Plague Journal, Religare
I suppose this is a good place to start. The Latin word means “to tie, to bind” and is related to the word religio which means “respect,” “awe,” or “sanctity” suggesting that the soul is bound to god. Well – ok. The notion that one is inherently, inevitably, innately “religious” works as long as one is conditioned by circumstance, by a circle of family and associates who hold such to be a true principle, and would never question their obligation to dedicate time and money to the church, to the will-of-god, to a higher calling, etc., etc.
That was a long sentence even when I attempted to make it shorter, evidence of how insistent, how rhizome-like is religious sensibility. It is a subconscious feeling, even a pre-conscious awareness of how small is our physical presence, and how time bound is the arc of one human life by comparison to the vast expanse of the ocean, to the vault of the milky way on a summers night, or to the wheel of our galaxy featuring uncounted suns… I suspect that my grand daughter, not yet speaking in full syllables already knows precisely the meaning of awe. Before mastery of language, the breaking of experience into linguistic packets, suitable for communication — I wonder if not all of experience is essentially religious, everything an awe filled discovery-encounter of sight, taste, of touch. A sense of a presence compelling our respect does not depend upon conditioning.
Yesterday I watched a bit of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Rams football game which was held in SoFi Stadium in LA. At $5.5 billion, it’s the most expensive stadium in the world, and entirely privately financed. The stadium holds 70,000 fans and is expandable to 100,000 for a super-bowl.
Our ancestors never had so fine a shrine to the god, or gods, to all of the saints.
Or so fine a monument to ourselves…
