Have You Guys...

[Silver]

I was raised Catholic and I jumped from schism to schism until I discovered the brilliant works of Robert Green Ingersoll. His agnosticism slowly led me to atheism.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I used to say "I'm not religious enough to call myself an atheist." The matter simply didn't matter.

[emjay]

As a child, I was a nominal Christian, participating in Sunday School and church service along with mother. As a teen I was something of an accidental atheist. I didn't believe, but not for any strong reason. At seventeen I converted to Taoism, and remained more or less involved with Taoism until perhaps the last decade. In my twenties, I went through 6-7 years in which I was apostatic, contemplating what I felt was a difficulty in Taoism. Starting in college, I became interested in the Hindu worship of the Goddess Kali. The more I reflected on it, the more I came to believe that Kali was a vital, living force in my life, and in my forties took to describing myself as Hindu, as well as Taoist. In the last couple of years, I came to the realization that if I wanted to take my Hindu beliefs seriously, I needed to learn more than I then knew about it. So I was faced with the task of examining the literature, but without any guide as to how to go about that. Some reflection led me to the conclusion that reason was the only logical choice for a guide. Given that, I didn't see any need to retain my Hindu belief and it's basis on intuition, and so self-consciously embraced atheism.

Just out of interest... since I've never heard anyone single Kali out before... what did you find appealing/inspirational about her? All I know about Kali was that she was worshipped, with human sacrifices, by the 'Thuggee', who were highwaymen who went around strangling their victims with handkerchiefs so as not to (for some ritual reason) spill blood. Then the idea of the Thuggee was exaggerated/sensationalised in the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom... replacing stranglings with lowering into lava. Anyway, I'm just wondering then, what positive way there is/was of looking at Kali?

[Anomalocaris]

I never had any cause to believe. From my earliest clear memory of these things explanation of anything by religion have seemed to me like the ridiculous and condescending explanations by those who are both ignorant and too stupid to appreciate how ignorant they are, but placed in positions of unearned authority and trying to exploit those positions to prevent the curious and inquisitive from penetrating their ignorance and stupidity for the fear that their unearned authority would be thus undermined.

[Whateverist]

Nope. In early elementary school I believed in a wise old, Christian god who'd spent some time in human form and was waiting to meet me after death to reflect on all the choices I'd made in life and to answer any questions I might have. I was raised with only a few hints of what God was and what Christians believed so I elaborated quite a bit. I decided that to be fit company for the god that was waiting to chat with me after death I would need to be thoroughly independent in my thinking and my choices; I wouldn't have known the word then but I was certain God would be disappointed/bored by sycophants. I don't think I thought much about a god's role in putting the world together. I wouldn't have given that any thought. My family stopped attending church before I started kindergarten and I never looked in a bible, so I had it pretty easy.

But by later elementary school the independence of mind I was cultivating to please God led me to doubt him instead. It was a little disappointing to lose the expectation of a post-life debriefing and opportunity to ask clarifying questions, but I got over it pretty easily. It was just one more thing one puts away when moving on from being a child.

[Angrboda]

As a child, I was a nominal Christian, participating in Sunday School and church service along with mother.  As a teen I was something of an accidental atheist.  I didn't believe, but not for any strong reason.  At seventeen I converted to Taoism, and remained more or less involved with Taoism until perhaps the last decade.  In my twenties, I went through 6-7 years in which I was apostatic, contemplating what I felt was a difficulty in Taoism.  Starting in college, I became interested in the Hindu worship of the Goddess Kali.  The more I reflected on it, the more I came to believe that Kali was a vital, living force in my life, and in my forties took to describing myself as Hindu, as well as Taoist.  In the last couple of years, I came to the realization that if I wanted to take my Hindu beliefs seriously, I needed to learn more than I then knew about it.  So I was faced with the task of examining the literature, but without any guide as to how to go about that.  Some reflection led me to the conclusion that reason was the only logical choice for a guide.  Given that, I didn't see any need to retain my Hindu belief and it's basis on intuition, and so self-consciously embraced atheism.

Just out of interest... since I've never heard anyone single Kali out before... what did you find appealing/inspirational about her? All I know about Kali was that she was worshipped, with human sacrifices, by the 'Thuggee', who were highwaymen who went around strangling their victims with handkerchiefs so as not to (for some ritual reason) spill blood. Then the idea of the Thuggee was exaggerated/sensationalised in the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom... replacing stranglings with lowering into lava. Anyway, I'm just wondering then, what positive way there is/was of looking at Kali?

Among other attributes (she's known as a protector goddess), the duality of her nature as both fierce and feminine appealed to me, and reflected something original in my own nature.  My first encounter with her was through the following poem:

The Invocation to Kali

    1

There are times when
I think only of killing
The voracious animal
Who is my perpetual shame,

The violent one
Whose raging demands
Break down peace and shelter
Like a peacock’s scream.

There are times when
I think only of how to do away
With this brute power
That cannot be tamed.

I am the cage where poetry
Paces and roars.  The beast
Is the god.  How murder the god?
How live with the terrible god?

                   2

The Kingdom of Kali

Anguish is always there, lurking at night,
Wakes us like a scourge, the creeping sweat
As rage is remembered, self-inflicted blight.
What is it in us we have not mastered yet?

What Hell have we made of the subtle weaving
Of nerve with brain, that all centers tear?
We live in a dark complex of rage and grieving.
The machine grates, grates, whatever we are.

The kingdom of Kali is within us deep.
The built-in destroyer, the savage goddess,
Wakes in the dark and takes away our sleep.
She moves through the blood to poison gentleness.

She keeps us from being what we long to be;
Tenderness withers under her iron laws.
We may hold her like a lunatic, but it is she
Held down, who bloodies with her claws.

How then to set her free or come to terms
With the volcano itself, the fierce power
Erupting injuries, shrieking alarms?
Kali among her skulls must have her hour.

It is time for the invocation, to atone
For what we fear most and have not dared to face:
Kali, the destroyer, cannot be overthrown;
We must stay, open-eyed, in the terrible place.

Every creation is born out of the dark.
Every birth is bloody.  Something gets torn.
Kali is there to do her sovereign work
Or else the living child will be stillborn.

She cannot be cast out (she is here for good)
Nor battled to the end.  Who wins the war?
She cannot be forgotten, jailed, or killed.
Heaven must still be balanced against her.

Out of destruction she comes to wrest
The juice from the cactus, its harsh spine,
And until she, the destroyer, has been blest,
There will be no child, no flower, and no wine.

          3.
 
The Concentration Camps

Have we managed to fade them out like God?
Simply eclipse the unpurged images?
Eclipse the children with a mountain of shoes?
Let the bones fester like animal bones,
False teeth, bits of hair, spilled liquid eyes,
Disgusting, not to be looked at, like a blight?

Ages ago we closed our hearts to blight.
Who believes now ?  Who cries, “merciful God”?
We gassed God in the ovens, great piteous eyes,
Burned God in a trash heap of images,
Refused to make a compact with dead bones,
And threw away the children with their shoes—  

Millions of sandals, sneakers, small worn shoes—  
Thrust them aside as a disgusting blight.
Not ours, this death, to take into our bones,
Not ours a dying mutilated God.
We freed our minds from gruesome images,
Pretended we had closed their open eyes

That never could be closed, dark puzzled eyes,
The ghosts of children who went without shoes
Naked toward the ovens’ bestial images,
Strangling for breath, clawing the blight,
Piled up like pigs beyond the help of God…  
With food in our stomach, flesh on our bones,

We turned away from the stench of bones,
Slept with the living, drank in sexy eyes,
Hurried for shelter from a murdered God.
New factories turned out millions of shoes.
We hardly noticed the faint smell of blight,
Stuffed with new cars, ice cream, rich images.

But no grass grew on the raw images.
Corruption mushroomed from decaying bones.
Joy disappeared.  The creature of the blight
Rose in the cities, dark smothered eyes.
Our children danced with rage in their shoes,
Grew up to question who had murdered God,

While we evaded their too attentive eyes,
Walked the pavane of death in our new shoes,
Sweated with anguish and remembered God.

          4.  
     
The Time of Burning

For a long time, we shall have only to listen,
Not argue or defend, but listen to each other.
Let curses fall without intercession.
Let those fires burn we have tried to smother.

What we have pushed aside and tried to bury
Lives with a staggering thrust we cannot parry.

We have to reckon with Kali for better or worse,
The angry tongue that lashes us with flame
As long-held hope turns bitter and men curse,
“Burn, baby, burn” in the goddess’ name.

We are asked to bear it, to take in the whole,
The long indifferent beating down of soul.

It is the time of burning, hate exposed.
We shall have to live with only Kali near.
She comes in her fury, early or late, disposed
To tantrums we have earned and must endure.

We have to listen to the harsh undertow
To reach the place where Kali can bestow.

But she must have her dreadful empire first.
Until the prisons of the mind are broken free
And every suffering center at its worst
Can be appealed to her dark mystery.

She comes to purge the altars in her way,
And at her altar we shall have to pray.

It is a place of skulls, a deathly place
Where we confront our violence and feel,
Before that broken and self-ravaged face,
The murderers we are, brought here to kneel.

           5.

It is time for the invocation:

Kali, be with us.
Violence, destruction, receive our homage.
Help us to bring darkness into the light,
To lift out the pain, the anger,
Where it can be seen for what it is—  
The balance-wheel for our vulnerable, aching love.
Put the wild hunger where it belongs,
Within the act of creation,
Crude power that forges a balance
Between hate and love.

Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who knows that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.

Bear the roots in mind,
You, the dark one, Kali
Awesome power.


— May Sarton
 

[The Industrial Atheist]

My mom encouraged me to participate in religion at a young age, but for the most part I wasn't forced. I went to a Catholic school from grades 4-8. The other boys were some cruel, nasty, little bastards. I pretty much was a Catholic back then, even though I had limited knowledge of Catholic doctrine. Eventually my mom married stepdad number 2, who was Pentecostal. I went to a Pentecostal church for about 20 years.

I had friends there from time to time, but most others my age there never really accepted me or wanted to be around me outside of Church. I think it was because they knew I had to be getting government help and/or that I didn't work. Evangelicals have the rep for being right wing, but Pentecostals are probably worse.

Probably about 3-4 years ago I started to question. It was mainly things like, God gave us these rules. we can't follow some of them, none of us do, we say we do. It's immoral to inflict guilt on us this way. God can't be moral. 2 years ago I gave that crap up. Maybe some day I'll find a (RL)place I'm accepted. It sure as hell wasn't there, as much as I wanted it to be.

[Shell B]

Always been atheists? I got rid of it more or less when I quit believing in the drunk bastard dressed in red and had a beard.

Yes, but I didn't really know I was an atheist because I didn't have religion in my life as a child other than my mother's strange family very occasionally (like once or twice) having me sit in church, which I really just thought of as "rich people Sunday." My mother would occasionally cross herself and tell some strange story about lightning being god taking your picture, but she was always weird and never told me about religion, so I took that as it was–a funny story from my mom.

[Whateverist]

I didn't have religion in my life as a child other than my mother's strange family very occasionally (like once or twice) having me sit in church, which I really just thought of as "rich people Sunday."

I lol'd out loud.

[emjay]

Just out of interest... since I've never heard anyone single Kali out before... what did you find appealing/inspirational about her? All I know about Kali was that she was worshipped, with human sacrifices, by the 'Thuggee', who were highwaymen who went around strangling their victims with handkerchiefs so as not to (for some ritual reason) spill blood. Then the idea of the Thuggee was exaggerated/sensationalised in the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom... replacing stranglings with lowering into lava. Anyway, I'm just wondering then, what positive way there is/was of looking at Kali?

Among other attributes (she's known as a protector goddess), the duality of her nature as both fierce and feminine appealed to me, and reflected something original in my own nature.  My first encounter with her was through the following poem:

The Invocation to Kali

    1

There are times when
I think only of killing
The voracious animal
Who is my perpetual shame,

The violent one
Whose raging demands
Break down peace and shelter
Like a peacock’s scream.

There are times when
I think only of how to do away
With this brute power
That cannot be tamed.

I am the cage where poetry
Paces and roars.  The beast
Is the god.  How murder the god?
How live with the terrible god?

                   2

The Kingdom of Kali

Anguish is always there, lurking at night,
Wakes us like a scourge, the creeping sweat
As rage is remembered, self-inflicted blight.
What is it in us we have not mastered yet?

What Hell have we made of the subtle weaving
Of nerve with brain, that all centers tear?
We live in a dark complex of rage and grieving.
The machine grates, grates, whatever we are.

The kingdom of Kali is within us deep.
The built-in destroyer, the savage goddess,
Wakes in the dark and takes away our sleep.
She moves through the blood to poison gentleness.

She keeps us from being what we long to be;
Tenderness withers under her iron laws.
We may hold her like a lunatic, but it is she
Held down, who bloodies with her claws.

How then to set her free or come to terms
With the volcano itself, the fierce power
Erupting injuries, shrieking alarms?
Kali among her skulls must have her hour.

It is time for the invocation, to atone
For what we fear most and have not dared to face:
Kali, the destroyer, cannot be overthrown;
We must stay, open-eyed, in the terrible place.

Every creation is born out of the dark.
Every birth is bloody.  Something gets torn.
Kali is there to do her sovereign work
Or else the living child will be stillborn.

She cannot be cast out (she is here for good)
Nor battled to the end.  Who wins the war?
She cannot be forgotten, jailed, or killed.
Heaven must still be balanced against her.

Out of destruction she comes to wrest
The juice from the cactus, its harsh spine,
And until she, the destroyer, has been blest,
There will be no child, no flower, and no wine.

          3.
 
The Concentration Camps

Have we managed to fade them out like God?
Simply eclipse the unpurged images?
Eclipse the children with a mountain of shoes?
Let the bones fester like animal bones,
False teeth, bits of hair, spilled liquid eyes,
Disgusting, not to be looked at, like a blight?

Ages ago we closed our hearts to blight.
Who believes now ?  Who cries, “merciful God”?
We gassed God in the ovens, great piteous eyes,
Burned God in a trash heap of images,
Refused to make a compact with dead bones,
And threw away the children with their shoes—  

Millions of sandals, sneakers, small worn shoes—  
Thrust them aside as a disgusting blight.
Not ours, this death, to take into our bones,
Not ours a dying mutilated God.
We freed our minds from gruesome images,
Pretended we had closed their open eyes

That never could be closed, dark puzzled eyes,
The ghosts of children who went without shoes
Naked toward the ovens’ bestial images,
Strangling for breath, clawing the blight,
Piled up like pigs beyond the help of God…  
With food in our stomach, flesh on our bones,

We turned away from the stench of bones,
Slept with the living, drank in sexy eyes,
Hurried for shelter from a murdered God.
New factories turned out millions of shoes.
We hardly noticed the faint smell of blight,
Stuffed with new cars, ice cream, rich images.

But no grass grew on the raw images.
Corruption mushroomed from decaying bones.
Joy disappeared.  The creature of the blight
Rose in the cities, dark smothered eyes.
Our children danced with rage in their shoes,
Grew up to question who had murdered God,

While we evaded their too attentive eyes,
Walked the pavane of death in our new shoes,
Sweated with anguish and remembered God.

          4.  
     
The Time of Burning

For a long time, we shall have only to listen,
Not argue or defend, but listen to each other.
Let curses fall without intercession.
Let those fires burn we have tried to smother.

What we have pushed aside and tried to bury
Lives with a staggering thrust we cannot parry.

We have to reckon with Kali for better or worse,
The angry tongue that lashes us with flame
As long-held hope turns bitter and men curse,
“Burn, baby, burn” in the goddess’ name.

We are asked to bear it, to take in the whole,
The long indifferent beating down of soul.

It is the time of burning, hate exposed.
We shall have to live with only Kali near.
She comes in her fury, early or late, disposed
To tantrums we have earned and must endure.

We have to listen to the harsh undertow
To reach the place where Kali can bestow.

But she must have her dreadful empire first.
Until the prisons of the mind are broken free
And every suffering center at its worst
Can be appealed to her dark mystery.

She comes to purge the altars in her way,
And at her altar we shall have to pray.

It is a place of skulls, a deathly place
Where we confront our violence and feel,
Before that broken and self-ravaged face,
The murderers we are, brought here to kneel.

           5.

It is time for the invocation:

Kali, be with us.
Violence, destruction, receive our homage.
Help us to bring darkness into the light,
To lift out the pain, the anger,
Where it can be seen for what it is—  
The balance-wheel for our vulnerable, aching love.
Put the wild hunger where it belongs,
Within the act of creation,
Crude power that forges a balance
Between hate and love.

Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who knows that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.

Bear the roots in mind,
You, the dark one, Kali
Awesome power.


— May Sarton
 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Poetry is not my strong suit and never will be, so this will take many rereads to see the meaning in it, so for the moment I'll just put it down to 'women's intuition' But please don't take offence at that... I am interested... but it will take a while to parse, but thanks again for sharing... that's already more than I've ever heard about Kali so it's something new to explore.