Looking At Religion

I looked at religion and I saw God and the devil. I saw saints and sinners. I saw great love and great hatred. I saw all those things, the ferocious to the idiotic.

I saw rituals a thousand years old, and I saw chaotic satyric orgies in ancient forests. I saw statues of chaste virgins and measured my walk by the mileposts of hermes. I heard silence, and I heard chanting and singing. We saw sacrifice chased with blood and bone, and then sacrifice unbloody. We heard intolerance and arrogance, and then reconciliation and hymns of community.

We saw belief, agnosticism, and atheism, all tied together in a viscous web of belief.

Looking at religions we saw all these things.
Religion is all things to man, and man's prayers are imperfect Art, of which he is the untutored artisan, striving to throw a pot, or sketch a hand, or write a poem.

And Religion is our imperfect pot with a drooping handle, our stick-figure hand, our doggerel poem, that we think are pretty good art, and we think they are works like Faith itself - Faith! which is the striving of Life to BE! despite the roadblocks! despite the injunctions against Life! despite the consequences of its lust to Be!

Faith is the One and the Many, the Love and the Hate; it is the Hard Place and it is the Big Easy.