God, Popeye, and the Ground of Being

God: "I am who I am."
Popeye: "I yam what I yam."

One and the same? You be the judge.

***

Today I'm thinking about God. More precisely, I'm thinking about what to do with the idea of God. Jung has demonstrated fairly clearly (in case current events are not proof enough) that religious symbols, and religiosity itself, are integral to the human psyche. It's not as simple as whether or not one "believes." Archetypes don't go away because you don't believe in them.

The way our retarded culture usually presents the issue is "Sunday School vs. Atheism". According to this version, if you have outgrown the childish Sunday School version of God, also known as "supernatural theism," then the only alternative is flat-out atheism.

When Joseph Campbell was asked by a street-corner evangelist whether he believed in God, Campbell answered, "You don't have time for my answer." Indeed, it's not a simple question. It all depends on what one means by "God" and what one means by "believe."

If one means by "God" the transcendent/immanent sacred ground of being, and by "believe" one means "to orient one's mind toward the object in question," then I believe in God. (I try, anyway.)

Though I am a Buddhist (let's say a Reform Buddhist), I am also, technically, Catholic. I am very interested in engaging the symbols of Christianity, though I have no use for obedience to any particular church or authority. I think humans must be religious in order to feel fully alive, and religion must, primarily, connect people to what is sometimes called "the transcendent." It's not enough to worship potatoes or something; true religion has the effect of establishing a sense of connectedness to the sacred ground of being. Because the symbol tradition that most Westerners are comfortable with is that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, those symbols must still be used, somehow.

So, that's yet another of my little sub-projects within the larger project of "poetry." How (and why) to figure God. Therefore, don't be surprised if little bits of myth stuff from the Bible and other, more apocryphal sources appear more frequently. The trick is to do it in such a way that I don't alienate all the heathens out there in the literary community. (Ha!) (Though I sense my mystical content may already turn off, or just baffle, a lot of readers.) I feel there is truly some cultural usefulness in working with these symbols. My underlying ontology may be quasi-Buddhist, but (more of) my symbols should be Judeo-Christian.

Besides, I can only talk generally about luminosity and numinosity so many freakin' times.