My parents grew up with different Christian denominations (both Catholic), but when I was a kid we only went to church for weddings and funerals. Instead of going to church on Sunday, we went to the great outdoors. Picnics, hiking, camping. Forests, swamps, mountains, beaches. Somewhere without other people. This wasn't a replacement for church, Sunday was just Saturday #2. They didn't push hippy shit on me. I didn't have a religious experience at a backwoods altar in the wilderness. Being alone out there in the wild just felt
special. There are places where the term "breathtaking view" isn't a metaphor. Your heart skips a beat. The chorus of birds, frogs, and insects. Flower blooms for which no painter could do justice. The faint scent of things on the wind...
Everything is alive.
As a teen I stumbled across the term
Pantheism and was like "yo that's it that's what i feel." After reading into it, I realized it wasn't quite the right thing. The awe of nature's beauty is there, but that's it. There is too much thought and deliberation. Nature has no need to be explained. There is no reason it exists. It should be experienced at all costs. No book, no film, no game, can match it. No mere moneyed art. I can't put it in words, all I can tell you is to get out there and see.
I'm also totally into mythology and anthropology, and over the years that has given me an intense craving to "practice" some form of worship. Ritual veneration of nature. The problem is, I have no proper way to express this need. Compare the ideas of "emic" and "etic" research in anthropology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_eticI will never be able to express my convictions emically; the society I am a subset of does not have any outlets for it. If I could ever find a way to participate in a different society's nature worship that fits my beliefs, I would not be truly integrated. My experience would be partially if not totally etic. The pale observer, always left outside the innermost circle of participation.
So I just go out in the woods and have quiet time alone. I drag boulders into a stone circle. Make music that nobody else will ever hear. No matter what, there is always the awful truth clawing in the back of my mind. I am alone in my beliefs, they are intensely personal and nobody else will ever understand exactly what I feel. Nobody will ever join me to dance this dance.
Am I a special snowflake or what, eh? What a loser. Also there is some drug use in there. I felt these things before adding
bad medicine to the mix, but those experiences have only cemented my beliefs.
Poll