So, friends,
I have not yet made the official statement, and since no one reads this, beginning here is a far cry from making it, but I think after a year and change of calling myself an Atheist, I am giving it up and returning to Christianity.
A Jewish friend whose pragmatic approach to God-talk in defense of justice I find moving, both emotionally and socially, asked me this morning what that means. Had I spent the last year consciously batting down thoughts about Jesus. I told him that amateur meditators like me can only make a little headway against thoughts by allowing them to pass by, not by resisting them. We have to work to see them as bubbles that float up, and smile gently at them as they pass, thinking (if one must think) "Oh, a thought" and allow them to go with bitterness neither for the thought nor the thinker. In this way, I told him, for a year, when I heard ideas like "This resembles the complaints of Job's friends," or "Perhaps this is what is meant by sin, actually" I would just glance at the thought and let it drift to wherever it was going. After a year of practice, they quite nearly stopped.
And now, I am seriously considering designing a slight modification into my pneumatic fishbowl, so that when, like bubbles, typological or otherwise Christian notions pass through, a net will catch them, holding the bubbles together so they can cluster and merge for a while.
His totally reasonable question: Why bother?
There are not enough hours in the day, especially during holy week. I will answer that later.
-V.
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