As a child, I took an art class at the Brooklyn Museum of Art
We’d go to different exhibits and the instructor would explain the context of pieces of artwork
Once us kids stood together,
Looking up at a large canvas polluted with ambiguously painted circles
And the art instructor told us that there was some deeper meaning to it,
Though to our uninitiated young minds,
We couldn’t see this
We went to an exhibit one day full of gods made of stone and wood
Idols, the evangelicals would say
There was a god with a protruding belly and a folded face like a shar-pei
And the instructor pointed to it and uttered its name
I was floored.
My mind raced—
Surely, there couldn’t be other gods besides the one I grew up with,
And yet here I was, surrounded by hundreds of them with names and identifying traits and even faces
When I arrived home I demanded an explanation from my mother,
Who being only a nominal Christian at the time
And not well versed in scripture
Couldn’t give me a satisfactory explanation for what I had seen that day,
She couldn’t provide an explanation that could seal the crack in my perception of reality that had been made
When I badgered her demanding to know God’s name,
Since now I knew God isn’t a name but a title,
And that there were at least hundreds of gods throughout history with names
The only answer she could muster was “lord”
So I continued on in my perplexed state,
Though I stopped inquiring about it
Until my mother became involved with a cult,
Who spoon fed us answers that insure certainty and seal up all the cracks in our perception of reality
With a glue that we aren’t allowed to question
But had to apply liberally to our minds everyday
They provided me a name for this God I thought I had known all my life: Jehovah, they called him
And with God’s new name they provided a personality too:
Jehovah is a god who’s sick of everyone’s **** and is going to destroy everyone in a horrific fashion in Armageddon,
except the true Jehovah’s witnesses plus a few good hearted unbelievers who never had the chance to join the “one true religion”
Nice.
So all my questions were answered...
Until they weren’t
Certainty is a drug like any drug,
It only gives temporary relief
And it wears off and you run out of your supply,
Your body convulses violently
And you can’t stop the screaming in your mind
This certainty was a antidote that could control all of your existential anxieties
But in being exposed to reality,
My false beliefs founded in superstition
Withered in reality’s limelight
Reality bites
Because with reality comes an undeniable truth
A truth that doesn’t have to be rationalized
But is inherent and honest
In an unforgiving way
But honest nonetheless,
And I think I want honesty in my life now,
Yeah
But not the “truth” that religion purports to own,
Giving me the “truth” as long as I adopt its rituals, rules and customs
But the truth that belongs to both ugly and beautiful things,
And how in life there are endless, painful contradictions
And how it can be over anytime for any of us
And how no one really knows for certain when we leave our bodies of flesh if there is a continuation of our consciousness
But I want it anyway,
I want the painful, ****** truth,
And not the lies of certainty.