Aiden Deis: My Subset of Reality

Tuesday, June 25th - 2013

  6:30 From out of his bed I hear Dan "okay everybody, it's six thirty, everybody hit the showers, we're leaving in a few minutes". Not a single soul stirs. I'm tempted to be the first to get up, but I'm just too exhausted.
12:15 We have "freetime" from twelve until twelve thirty, but we finished our "game" early so we got off at 11:30. We played a game called "crate ball" while the rules of the game aren't well enough developed for me to bother explaining them, the game equates to an improvised version of a testosterone injected netball game. So far the food at this camp has been really good, and that led me to have to make a conscious effort to eat less, so that I won't have to deficate as often as I would at home.
1:19 Right now until 2:30 is FOG time (feet off the ground). So I'm going to nap now.
4:13 There are two groups at this camp, orange and green. The green group has 4 campers and the Orange group 6. I'm in the orange group and tonight we are going to be dancing right after the "nightly news" which is a video that is being prepared by the green group. Right now we are on "freetime" and so most of the campers are off swimming somewhere. It turns out that in my haste to pack, I've forgotten both my swimming trunks and towel. The guy who sleeps across from me (Chase) brought two pairs of trunks and lent me one, but I'm afraid that we don't share the same body type and the trunks may just slip off in the pool. Of course I could come up with more and better excuses then that, but the truth is that we have discussed some reasonably deep stuff on the first, and this, the second day of camp and I really need some time to digest and gurgle the new opinions that I've heard and how my convictions are changing, because they are.
This morning after the 'keynote' when we broke off into 'Investigation teams" the question was posed by our leader Dan "What is your definition of faith?"
The prevailing answer was something along the lines off "believing in something you can't see". There was another answer that seemed a little less "copy-paste", but it didn't stick so I'm assuming its insignificance. I didn't answer this question, because I think that if I introduce too many contradictory ideas, people may start thinking I'm just trying to sound 'profound' and don't really grasp the meaning behind my own words. Yes, my ideas are contradictory, because my ideas are my thoughts and on the subject of religion I'm still developing my thoughts and so as a whole, my view of religion is like a math problem that looks impossible to solve until you start combining like terms, canceling and simplifying fractions. That is what I hope to do with my view on religion, I want to take it and parse through it piece by piece until I can look at all the aspects of my convictions and they form a coherent belief.
The answer that I didn't give at the Investigation team, is. (and in reading the answer, understand that I put sprinkles on it so that it would fit the context of a church camp)
I like doubting religion. Now I realize that is not what the Bible call us to do, but I really do like it... I would call it my addiction. Think of it like this, if you fall and scrape your knee, well it hurts- the skin is scraped away and if yours is a hairy leg, the chances of It getting infected are all the greater. The underapreciated part of the healing process though is that the more you scrape your knee, the tougher the skin grows back. Sure, it's not as pretty anymore but it grows always less susceptible to injury, the hairs stop growing back after a whole and it becomes less prone to infection. That is why I like scraping away at my religion, so that all the nice visuals are taken away, and the imperfect remainder grows stronger and less likely to be damaged by infection from destructive ideas. I don't mean to say that questioning religion is a 'destructive idea', Most of the people I consider authorities on science, the people whose objectiveness I admire and opinions I subscribe to (Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, etc.) are atheist and they provide me with the best tasting food for thought if ever gorged on. What I then view as being faith, is that science is absolutely brilliant and can account for and explain everything(not everything literally, but science resonates with the universe), science explains atoms and solar systems and all their intricacies and it is absolutely beautiful how objects on such different scales interact with each other. Faith to me is a feeling, it's the feeling I get when I so desperately struggle to understand part of the universe and then the thought crosses my mind that this little thing that I am struggling to understand is only a part of the expansive collection off perfectly intertwined inventions, that are the product one beings' creation.
After the Investigation teams, I was contempt with that answer for my definition of faith, until we settled in for FOG a while ago. I started thinking about what my views would be like if I removed a deity from the equation, and I found the scenario to be very easy to run with- it removes all the gaping holes from religion and what you are left with is pretty simple. It felt right.
I have lived in hell before, it wasn't that bad until I saw heaven. I used to live in a place where I was riddled with guilt over things that should not have born the significance on my life that they did, where I was constantly told that I didn't have enough, I was told that I'm not safe, and that I had no future there, the place was going to sink and I'd better jump ship, even if I had no life jacket. Eventually I listened, I jumped ship. You know, the worst part about jumping ship is that if you don't find yourself drowning, you get to see the ship go down, you get to hear the screams. You realize that you where always safe, the people who told you that you where in danger would have gladly protected you. You always had a future, even if it wasn't embroidered with gemstones, if it was only dragging the drowning back above water. But once you've jumped, you don't swim back. You don't want to look into their eyes, hear their screaming. You don't want them to be happy for you, happy that you at least found a life boat, no. You climb on the life boat and you row and you don't stop rowing until you no longer hear the screams. For years afterwards you don't watch the news, just in case it mentions the sinking. But you do see their eyes, and you do hear their screams. And then you tell yourself they could have jumped too... Why didn't they jump. They can still jump.
5:49 I'm going to dinner now, I'll make some light talk to lift me out of this mood.
11:48 Look, a man needs his sleep. But just know that I intended to write about moments of experiencing heaven. I will leave you now with the completely irrelevant knowledge that when I get up from writing this, I will go brush my teeth.