Sound of the Tao

Neither of us were expecting it. There had been no preparation, no planning and no expectations. It was a routine appointment.
And then she said, "Would you like to hear Baby's heart?"

An odd sort of question, really. How likely was it that we would say no? The small, square machine became an auditory portal to a different reality. It was like Vonnegut's Euphio, but without the calamity. She said the heartbeat was strong. Yes, I thought, it has the strength of the cosmos in every iamb. It was the needle in the groove of life itself, the music of holy magic reverberating through the horn.

There are a few moments one experiences in life that make the entire world shift slightly. It's an unnerving thing. Sometimes they are terrifying moments. Sometimes they are fragile moments. Sometimes they are moments of great romance. Sometimes they are moments of immense anger. Sometimes they are moments of extreme pain. But they are always awesome moments. This was one of those moments. I felt the Earth jolt. No-one else would have noticed it, consumed by their day-to-day: work, food, sleep, toilet, television. But in that moment, that small room became Wellsian in its potential to transport us. In that instant, I was everywhere and everywhen. I heard the breathing of God.

Swimming with the Tao - the way of water

I am a lapsed atheist. I used to think that religious people were somehow weak, cowardly or naive. I imagined that I had no need of a religious component in my life; that I was above that and that I was far too modern, far too rational for such childish hogwash.
But even in my darkest, most arrogant years of atheism, there was a doubt in my mind. Why did I ponder God for so much of my time? Clearly, I was agnostic.
I knew that my love of astronomy was more than just a scientific interest. Looking up, looking out, I was aware that I was part of something beyond my comprehension. I love the knowledge that I am made of the same stuff as everything else. I see a kind of romance in the idea that all we are is the product of cosmic explosions: a star whose life came to a violent end, but whose death gave rise to our own sun and everything that spins around it.
So, for a while, I wanted to be pagan. But there are negative connotations with that label, brought about by Wicca - a nonsense religion closer to Catholicism than Wiccans or Catholics would like to admit.
My personal theology is certainly pantheist. Interestingly, in his The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins dismisses pantheism as "sexed-up atheism". This is a rather whimsical argument designed to avoid the fact that Einstein, one of the dead scientists that Dawkins calls as witness, was clearly a pantheist.
And then I found Unitarianism. And I still consider myself a non-paying member of the global UU (Unitarian Universalist) community. The nearest Unitarian congregation, however, was still too distant for regular attendance, and my visits waned.

But then I stumbled across Taoism. I forget how. It doesn't really matter. I felt an immediate sense of, I dunno, belonging. Its basic tenets so completely matched my own theology that it seemed uncanny.
The Tao Te Ching is one of the most beautiful, and profound, things I have ever read. Full of oxymoronic poetry, it is a guide to life and leadership. And then I read Pure by Barefoot Doctor. And now I cannot get enough.

What is particularly interesting is that through the lens of Taosim, Christianity makes a kind of sense. "I am the Way" presents an interesting perspective. Now I want to be a part of my local church community, at the heart of this wonderful village in which I have lived for 7 years now. The only problem is, of course, that my local church is Anglican. But that's for another post, another time.

For now it's enough to say that I am a pagnostic Taoist Unitarian Universalist.