I called a friend who is a believer...

[drfuzzy]

LOL, yeah, my daughter MoMo's name is Morrigan.  I'm kind of hoping mine -does- set the world on fire, literally, lol.  I wouldn't mind being pater f to a warlord, and it would fit her like a glove......  

Your inability to believe in a diety made you fall away from druidism, though?  Strictly speaking, you don't have to believe in any gods to be a druid, do you?  That was never my understanding of the overall movement.  Was it the pomp, then, that made it seem silly, or?

Yes, without belief that there was SOMETHING invisible and powerful out there that would answer prayers (some of them were spells, but those are really just prayers in a different form - trying to force a deity to do something for you) then the pomp, the ritual, the prayers just feel silly. Why set up an altar and pray - in any form, to any god - if you don't believe anyone is listening?  

Morgan is about to turn 9 - she has already skipped a grade at school and might get sent to an advanced science academy. We'll get MoMo and Morgan to meet someday . . . (we'll need one more girl, though, the Morrigan is a triune deity!) and then we'll build a bomb shelter . . . 

[The Grand Nudger]

Seems like your group was missing it's ritualists.  Some conceptualize the pomp (and even the gods) as tools for focusing the self or eliminating anxiety.  Not saying you should dust off your athame or anything, just wondering what you thought about it from that POV?  Did you go from there to atheism...or was there another waystation?

(sometimes I feel like MoMos -already- a triune terror)

[MTL]

In general, in a war zone, there are disturbing numbers of displaced or lost children.  Some of those kids decide that it's safer out on the margins - so they never "come home" or come in for help..assuming they still have a home or anyone to help them.  We call the ones that have been out there a long time feral.  You try to round them up and get them to the local authorities or to an aid station....but alot of them don't want to be caught, especially by a foreigner with a gun.

Our standard explanation for phantom noises out in the middle of "nowhere" - nowhere to us, mind you..or for stolen things and rummaged rucks in the middle of the night...was feral children.  The alternative is ghosts or incredible enemy commandos who don't kill ...who just take the candy bars and ham slices out of our MRES....., lol.

Christ.  Where the hell ARE you?

[The Grand Nudger]

Where -was- I, lol.  I hopped back and forth between Kosovo and the middle east, training local forces and our own for urban warfare and peacekeeping duties. "Lock and load your magazines...and watch....your lanes." :thumbs up:

[MTL]

Where -was- I, lol.  I hopped back and forth between Kosovo and the middle east, training local forces and our own for urban warfare and peacekeeping duties.  "Lock and load your magazines...and watch....your lanes." :thumbs up:

Ahhh.  Now I have some context.

Your profile says S.E. USA.

I was scratching my head.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, I moved out into the sticks in Kentucky, it's pretty much required for my peace of mind at this point - all I see in a city is a nest of firing positions filled /w potential enemy combatants.  The paranoia is real, lol.

[Godscreated]

@ Old Baby, i didn't have to I know those questions existed long ago and they have been put away by many Christians, no need in me hashing out things already completed. I also want waste my time on someone who what make an effort to bring things to me one at a time, if he/she was interested some work would have been done to show so.

GC

[MTL]

Yeah, I moved out into the sticks in Kentucky, it's pretty much required for my peace of mind at this point - all I see in a city is a nest of firing positions filled /w potential enemy combatants.  The paranoia is real, lol.

Sorry to hear that.  :/

I can't say that I know what THAT is like, per se;

but I do understand how your brain can get stuck in a pattern like that,
and I understand paranoia.

[robvalue]

Sorry to hear that Rhythm

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, when you think about it, I stuck myself in that pattern.  For years I'd repeat a mantra three or four times a day whenever the range was up about how anybody walking into a hostile city on foot might just as well make their funerary arrangements.  All day long, "you're dead, lay down..you're dead, lay down,.....you're dead, lay down".   Then you go out on a patrol or two and sure, you see the rewards for your work and feel validated in those propositions by your experiences.  

Thing is, I'd effectively convinced myself that all windows hid shooters, that there was a bomb in the canopy liner of every car.  That follows you into a scenario where it isn't remotely true...where it isn't even a good practical assumption.  Nevertheless, it's still there, always in the back of your mind.  So, I have this set of experiences, a reinforcing structure of ritual behavior.....and even the constant inner recitation of what a religious person might call a mantra or statement of faith with regards to those experiences.  Not only did I have a powerful experience..but if that experience had been divine in nature (or, more accurately, had been taken to be divine by myself) everything that arose out of it would be immediately recognizable as components of a religion.

However....nothing can convince the front of my mind that the shit the back of my mind worries about is actually true, that I'm actually in danger.....the position is intellectually indefensible.  OTOH, nothing can convince the front of my mind to ignore those things the back of my mind is whispering.  It's a sort of fugue state where something I act as though I take to be true is not, and is not taken to -be- true by myself......nor am I able to wash away those suspicions.

Long winded, but you'll be glad you stuck with me.  When I hear these stories about born again experiences....which by their very nature must produce some dissonance or inner conflict (or they wouldn't be seen to be miraculous in the first place)........I figure that they must have been even more powerful than my own experience described above...and that's pretty damned impressive.  You don't see a rock roll down a hill..like every other rock you've ever seen...and think "did you see what god just did, man!"  It's when you see the rock rolling up, that's when shit must get real.  So, what is it about those experiences which can overcome the sort of fugue state where you realize that the thing in the back of your mind is just your imagination, but still can't disabuse yourself of it?  I ask that because people with born again stories do not describe a fugue state, but a realization of what they perceive to be true knowledge from that moment forward.  

My own experience, visceral and in-arguably "real" in ways that no brush with the divine can be said to be - no matter how generously you choose to take their narratives...is less effective, less compelling than the experience of a person who sees christ in their toast and so drops to their knees shouting hosanna.  If there was ever a mystery to faith, imo...that's it, right there.  

(It's actually not that bad yall, no need to feel bad for me - I've long ago made my peace with the weird ass shit the back of my mind tries to fob off on the front of my mind, he's a godamned liar and I know better than to listen to him. Besides, it's gorgeous out here and the air doesn't taste like my neighbors toilet. If you want to feel bad for somebody, there are joes I know who are crippled..positively crippled by a much stronger form of the same little ticks I have. I can still function without mediation. Feel bad for those who can't.)