That transcendent moment...

There are times, like last night, when everything that you thought was so important, slips into the background. And thoughts of things you spend your life avoiding, are all that is left to contemplate. Last night RM got some bad news, about a friend from school who had died.

How do you study for finals, write that last paper, when it is so obvious that life was never meant to be about grades, or all the little things we preoccupy our time with?

Last night it occurred to me, that this is what I was missing. A constant reminder of that transcendent moment. A constant reminder of what is important in life.

That is what I miss about religion, at least practicing it (I won't go so far as to say I've lost my religion): the constant re-awakening to the moment that is so much larger than your office, home, school, town, or even country.

The only way to find those moments, are to look for them. And in a world where it's easy to get lost looking for a million other things, it's most helpful I think to find yourself in a culture that is looking for the same things. So when you bump into eachother, you can say, 'hey, what were we looking for again? Ah yes, the transcendent moment!'.

So I've decided I'm on a quest. A journey to find people, like myself, who are offended by much of what passes for 'love' in religion, yet who also know that if God exists in any sense, there must be some people who are going about searching for him in a healthier way.

Will I find those people in 'church'? In 'synogogue'? In a mosque? In Tibet?

I don't know yet. But I sure as hell ain't going to find out unless I get my ass out there and start looking.

And in the meantime, I'll keep trying to remind myself to stop and live in that 'moment'.