I'm still attending a consumer law conference in Portland Oregon. After today's sessions, I took a walk in the dark. As I often do, I brought my small consumer grade camera with me(SD1100IS). Here are some of the things I noticed while walking through downtown Portland tonight. Who would have…
I’m traveling back home after spending an incredibly quiet and stress-free five days on Nantucket. For those of you who are not familiar, Nantucket, part of Massachusetts, is an island in the Atlantic Ocean. October is the off-peak season on Nantucket, meaning that the Island is much quieter than it is during the summer. This week, I was able to experience the perfect storm of quietude. While the entire island was relatively devoid of people because of the season, I was utterly, almost sinfully, able to spend my five days in an especially quiet corner of Nantucket, in a beach house owned by my wife’s family. I was the only person occupying the house. My wife urged me to go, to get away from “everything.” My co-workers at work were equally generous with their encouragement and support.
I truly did “get away from it all.” The sun and the moon were my only clocks. I spent my time reading, writing, walking on beaches, shooting photos, eating simple fun food (can of chili, anyone), beach-combing, enjoying the 60 degree daytime high, not shaving, playing the guitar, staring at the horizon, staring at the horizon again, listening to the waves, and watching the seagulls sail by. Although I did quite a bit of reading and writing (which I also do at home), I had long uninterrupted stretches of time in which to do this work, rather fighting for an hour or two here and there. I had my own desk where I …
Did you ever notice how evocative moments of silence are? I’m always emotionally moved when the PA announcer asks for a moment. The silence of tens of thousands of people is powerful, indeed. American culture is usually out-of-control cacophonous. If we aren’t yapping with each other, there’s a TV or radio blaring. We are pummeled with noise everywhere we go, including waiting rooms, stores and airports. We even bring our yapping and music to “quiet” places, such as national parks. We just can’t help ourselves. It is getting much too hard to find quiet places anymore. That’s why it’s such a joy to be reminded to shut up, even for a moment, even if once in a while. I also appreciated this simple attempt to remind the crowd to be quiet out of respect for Abraham Lincoln’s accomplishments. Not that this sign worked very well. People still talked, almost as much as ever. Children ran around unrestrained by their parents. People shouted things like, “Hey Bill! Isn’t it about time to go get some hot dogs?”
The Bible version of God doesn’t ring true to me. I don’t believe in any traditional sort of God. I am not that sort of person who finds any purpose in worshipping or asking favors from invisible Beings. I don’t ascribe any emotions or sentience (certainly, no vindictiveness) to any Person or Thing that might have created our universe. How the universe came into being is beyond what I can know.
I do cherish my universe, though, and I realize that I am an incredibly tiny and incredibly ignorant part of it. Many fervent believers (though not all) would characterize my beliefs as “atheism” although that word, as commonly construed, would characterize me in a misleadingly cartoonish way.
Given my beliefs, most people would be surprised to hear that I sometimes go to church to be inspired and energized. What’s my secret? I go to church when no one else is there—I like to go to empty churches. When nothing else is going on other than one’s own breathing, meditating, thinking and writing, going to church can even be exhilarating.
With a pad of paper and a pen in my hands, in search of solitude, I walked to church twice this week. I had previously noticed a huge church a few blocks from a courthouse where I sometimes work. Only after walking to this church on Monday did I learn that it was called “Saint Peter’s Roman Catholic Cathedral” in Belleville, Illinois. Here’s a photo I took on Wednesday …