, “you old man my father’s age”. I was caught off guard while also being amused.

Like many other Americans, I was raised in a family that had a particular religious affiliation going back hundreds of years. Some people are Protestants, Jews, Muslims or other. We were Irish Catholics.

Catholics are taught about God, angels, saints and lots of other good stuff. It’s all fine so long as it’s left in church where it belongs. Talking about God stuff — besides praying before meals and at bedtime — was out of the question.

When I began to mention discussions with God, my guardian angel and various angels and saints in early childhood, my parents were not amused. They were alarmed that I may be having hallucinations. The fear of having a crazy child was very real. I was punished into silent submission.

I have long looked back at the superstitious ideas of my family and others with amusement. The notion that religion and spirituality cannot possibly overlap is absurd to someone who has studied both in depth. The fear of spirituality has become more normal over the last several centuries.

For those stuck on the petard of intellectual elitism, religion is an opiate. Spirituality of any sort is pure madness. It must be controlled. Subjugated. Made submissive to popular scientific ideas.

The word science, for those who have forgotten, means knowledge. Science is greater than the mere physical world. Science is the study of facts or truths — whatever the subject.

It strikes me as odd to say that epidemics can bring anything good, but they do. Families that suffered the trauma of polio saw how friends and neighbors could rally for support. AIDS brought together communities of support which otherwise would never have existed. Covid, for all the disruption and devastation it has wrought, frees people to step back and review their lives.

All of these and more put us in the position to ask ourselves if how we have been living our lives is how we want to continue to live them.

I was feeling tired of writing weekly articles covering various areas of spirituality to post as blogs. The last few months found me less interested in continuing my efforts. A few weeks ago Somebody started telling my friends to encourage me to keep writing. I hadn’t discussed my thoughts with anyone. I was simply feeling drained, like I didn’t have a whole lot of anything new to say.

Apparently, that’s not the plan. I may not always suit would-be brilliant intellectuals of the world with what I write. But I have never been one to please almost anybody.

Let the intellectuals whine that I have superstitious hallucinations.

Let the whomever wishes complain that I am making this all up, this talk of God and spirits.

Let everybody say or think whatever they choose.

God is happy with me. To the point that I’m being told by friends to keep writing no matter what.

Here’s to no matter what!