[Redacted] – the word religion, means “to re-read”, and when you wrote this, I’m sure, in some small way, or larger one, in searching for expression, for words, for experience, for life, for living, for something, there was something akin to reading braille, seeking out, sensing, a back and forth, a feeling out, and then… realization. That’s religion, the function, rather than the names arising from the function of religion. Re-read, re-peat, re-member, re… that wonderful ability to re-plant, re-sow, re-frame… for far too long have names plundered functions, and now names plunder names, and… if the eyes are opened, and the heart remembers, then perhaps so too will the mind, that gentle guide, remember too. That religion was just the peace of re-reading, not for the words, but for finding meaning, and relating, something that greed for more and more, left time for less and less.
So no, I will not give up religion, because I read for meaning, and meaning is never received in one go, as this is a neural network, it learns by training, and I know that others have not given it up yet, because even if it’s finance, war machines, business books, or recipes, I see them re-read and consider, and in that case, it is realized… that these have altars too, whether it is a computer, a machine, a desk, or a counter. And they have tools, and they have worship. So when it comes down to the functions of these words, and their clear and present meaning discovered in re-reading, and realizing what countless humans realized over thousands of years…
You are what you eat, you are what you read, you are what you do, and then realizing through this re-reading… no I’m not even that. And how can this be, because re-reading was a training for re-view, re-smell, re-taste, re-touch, re-hear, re-member, and that? This is what it means to be mindful. And yes, all this was read too, and now more frequently than the rest. So there is Religion TM, Religion (C), Religion (R), and religion. So please remember there are those distant, and those near, who still practice, the old ways, and these ways are here-and-now ways. And if mankind wants to slaughter, like many times before, again, the religious because its offspring, the Religious TM… then re-peating history, and ignorance, again, and again, will, is, and would occur.
And this is now where wisdom and compassion stands with joy and love, because this is the line, drawn, please do not cross it. No more attacks on religion by enemies foreign or domestic, no more attacks on this act of re-reading for meaning. Yes it’s like the self-help book section where one can make a quick buck on a new and novel therapy or process to alleviate pain and suffering either mentally or physically. And then this sullies the therapy, which most likely was radically different in the origination, yet the inventors or the people who started it are sullied, removed, and excised due to an attribution, a simple affiliation, a Red Scare tactic, to keep the altar of economy empowered with the world filling its cathedrals and pews.
So here is the stand, the final breath, that says… what are you re-reading?