Family

Is there a police force more compelling than that of family? Long after we've outgrown our childhood cohort and the authority of our parents, that culture still reigns in our thinking and our choices. The upside (per Christians) to the family culture is "raise a child in the way he should go and he will return to it." Or not stray from it, or whatever version you prefer. I strayed. I tried to return to it and strayed again.

Now I'm trying to burn the bridges to The Way so that I can't go back to it any more. But just yesterday I caught myself in my journal talking in the passive voice. I was talking about difficult times in the past and the relatively gentle stress of my days now, "I always wondered if I wasn’t being stretched to be able to handle less, rather than more." Well, it's an interesting idea: being made a larger vessel so that we can contain more without strain, but let's not miss the real point here. Who is making the vessels?

You see? I have in my mind, still, a Maker. A Stress Coordinator. Thankfully, I seem to have internalized this One as benevolent and intelligent. Ungratefully, I reject the idea of a maker. I can hear the family-police outcries at that statement. No maker? Good God!

In fact, the pressure is so great from my family to lie and say that I believe, whether I do or not, that if it came down to it, I would lie to keep the peace. See what I mean about effective police force?

That leaves me without a maker and without a family, however. The pressure is great to buy into what the family believes. Do Islams go through this? Certainly. (But they're mistaken about their religion, my father would add.) Buddhists don't seem to have this struggle. They seem to say, "Believe or not, whatever, but wash your dishes." I am partial to them just for that practicality. But I'm not an -ist or -ian or -im. I'm just an am.