agnostic front.

in the past week i've been asked twice by people at work if i'm an atheist. religion is not really an appropriate subject in the office. people, obviously, are really passionate about their religion. having any kind of "debate" is pretty taboo, unless it's a coworker you have a rapport with outside of these 4 beige walls. 

thought about how i used to be scared to speak my mind about religion. to go against my family. they know i don't go to church. don't follow the church's doctrines. that many of my friends are gay. i don't believe they are going to hell. two of my cousins have no "dad" in their lives. i don't think they are going to purgatory. and on and on...

a story from the last time i was in ireland. my cousin liam, who is in his late 40's/early 50's was talking about how my great aunt tess' memorial service should be conducted. aunt tess died in syracuse, unmarried, no kids. was never a citizen of the states. wanted to be buried in clare, in the family plot. liam held a strong preference for a priest who knew her saying the service. makes sense. 

my cousin olive, divorced and remarried, lived 20 years in nyc, goes to mass at 6 am every day, states that the priest who is assigned to the parish where she will be buried will be presiding. 

liam says, "well it doesn't really matter to me. i'm an atheist." 

i distinctly remember sucking in a breath and holding it, waiting for olive's reaction. you don't just toss around that term in my family. at all. olive calmly didn't react. i was impressed how ballsy liam really is. 

can't figure it all out today, but my view is that there has to be something. i think. i hope. 

my view is: ordo ab chao

and if you google this to find a bunch of masonic mumbo jumbo, that's not what i'm about. just the straight latin to english translation. (ms. valerio, my high school latin teacher, would be so proud.)

years spend studying science, trudging through forests and around streams with my grandpa stanton, spending summers in the country building forts, skipping stones in creeks, losing my shoes in mudsinks. all this has colored my worldview.

there is an order. sometimes out of the most random things, a pattern is revealed. 

everything is connected in a way i think has nothing to do with books written and lost and translated and retranslated and used for profit and power and control and tyranny and monopoly. 

or i could just co-opt nicole's future epitaph: 

THE ONLY PROOF SHE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC. 

-vonnegut