My Observations of Life, & The Fruition of Things…

So yesterday we decided to go to church… I personally haven’t been to a mass that wasn’t where someones baby was involved or a wedding in… hmmm well, a very long time. I was raised a Catholic, went to catholic schools till highschool. In all that time they had us read the bible and learn about GOD. So far as to send us to a retreat in grade 8. Mount Mary I believe it was called.

Then I went through highschool… and moved on to college. Perhaps it’s having an artists sight. That did it to me… opened my mind to the infinite of possibility. But there was an underlying logic that I have within me that made me think… hey there are a lot of things they’re telling me that just don’t match up. For one a persons soul… perhaps I had it all wrong… but I always thought your soul was your personality… (if in the least, in part) it was the culmination of things that shaped you to who you were… not just some energy source within… I didn’t like the idea that when I died… my “aware” self would be gone. That all these years of memories and learning would be washed away in moments.. Where do all these memories go, how is it I don’t forget? So I always thought… well it’s all part of the magic of my soul. But then you start to see people who suffer from mental disabilities and they change… it’s like where did they’re soul go? and it was following these changes and debilitation in the human creature that lead me to think… all these memories and my personality etc., and so on… is not as all powerful as I thought.. it’s not in my soul – it’s in my brain. That bundle of gray stuff on top of my shoulder inside me head… that was me. The observations I made in life, lead me more and more to draw conclusions that heaven didn’t exist – that GOD wasn’t real and that it was unbelievably terrifying now.

I mean to not believe in GOD… that we’re here, then nothing.. I’ve used the analogy from time to time as going through life is to a degree being part of a movie.. but you don’t get to ever see the end. So now what… It’s no wonder now to many of you – that you see why I get so upset at funerals… It makes me face the terror of my own mortality. I’m still hoping one day that I’ll be able to get put into a robot (wink).

Well this wasn’t good enough for me… perhaps I wasn’t finished looking for my answers. I started to observe again… I looked at all life on this planet. And I noticed a fundamental similarity. All life right down to its simplest form – reproduces. So I started to think outside the box… as an artist can… hmm… reproduction.

what am I… hmmm.. well lets break it down… I am a series of cells that have formed in various ways together, to create larger organs and bone, and material for a common goal. To be alive… well it’s safe to assume that my form.. at it’s edges is where I begin and where I end. But what if it’s not.. what if we zoom out of the human animal singular and look at what I really am. I am a piece of an organism that started many many years ago… and grew.. then like a single cell split into more “heir’s” I then am not the singular organism known as Mark but the greater life we’ll call “Family” I carry within me the gene knowledge for all those that came in my line before me… and I have passed that on to my son. I am my parents, as I am my son… Following this train of thought I started to take some solace in knowing that should I die and things go terrifyingly to nothing. That much like the cells of your body are cast off as they are no longer needed.. the greater organism that is family would continue.

Well there is more than enough logical information to support this line of thinking. I mean look around.. there’s your evidence… So if this is to be true then it changes things up a bit. I mean its the duty of each family member to learn it’s history and keep a sort of ancestral knowledge of itself. Because in it’s individual parts we are self aware but together as family as the creature I’ll called family. We should remember all the parts that have gotten us here so that we may be remembered. This is where keeping a family tree is important, I feel.

So there you go I finally found peace.. for awhile that i had figured things out… this is why we are, and this is how life works. It was this conclusion that helped prepare me for being a Dad. 3 years ago I finally tied all the loose ends together. The bible was such a flawed thing to be taken so literally. If it was so good why are so many dying from it. Thing is, it was written by flawed humans.. many years ago… not originally, no I do believe there were some fundamentally good people that originally wrote it. But then Bill told Mary who told George to interpret it so Fred could hear, who told Sam… and it’s a fact that parts become lost – lines become blurred – things become interpretations. I think at it’s base… it is undeniably a good idea to a have a law and a set of examples for which to model one self after. But these bible belt types who take each word as law frighten me.

Ayden came along and I thought, hey this is awesome… life is doing what it’s supposed to. I have re-invented myself.. here is a merger of the life form Bingham and Wilhelm.. so that it may live further into the future. I’ve done what I was born to do. It felt awesome!… I admire every inch of my son. And can’t help to dream about what he’ll do in his life…

But then… he was born early, he was tiny and fragile… well I told myself… all he is – has one purpose right now – to live… the primary objective of all of his cells is to live. He’s creating thousands and thousands of new cells constantly replacing old ones… developing organs creating the bones and muscles and sensory organs so he can live.. and then reproduce… I told myself this over and over.

He’ll do it.. genetically my family is pretty durable. (knock on wood) still never broken a bone… I must have gotten some upgrade Matt didn’t get (wink)

Ayden however was sick… things needed a lot of help externally and then the news kept getting worse. And like a reflex… I prayed. Despite the fact that I didn’t really agree with a lot that happened in the Bible or the events that transpired there in. I did fundamentally still hold on to the idea that another energy form… was undetectably steering events in the universe. And I tried to talk to him. I was helpless… there was no way that I could fix what was happening. His life was and is in the hands of the people who are caring for him at the hospital. But still I prayed.

It seemed the more I prayed the more I felt better about things. The more it gave me an inner strength to deal with the situations. I like to do things myself, whenever I can… leaving things to others to take care of – especially in such a sensitive area, is horrible. But I don’t have 10 years to become a Dr to help him on my own or I would. lol The more I prayed coincidentally the more often we got good news. Till finally I think I’ve just kept an open mic going 24/7.

This Sunday we went to church… yup. I parked my butt back into a pew and sat there in a room of oddly, generally older people. And I prayed… And a thought popped into my head. That what if 100’s of thousands of people were right, and that possibly there was a little more to this miss-interpreted book of there’s. That although I had stopped believing in God… God still believed in me? It’s kinda low in my opinion to use ones child like that against them… but I see the “why” of it. And can let it slide if my boy gets off Scott free. (wink)

Here’s another life observation… Many things work in cycles… perhaps now I’m coming into the summer of my faith… it’ certainly has been a very long winter.. hmmm I wonder what they’re wearing this year.

-m-