Tales From My Slumbering Subconscious, part something

Last night I dreamed I was infiltrating a bank building downtown. It was very tall, and I wound up on the top floor in a cramped little room with about ten call center reps. One of them was a friend, so he and I were talking and laughing about whatever.

Suddenly the tower swayed and the part I was in fell off. This was moderately alarming, what with it being hundreds of feet in the air and me being inside it. But apparently it caught a gust of wind and rode it sideways a mile or two. It smashed into a beautiful lawn in front of a church. People came running to see what happened, but all of them except Mneme were far more interested in the building fragment than me.

I was fine. Mneme and I went to a movie, where the lady sitting on the other side of me was talking to us and eating our nachos. It turned out that the movie was actually some kind of training class for future Mission: Impossible team members. (Because you have to have nachos for that, obviously.) They picked teams to go on the assignment, and I got picked last – sitting there by myself in a big empty auditorium.

There are a few things interesting to me about this dream.

Thinking of the Gom Jabbar

I like my life to be simple. A lot of people would call it boring, and I wouldn’t really disagree with them: I like quiet nights at home more than wild nights on the town. Always have. I don’t want to lose myself or let myself go. I want to hear myself think.

Probably I like the sound of my own brain too much. I used to think that made me deeper and my life more meaningful than others’. Where they wasted time on silly things like bonding with others over shared experiences and growing pains, I was alone in my room thinking deep thoughts like “It’s weird that I still don’t have a girlfriend” and “I bet I’m going to be really awesome some day”.

Not Angry Anymore

Mneme has asked some tough questions about how I got to where I am. In order to answer that, I need to talk a little about where I was. 

One God Less

(Thanks to my friend Marty for the title.)

As a Christian, I never had to explain myself.

I never had to tell anyone that no, I didn’t worship a two-thousand-year-old zombie. I never had to explain that I didn’t want to make every child pray in school. I never had to justify my views, never got the “really? you believe that?” look from people I met, never had to explain why I celebrated the holidays.

I certainly never had to explain that while I’ve never been in a foxhole under fire, I’m still very confident of my commitment to my ideals. It was assumed that my faith was central to me, and that it deserved respect accordingly.

But somehow belief in one god less than most makes me strange and threatening. It’s assumed that I mock the faith that brings meaning to millions. It’s taken for granted that I want to ban wonder, beauty, and all that’s noble save cold material reason. I  think I’m smarter than everyone and I want to take away the very things they cherish most.

Just Don’t

I don’t snicker behind my hand at theists. I don’t question the sincerity of their beliefs or the depth of their commitment. I don’t make cracks about their behavior in hypothetical foxholes. And I don’t try to play absurd childish word games to “prove” they’re hypocrites.

Is it really so much to ask for others to do likewise? To just accept that I believe in a world without gods or angels or demons or any other manifestations of the supernatural? To accept that it is just possible for others to live in a way that is foreign to you, and that there’s nothing wrong with that?