Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

In a sense what you say is true, Skip. But I am making an effort to be up-front and direct about what I do. The psychological aspect to analysis of culture and to the positions people take seems to me crucial. I think 'palisading' is a little over-the-top though. On Internet forums you cannot really have acquaintance. It is a 'blind' medium and in making assessments of others (it seems) you end up missing the mark as often as you hit it. And when a topic is a contentious one, so much the more difficult. But please don't take it personally. I don't. To avoid (more) misunderstanding do you think it perhaps best that we let it rest? I am somewhat inclined to try to explain why I note Marxian ideas in some of your words, and I did say earlier that we swim in certain ideas without knowing the degree we have absorbed them, but I don't---honestly---want to offend you.

[Skip]

I'm not offended. Just patrolling my intellectual turf.

I am an avowed egalitarian and socialist, but have not actually read any great thinkers on the subject nor aligned myself with anything more philosophical than my NDP candidate. I have done this (but don't anymore) quite consciously.

Rest is good.

[tillingborn]

Oh, right, I forgot: the Aussies.

And the Kiwis, and the South Africans and the world's second largest country just to the north of you. Those are just the countries that were invaded by Britain, plenty others were colonised and other European nations did much the same. It was quite an achievement, but not one that I am particularly proud of.

I don't understand. Mustn't you take a definite and radical stand against 'conservative reactionaries'? If I were one, wouldn't you have to think the worse of me for it?

Not especially. If 'conservative reactionaries' get off their bum and do actually do something I strongly disapprove of I might, as I have in the past, confront them. But everyone is entitled to their political opinion; it's the nature of democracy.

I am not sure if you can internalize what I am expressing in these pages. The culture(s) that have produced us are so fundamentally Christian, and so deeply wedded to that, that is is impossible to separate it out. Though I really do think this is true---a basic and fundamental truth, a simple and verifiable fact---I don't think it should serve you to feel such animus toward me because simply because I articulate it.

Don't be so touchy. I think some of your ideas are crummy, but I've nothing against you personally. It's all part of life's rich tapestry. I happen to believe that difference of opinion is part of the excitement of living. If we could just stop this spilling over into conflict, we would be getting somewhere. Christianity has so far failed to achieve this and although I don't really care what you think, telling people they are incapable of internalizing what you are expressing is not going to lead to world peace.

I do feel there is a hugely positive aspect to the Christianity of our cultures though.

I think there have been wonderful contributions made by brilliant individuals who have been operating within a Christian context; I don't think therefore, Christianity should get the credit.

Here's an odd band for you.

Thank you; I shall listen at my leisure.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I am an avowed egalitarian and socialist, but have not actually read any great thinkers on the subject nor aligned myself with anything more philosophical than my NDP candidate. I have done this (but don't anymore) quite consciously.

With your permission only I would make some comments. There is a relationship to 'the present conversation'. But I don't want to drag you in to a discussion you don't want to have, nor even to read.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Christianity has so far failed to achieve this and although I don't really care what you think, telling people they are incapable of internalizing what you are expressing is not going to lead to world peace.

A couple of pages back, if memory serves, you referred to 'sending off our nutters'---a comment I thought quite apt in many ways. (America is filled to the brim with 'religious nutters', this is just a FACT). Meaning, the founders of the original (highly religious) colonies. How do you reconcile making that sort of comment to someone, who is American by birth but expatriated (FYI), and still hope to maintain 'world peace'. Though the missiles in my silos are always on high alert, still I pushed no 'no turning back' buttons.

I did not tell you that you were incapable of internalizing the ideas I am attempting to communicate, but that 'I am not sure if you can internalize what I am expressing in these pages'. To say you are not sure about something is just being honest. It is a fair and above-board way to proceed.

Myself, and on a philosophy forum, I think there has to be a basic agreement to work within the scope of articulating ideas. In my view (notice the polite way of saying it) neither you nor Skip are working very hard to articulate large, bold, independent ideas. Let us make an agreement here and now: Everyone can say exactly what they think with no politically correct or socially correct fluff and that we each resolve to keep the finger off the detonation button.

Eh?

[tillingborn]

Everyone can say exactly what they think with no politically correct or socially correct fluff and that we each resolve to keep the finger off the detonation button.

Eh?

Be my guest. See? I can be polite too. Actually you are pre-empting parts of the ensuing by describing as 'socially correct fluff' things I might think common courtesy at least and sometimes the facts; which I shall try to defend. We shall see.
So; what is it that you really think?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It is that I conceive of different 'rules' or 'guidelines' in forum-conversations as this one. It is an art of sorts to express ideas in strong, above-board terms, and to respond to the same, but without getting bent out of shape. I am aware, and you also seem to be aware, that the topic being discussed, though it now has the understructure of the 'personal' which could also mean misunderstandings and projections (it happens all the time on Internet forums...), is a difficult one. That is just a fact. I assume that people who have strong opinions on the matter have a certain amount riding on it.

Actually you are pre-empting parts of the ensuing by describing as 'socially correct fluff' things I might think common courtesy at least and sometimes the facts; which I shall try to defend. We shall see.

What I think is this: behave in this conversation as you feel you should behave. If you feel it correct to be polite, then be polite. And if you don't, don't. Myself I am not concerned about politeness but clear exposition of ideas. I desire to establish the 'right' to say what I desire to say and in the way I want to say it even if you or anyone else might be 'offended' by it. I wish to establish this right at the start. But in the absence of a full permission I suggest that the conversation be brought to a close.

'Socially correct fluff' is an ironic way of describing excessive politeness when it may indeed be, for example, that what one wishes to say is, say, 'religious nutter'. (The winky smile indicates irony---good, clean fun if you wish to have it in squeaky-clean Christian terms)(Another irony). But again, if you feel the need to be polite, be polite. My view is that on a philosophy forum where important ideas are discussed we should observe some basic guidelines for civil conversation but we should not forget that our oppositions and differences may be extreme, and they may not be reconcilable. The art of engagement even when such stark differences exist in my view is the mark of maturity and even 'gentlemanliness'. But it is possible that the term 'gentleman' might not be to your taste.

So; what is it that you really think?

Hmmmm? I don't understand what you mean. I have been saying exactly what I mean in every post, paragraph and sentence since I began this thread. What I have been saying is what I really think.

PS: Do you really think The Damned can compare with Flipper? Let's not beat around the bush on this one. I am from California and Flipper is a California band. I have a great deal riding on this. I ask you: which is the superior band?

[Skip]

With your permission only I would make some comments. There is a relationship to 'the present conversation'. But I don't want to drag you in to a discussion you don't want to have, nor even to read.

You don't need my permission to comment.
I may refute any allegations i consider to be false, if i care enough. I may object if you misrepresent my statements, leap to unwarranted conclusion or lump me in with some school of thought, or faction, whose existence in the world, and whose agenda, have not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

I have not expressed any great or lofty ideas of my own, because this is your thread; by common courtesy, my participation here is to respond, not to take over. And, as i have no clear idea of your overall theme, my responses have been piecemeal and therefore possibly off the mark.

What i've gathered you're on about:
The Euro-Christian tradition is so unique and important an advancement in human development that it deserves/needs enshrining and celebrating and elaborating.

The philosophers of this culture - well represented by the monastic movement in general and Loyola in particular - are a higher order of human being than the other 99.9%, which are automata ....or something like.

While not necessarily wishing to take the cowl, you do wish to join these thinkers.

But you want to clean up the literature first; get rid of the sacrifice and magic bits, and maybe some of the less credible stories and characters. Then, a superstition-, Inquisition-, crusade-, Reformation-, fundamentalist- and presumably brimstone-free, pure Christian thought will inform the moral/spiritual aspirations of Western Man.

I realize i don't begin to scratch the surface of your complexity, and never can, probably because of my entrenched materialist, naturist, secular, democratic (i'm not accepting your designations) habit of thought. At my age, comfort is paramount: i don't trade off a pair of shoes until they're tattered beyond use - so i'm even less likely to change a mode of thought that both fits and suits me.

[tillingborn]

Wotcher Gustav.
I thought that if I were to take this seriously, I would need to read the entire thread again. I didn't make it to halfway before it became abundantly clear that anything I could add has already been said, with more grace than I could muster, by Skip. If you really want to continue this, it'll be more of the same, but with about a 1/3 of the wisdom knocked off and the petulance turned up to 11. I would only add that it sounds like fun and I really wouldn't be so defensive, since you know you piss people off.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I do thank you two. I think it may be best that I continue the search for a forum more in line with my desires and intentions. I'll think on it.

[Harry Baird]

Hello,

This is my first post to this board, and I pretty much joined for this thread alone, a thread which so far has been very interesting - "nourishing", in fact, to continue the feast analogy - although I note the declining enthusiasm of some of its participants in this past page. But thank you all for offering this sustenance. I'm very wary that this post might unhelpfully divert the thread, but I also hope that I have something halfway useful to contribute, so I'm going to take that chance.

Perhaps it will help if I state my affiliations with the different ideas in this thread up-front. I find myself sympathising in some respects with both Skip and with Gustav. It seems true to me that Western society is in a process of re-evaluation of its Christian heritage so intense as to be comparable to, yes, a battlefield. It is true too that, like Gustav, I experience this battle internally, and that, like Gustav, I see both value and absurdity, truth and misrepresentation in our Christian heritage, and that, also like Gustav, it would not be quite accurate to label myself a Christian even though I value much in Christianity. Like Skip, however, I am left-leaning, and would probably describe myself as a socialist if I had a clear meaning of what that term exactly means (like Skip, I have not read any of its political tracts). And so, I, too, am wary of elitism and conservatism. Too, I am critical and wary of the historical abuses of power of those wielding it under the Christian banner, even whilst I am effectively illiterate historically, and know what I know only through osmosis and the odd television documentary, and not through proper study and reading.

Perhaps, too, it will help if I offer a few quotes from the two main participants in this thread that have "hit home" to me:

"It is possible that, in comparison to a sort of 'mindless existence' offered by consumer and entertainment culture that a 'thoughtful' Christian faith and practice, one that is grounded in social responsibility, commitment to a healthy family environment with emphasis on good relations, self-improvement, education and higher ideals, may indeed be recognizably superior to a life lived with no doctrinal system in place". --Gustav

"A 'sophisticated faith' is by no means a gratuitous achievement, and in this sense a faithful relationship to existence can be seen as a unique and powerful position. What it might be contrasted against is an individual who stands in essentially a 'paranoid' relationship to reality, or perhaps the word is 'anxious'". --Gustav

"I don’t consider the early animists to have been superstitious. Rather, I think they lived in a world that was very much more alive than ours. Without means of gathering scientific data, it’s perfectly logical to assume that other species, trees, grass, water, clouds and wind have a consciousness like our own: they move; they change; they appear purposeful. In fact, it’s taken science a long time to overcome the religious prejudice against recognizing the kinship between humans and other animals, which primitive people (and modern dog-owners) always recognized". --Skip

"To me, as a socialist, the saddest part is that the biblical Jesus (real or fictional; it doesn't matter) had much the same notion of how to live as I have, as some native tribes of North America had, as many communities of humans, both religious and atheistic, have had from the dawn of time to the present. The churches and their feudal and capitalist patrons have deliberately trashed that aspect of Christianity". --Skip

In many ways I relate to Gustav's description of a "paranoid" and "anxious" individual, as contrasted with a faithful one: in fact, the reasons behind my paranoia and anxiety are part of why I am drawn to Christianity. Without expecting anybody to believe this anonymous stranger on the internet, nor, if they do, to resist the psychiatric interpretation: I have experienced malevolent spiritual forces directly, and so have good reason to relate to those parts of the Bible which describe the demonic realm and its master. This, along with the many reports I've encountered from both friends and strangers, both informal and published, of paranormal experiences, is why I find the sceptical-naturalistic-atheistic world-view a la Dawkins, Randi, et al. to be completely inadequate.

My reasoning continues: if, in my experience, metaphysical evil exists, yet the world is not completely beholden to it, then likely there exists an opposing metaphysical good which protects us from that evil, and so I am drawn inevitably to the notion of a (benevolent) God of some sort. The existence of evil in the first place, however, leads me to believe that Christianity hasn't quite gotten God's nature "right", at least not yet - I can't fathom how an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving Creator would have created or at least permitted this evil, and, like Gustav, I find the notion of the direct quotes of God in the Bible a little... dubious. My view is a lot more manichaean than traditional Christianity. I agree with Gustav (to the extent that this is his position) that we need more realistic, accurate depictions and understandings of God than those with which fundamentalism provides us.

The question of the redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice is of course central to Christianity, and a person evaluating Christianity needs some way of assessing that question. My own assessment is that there is something to it, mostly because of the many reports of living people who have had spiritual encounters with Christ. Many of these reports are readily available to anyone with an internet connection. I would like to be able to say that mine numbers amongst them, but it seems that as yet I have an undeveloped faith - although I have experienced what was to me a miraculous answer to prayer.

And so, in leaving off: it seems to me that the "battlefield" is multi-layered, occurring both in the material, human realm of ideas, and in the spiritual realm in which a man's soul is tested between the poles of diametrically opposed forces, and, certainly it seems to me that the consequences of this battle are not insignificant.

Anyhow, this will do for a first post, getting a relatively brief "position statement" on the table, even though there is much more that I could write in response to the preceding few pages of this thread.

Thanks again.

[Skip]

That's about the most thoughtful introductory post i've ever seen.
Welcome, Harry Baird!
And don't feel you're derailing or intruding - this thread seems to have wound down.
I hope we can offer you more interesting subjects in which to participate. One of my favourite features on this site is the "unanswered posts" option on the upper far left.

[tillingborn]

I do thank you two. I think it may be best that I continue the search for a forum more in line with my desires and intentions. I'll think on it.

Religion didn't feature much in my upbringing, only two episodes stand out. One being the occasion my RE teacher, the vicar at the local church, asked who Karl Marx was. Aware that Groucho had several brothers, I suggested that he was a comedian. The vicar droned on for the entire lesson in response; I've no idea what he said, because I wasn't listening.
The other occasion is more to the point; I remember a story from morning assembly. A man dies and finds himself in a place where all his wishes come true; everything he hopes to achieve is easy and everyone agrees with him. At first he is delighted. After a while though, the lack of any challenge begins to bore him until eventually he says to someone, 'I've had enough of this. I want to go to hell.' To which the reply was, 'Ah! You don't understand; this is hell.'

PS: Do you really think The Damned can compare with Flipper? Let's not beat around the bush on this one. I am from California and Flipper is a California band. I have a great deal riding on this. I ask you: which is the superior band?

Having never heard of Flipper, it's not something I've given much thought to, but on the geographical analysis that you apparently subscribe to: I am from London, therefore The Damned is the superior band. That's pretty much how a person's religion is decided too.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

That's pretty much how a person's religion is decided too.

Is that so? You could be right!

I would only add that it sounds like fun and I really wouldn't be so defensive, since you know you piss people off.

Although you might not think so it is to some degree a sensitive point for me. First because when what I call 'conversations' become acrid they fall into a vicious cycle from which they do not recover. The Internet over the last 10-12 years has opened up a new, and wider, possibility of conversation, which should be a good thing, and is, but I have noticed that if people are not serious about the way they go about conversing, if they don't demonstrate a certain restraint, and if they cannot actually listen to what the other is attempting to say, then the whole effort is lost, and this is a shame.

There are people who set out to 'piss people off'. It is a style of Internet presence whose purpose is to elicit reactions. It is a form of baiting and a way of operating in bad faith. But there is a wide difference between 'dealing on contentious themes' and deliberately trying to piss someone off. This thread was begun in good faith and its purpose is to speak about a current issue which is divisive and highly contentious. There is no way round that difficulty. The best conversations (in my view) are those that deal on the more difficult subjects but it is best, if possible, to try to keep things on as much of a good-faith platform as possible.

Now, what I 'know' is that in the present climate of expressions of contempt for 'Christianity' an apology for it will not be welcome. And the term is really problematic because 'Christianity' is such a huge thing, it cannot be contained by one word, and so it may be that someone opposed to 'Christianity' is opposed to any faith and any sort of relationship with a transcendental being, consciousness or presence ('spooks' as Skip said), or to the collusion between a hierarchical religious body and the State (as tillingborn described with the reference to the Anglican Church and its links to the royal family, to imperialist policies, etc.)

You might be a feminist opposed to 'Christianity' or a homosexual of a communist or a pantheist or an herbalist. It is simply a fact that, for political and social and spiritual reasons, this 'Christianity' is or has become a contended Symbol, in addition to being a 'fact' in a political and social sense (as a church-body is a 'fact' in time and space), and there are a great many people who hate the symbol and who hate the fact. It is my view that this 'hatred' has many dimensions and not all aspects of the oppositional stance are clear, in the sense of being 'conscious'. There does indeed seem to exist a 'revanche' (retaliation, seeking revenge) against what I can only describe as a Symbol because it is vastly complex, that is, what one feels 'revanche' against. How can one bring up this 'mood' and this 'activity' (revanche as an active effort, as a doing) without stirring up the inner core that nourishes and feeds the revanche itself? Put in reverse, how could a 'believing Christian' or a long-time practitioner of an ancient religion, not feel a form of 'revanche' when so many people come forward to strike a blow against both the Symbol and the Fact?

It is a very, very curious and complex situation. But, as in a complex and contentious relationship, if the parties are 'mature' and 'honest' they may be able to create something out of the conflict. In the most basic sense that is my effort. Certainly in what I write here and definitely in my own research. One of the reasons for this is because my reading on this subject is wide, and the wider one's perspectives become the less possible it is to simply dismiss something which, as I have attempted to say, is part of the very structure of ourself, in the sense that bricks are the parts that make an edifice. Yet if you attempt to explain that to someone 'possessed by revanche' and who, no matter what, 'hates' the edifice, in some sense you are wasting your words. On them at any case. But one characteristic of these forums is that there is always an 'invisible readership', and so the true beneficiary may not be your obvious interlocutor but someone else.

The vicar droned on for the entire lesson in response; I've no idea what he said, because I wasn't listening.

For me, reading this, there are numerous levels of irony. What is there really to hear? Who really is speaking?

I grew up almost absolutely outside of any structural religious organization. And my hippy-professional parents (late Beat-era types from San Francisco to be more exact) upended everything by selling their home, quitting their jobs, and talking myself and my sister to live in India. In my case and at a young age (13) I was exposed to some of the most exotic religious forms and not as ideas in a book or narrative but as an experience, a full-body experience as it were. In my particular case, and from an early age, the notion of spirituality and religion was always tinged with this force.

My parents, in their thirties, were in struggles to understand their marriage bond; they were both trying to define themselves spiritually and existentially; and additionally there was all the various undercurrents we are all aware of: political issues, issues of freedom and independence, issues of what indeed one 'serves' in this world, to what does one owe allegiance. They took this odd step of projecting themselves and their personal struggles into an exotic land and brought myself and my little sister along for the ride! Ashrams, trains, diesel smoke, ochre-colored sadhus, flower garlands, curries, jungles, unreal poverty and disfigurement, bizarre temples pulsing with sound and color, death and life all commingled.

The strange thing was that I was given great deal of freedom. I don't know what my parents were thinking. I used to get up in the morning, eat, and wander around Benares all day including around the ghats and then come back at three or four in the afternoon. At the same time I had my odd 'obsessions', some grounding mechanism perhaps: all the novels of Edger Rice Burroughs and the animal adventure novels of Gerald Durrell (brother of Lawrence Durrell) and a fascination with old watches---od English watches, broken, that you could pick up for nothing in the markets. Clouds and the weird Indian crow also held me in their grip. Those crows are the most bizarre beings!

It is not a hard thing to talk about, and yet it is a hard thing to talk about, but I used to visit one small Ganesha temple in Benares where a group of sadhus hung out. They saw me every day and I was something of a young celebrity. No one spoke English and we communicated with signs. One day one of them whose face is still embedded in my memory took me around to a side alley to have a view of the murtis (statues). It is impossible to describe what happened, I don't understand it, but through his touch---a sort of reassuring, friendly touch like when you put your arm around someone's shoulder---he transmitted energy in such a way that I had an overpowering, unexplainable visionary experience. Of the sort described, say, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (William James).

It would not be advisable or necessary to describe it in any detail except to say that while aware of my body I was also not in my body and in a more expansive state. The abiding element of it in it was twofold. One was the clear understanding, peculiar to visionary states (if you've ever had one you'd know) that the whole platform of existence---the 'world' as we say---was a 'temple', a sacred place, a sacred possibility, something to be taken quite seriously. It is the sort of experience that occurs at a deep place inside and is not possible to really describe. The other element was a vision of the way that 'divinity' is present at an 'atomic' level (if you will); a Consciousness or Awareness that, to me then (and now still) is 'inconceivable'. It seemed to be a way of understanding divinity as an underlying force, as Brahman as the Hindus describe it: 'the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world'.

I had no language to explain this experience, especially to myself. I don't know if that makes immediate sense. You have to be able to 'translate' dramatic experiences to your own mind, to your personality. I just didn't have it, I did not have the 'language'. It became necessary, I realize now, to suppress the strength of the experience, and this is largely what I did. I got sick immediately afterward with a fever and delirium for about a week. A German lady doctor visited me every day whose energy is still infused with my memories of that time. This was an advantage because I was never able to tell my parents what had happened although they certainly noticed something in those first following days. I couldn't speak much. But it was all ascribed to the fever when it hit. We left Benares soon after and were located in other parts of India, and then Katmandu for almost a year. After another 8 months or so we returned to California.

For me it was literally hell. The whole experience of India was so very overpowering, not to mention the 'assault' on my own consciousness through the power of a strong visionary experience for which I had no language to describe nor understand. I could not recover a sense of 'continuity' with the social-cultural life of America. It represented a 'radical break'.

So, I did what any normal teenager would do in such circumstances: I rebelled against everything. I think it was like going crazy but in a somewhat controlled way. Or maybe it was a way to keep from going crazy by letting the strange energy out so as not to be consumed by it. All that that means is a did everything 'backwards'. Or upside-down. My peers were all sons and daughters of people variously connected with the 'human potential movement' in California at that time. Fritz Pearls, Esalan, Synanon, Zen---every trippy and hippy-dippy alternative 'consciousness' scene you can imagine.

So what did I do except become a first rate delinquent with a specialty in car theft. My 'girlfriend' was the daughter of a very well-known psychologist and writer whose name I will not mention. We were partners for a time in a mutually-shared rebellion-madness. (She later studied acupuncture and went to live in Brazil. We write from time to time since I live a hop-skip-and jump north of her). How close you can be to someone and how far away too! Drugs, sex, madness, always on the edge, living in anxiety and something like 'shame'. But car theft? That was because of my friend K. It would never have occurred to me, honestly. From the time I was 15 until about 17 we stole about 50 cars! I kid you not. Porches, Mercedes, BMWs were our preferred brands. K. knew were to sell them and we split the money 55-45. I can still feel the 'weight' of those fog-soaked dollars in my hands, strange as that sounds. Everytime K. and I got together our personal chemistry produced some outrageous adventure and crime. But we never got caught.

It turned out though that one afternoon---a Sunday---we stole a porsche and were also high on mushrooms I think it was. Or some mixture of drugs. I was driving, driving like a maniac, and going too fast around a corner on a country road I sideswiped a car coming the other way, spun around, lost control, and we went over the embankment and down the side of a hill. Strangely I remember clearly what we were listening to. Life Goes On. I think it was on an old 8 Track. But it is such a weird Swiss band that I don't know if they ever put out on 8 Track. But I remember the song. What stands over us and supplies *meaning*, the meaning that comes to us through words? Such a bizarre topic...

• "I.don't.know.what.I.am.doing. I.don't.know.why.I'm.like.that."

We ran like devils down the hillside (rural, coastal California) and then up to a hillside where we looked back down on the crime scene. Red and blue flashing lights, squad cars. Bloody, with a few broken teeth but unhurt, we were insanely scared but non-repentant. We thought the game was up though. But nothing ever happened. I was 17. It was the classic 'sobering event'. I never hung out with K. again. I kept expecting for the cops to track me down but it never happened.

Soon after that, under strange circumstances (all my circumstances have been strange), I left California for good. That was the event that 'cured' me at least on one level. I was still a minor so you'll have to forgive me my wicked crimes. No one ever got really hurt.

Anyway, because I said that I would earlier, I wanted to trace a little some aspects of the 'personal' events that have shaped my existence. For me, the need and desire to shut out of my consciousness because it was just too much to assimilate the 'sense' of the knowledge of a divine force was really how I began my life. But what 'bit' me would not ever remain silent or powerless. It is in response to that that my life has occurred/is occurring.

...this thread seems to have wound down.

It ain't over till the fat lady sings...

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

When Death Comes (Mary Oliver b: 1935)

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefor I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.