IBO and I...
IBO and I finally found a pub with a decent beer on. It was a nice chance to escape from nothing but the questions. There are ways you can tell you are sitting next to someone who understands you well, and vice versa. It is very rare. That is an escape.
From time to time I suddenly become deeply worried and indecisive; most of the time I am more assured. Something touched me about Wimborne Minster today. I felt something profound about the sense of history and inheritance, not only of a fine building, but of an ideology, and and archetype. From time to time I feel so negative about religion, especially Christianity: but I always maintain that it is deeply important, natural, and essential. I cannot claim to have faith in any god, but I see all the good that comes of the church. I see the creativity and utter depth of so many people involved; the intelligence, and humility of them. I can only say them, because I am not one of them. I feel spirituality, I feel, I think, the sense of reverence and respect that these places, these images demand. And it is not because I believe it, or to escape from the real world, because that is impossible for me; it is because I see it as a human behaviour essential somewhere in all of us.
But I do not see an actual truth, just as I do not see an actual truth in anything. If I can only seriously maintain that the reasons for faith are so utilitarian, and serve only a psychological and socio-psychic function, then where am I left, as an individual? I feel like an outsider because of my unbelief, yet an insider through years of contemplation, experience and discussion. I believe that my feelings are the same, but how can I make sense of them with no faith? How can they signify anything but weakness? And if ever I become religious, how will I know that it is not just a lie I tell myself, and if I have gone so far as not to be able to handle that question, what person will I be?
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