acts of over-active imagination

4 Commentsblog, writing

I have a lot of sympathy for atheists – even the new atheists – but there are so many times they make it hard to be on their side. I get that they think many christian beliefs are deluded. i’m right there with them. but to think that those beliefs are where faith begins and ends is just silly, disingenuous and, quite frankly, boring.

Oddly, I think that the faith column in the paper should be stopped too [even though it keeps me in books, cd’s and Campers], but this article just makes me want to fight for it [you don’t need to read it, you can probably predict what it says]… Anyway, in my resolution to not have an opinion about anything during May [it’s very good for the stress levels to decide that you don’t have anything to say that the world badly needs to hear! and the sure sign that one needs to detox from that belief is having it in the first place…], i’m not writing articles in my head to respond. Instead it’s coming out in other ways… this is the beginning of an idea for worship i’m curating in a few weeks with the directors and boards of UnitingCare welfare agencies…

they are right,
those who mock faith:
it belongs only to those with over-active imaginations.

who but the foolish would look at barren ground and imagine food for all
who would see past desolation and believe it holds the promise of life
who would not be stopped by war, but live for the day there will be peace
who would reach deep into the world’s fear, in the prayer it would bring love…

so if faith is the terrain of the deluded,
then may you have the faith of the fools
who have loved the world since it’s beginning
and will live for its redemption until its end.

4 Comments

  1. Michelle

    Thanks for posting that Cheryl, I’m with you on the whole ‘please don’t define me by what I believe (or don’t believe)’ thing, and while I dwell on ‘the terrain of the deluded…’ I like to think it is an ok place to dwell 🙂

  2. mark

    Thanks Cheryl, some people not ‘getting’ where a chaplaincy project I am involved with is coming from. They think it foolish….
    peace,

  3. Cheryl

    michelle – i’ve taken a lot of care in choosing my delusions…

    mark – yeah, it’s hard work convincing others that you haven’t lost your mind… i’ve been thinking a lot recently about what helped this project to get off the ground and become part of the furniture – i’m putting some of it on paper at the moment, and when it’s done i’ll put it up here… peace to you

  4. John

    What I find really annoying is the cursory way the “moderates” are dealt with and dismissed so often by this article and “the new atheists”. It would seem that the moderates what ever is mean’t by that, indicates an alternative view of faith and of religion. Yet the moderates seem to fail to provide an adequate opposition and are quickly assumed back into the “religious” generalisations based on the fundamentalist assumptions. And whilst I agree that religion has a lot of dark history (past and present) and keeps harming itself by its fundamentalist components, When I look around where I live, about 70% of services to and for the poor, the weak, the lonely, the sick, the marginalised, outcast, etc are the work of religious organisations. How does this relate to his statement about religions rarely matching its beliefs of self and community betterment with its actions? He like many seem to only see what they want to see. Meanwhile, I will go back to sitting with, listening too and caring for people that many in our community the religious and the atheists would rather ignore.

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