In my mouth on the bottom left, the big molar tooth at the back, that would be #17; mine is gone. It worked for a long time but then it got a crack in one of its roots and my dentist made it go away. The gum healed nicely but there is an irregular recess there. Without permission my tongue goes back to that molar-footprint as if checking to be sure it hasn’t come back. It’s not that different from reaching to my nose. I was trained to keep my fingers away from my nose, must be a boy thing so when my hand goes there spontaneously I notice and redirect my reach to the bridge of my nose and adjust my glasses.
I have another unauthorized behavior if you can call it that. My mind takes me to a familiar place but not one I want to revisit. When I am writing in particular, by association or habit or impulse I default to the religion I grew up with. My parents were devout Christians. My mom had a difficult upbringing where she was befriended my Mormons and would have preferred to follow that tradition. My dad was unchurched but open to the idea except he had a strong bias against the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Their compromise was joining a nondenominational Community Christian Church. That, along with my family’s practice made up my religious experience. It was middle of the road mainstream church but without any evangelical, fall-down-Hoot-and-Holler behavior as my dad wasn’t buying that hyperbole either.
At my ripe age it has been a very long time since I gave up on their mild-mannered religion. Both of my brothers fell away early on but I didn’t. If I had to defend that reluctance it would be for the sake of pleasing my parents. From the get-go my faith was thin with doubt and that only compounded. I didn’t like controversy or disapproval so going through the motions was an easy adaptation. Later, living far away when my kids were little I didn’t have to pretend and I couldn’t go along with the hocus-pocus stuff they were getting at church. I had no problem with just walking away and not looking back but it’s like any habit. All that redundant behavior for so long has residual effects.
I have neither doubts nor reservations about my system of unbelief. I’ve weighed and measured it from every direction with an open-ended a mind as I am capable. The fact that I keep falling back on that story, I believe, is an expression of disappointment for so many wasted years at that spiritual dead end. My devout friends think that God is still tugging at me but I wouldn’t expect anything less from them. I realize that true believers can benefit from their religious experience but I also realize it is tantamount to a self induced, psychological drug. It satisfied a primitive need to offset anxiety and ignorance in a dangerous, paleolithic world. Likewise, if one still needs that fix in the modern-day then they should have it. If it only functions to facilitate inclusion in a comfortable, social community then they should be able to have that too.
My mindset neither wants nor needs persuasion to believe something that is so clearly unbelievable. When my tongue & tooth reaction defaults to uncomfortable reflection on that long suffering, wasted time in the medieval myth it is like eating peanuts; hard to stop. Hopefully my subconscious itch will go the way of tooth #17. I could spin off into the way human nature runs on outdated software and fills in the gaps with ‘monkey-see monkey-do’. That’s what I have been doing, exactly what I want to cull out of my system.
I have another unauthorized behavior if you can call it that. My mind takes me to a familiar place but not one I want to revisit. When I am writing in particular, by association or habit or impulse I default to the religion I grew up with. My parents were devout Christians. My mom had a difficult upbringing where she was befriended my Mormons and would have preferred to follow that tradition. My dad was unchurched but open to the idea except he had a strong bias against the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Their compromise was joining a nondenominational Community Christian Church. That, along with my family’s practice made up my religious experience. It was middle of the road mainstream church but without any evangelical, fall-down-Hoot-and-Holler behavior as my dad wasn’t buying that hyperbole either.
At my ripe age it has been a very long time since I gave up on their mild-mannered religion. Both of my brothers fell away early on but I didn’t. If I had to defend that reluctance it would be for the sake of pleasing my parents. From the get-go my faith was thin with doubt and that only compounded. I didn’t like controversy or disapproval so going through the motions was an easy adaptation. Later, living far away when my kids were little I didn’t have to pretend and I couldn’t go along with the hocus-pocus stuff they were getting at church. I had no problem with just walking away and not looking back but it’s like any habit. All that redundant behavior for so long has residual effects.
I have neither doubts nor reservations about my system of unbelief. I’ve weighed and measured it from every direction with an open-ended a mind as I am capable. The fact that I keep falling back on that story, I believe, is an expression of disappointment for so many wasted years at that spiritual dead end. My devout friends think that God is still tugging at me but I wouldn’t expect anything less from them. I realize that true believers can benefit from their religious experience but I also realize it is tantamount to a self induced, psychological drug. It satisfied a primitive need to offset anxiety and ignorance in a dangerous, paleolithic world. Likewise, if one still needs that fix in the modern-day then they should have it. If it only functions to facilitate inclusion in a comfortable, social community then they should be able to have that too.
My mindset neither wants nor needs persuasion to believe something that is so clearly unbelievable. When my tongue & tooth reaction defaults to uncomfortable reflection on that long suffering, wasted time in the medieval myth it is like eating peanuts; hard to stop. Hopefully my subconscious itch will go the way of tooth #17. I could spin off into the way human nature runs on outdated software and fills in the gaps with ‘monkey-see monkey-do’. That’s what I have been doing, exactly what I want to cull out of my system.
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