Georgia: Watermelon Harvesting

After posting yesterday, I didn't take an afternoon nap. I played soccer for a few minutes in the garden with my host brother. It involved a lot of ducking because of all the tree branches at eye level. And then I went with him and his father, what's his name, I forget, into his car, and we drove for twenty minutes or so to a watermelon field. We picked up three other people, two older guys with huge bellies, and a younger guy, maybe eighteen, and we spent the rest of the day picking watermelons tossing them to each other, and putting them in piles around the perimeter of the field. When they found out I was American, a few of them got a kick out of saying "fuck you!" to each other for a while. One guy had his toddler along, and had trained him upon coaxing to chirp out, "puck you! puck you!"

After a few hours, one of them drove a van into the field. The field was full of bumps and small ditches, and to drive such a van into such a field was a bold move, it's low suspension and tires worn slick enough to be eligible for winter sports. It was hard not to admire the sheer optimism, the glass-half-fullness of perspective of the driver and those calling him on with advice and commands. Several times we pushed the van back and forth, breathing in exhaust, getting mud sprayed over us. The field filled with the smell of rubber and a suffering clutch, but eventually we were piling the watermelons into the van, and then encouraging the vehicle along to the next pile. I can't imagine we saved any time. Whether it's more difficult to get an empty van into a field, or a watermelon-packed one out of one, is a riddle I don't know the answer to, because it got dark and we left the van there in the field, and drove back. Tired? They kept asking me. A little, I said.

Apeni, Georgia

The village of Apeni, where I will be for the next two years it seems.


It's a nice place. I live alone upstairs. Everyone else is downstairs, the parents and their boy and girl, Giorgi and Lika.


They've painted the floor boards upstairs for me apparently. A dark reddish brown, a thick oil paint. You can reach down and scratch the floor and get a little of it under your finger ails. Should be interesting in a six or so months.


Last night they had a nice welcome dinner for me. The director of my school was over with her daughter and sister too. I was very tired though.

This has nothing to do with my post but when we went to the castle in Atskuri, John's dog walked out on the wall, and almost committed hari-kari, before John followed him out there, picked him up and carried him back to safety. He's hard to spot, so look closely.

Yesterday we swore in. The ceremony was at Tbilisi university, and host family members came, the directors, and all sorts of Peace Corps people. We sat on the stage in bright lights, and there were several speeches from people, our director for one, some volunteers, and some other people, and then we got to stand up, and say we promised to be good, and then we were congratulated, and walked off to sit down in the front rows. A Georgian music group got up next and played, and they were very talented.


Afterwards there was lots of crying and hugging all around me. We stuffed all my luggage into the trunk of my latest host family's car. It's remarkable it all fit. And then, we were off to Apeni.


The night before, on Thursday, we had a farewell dinner. I showed a short film I'd made in my village, and everyone liked it a lot. I'd finished editing it that morning. We got back to Kistauri late, and then I put off packing and gave my host family a bottle of wine. Wine? They probably thought. But we make our own... And went to sleep. Getting up at 5:50 the next morning was getting up late, and leaving then at 6:40 made me ten minutes tardy. I was almost to the road, when my host brother Zaza caught up and gave me my camera bag.


My new bedroom appears ransacked, my personal belongings everywhere and concentrated around two epicenters, a mostly clothes one, and a mostly books and notebooks and paper one. It's hot up there right now though.


What I'll be doing with myself for the next little while before school starts, I don't know yet. I have to do a summer camp or something, and last night I think I told my director I'd teach a computer class for the teachers.


It's a weird time. Starting up, a new place, new people, stuff I need to start planning, and already so much has happened here. Several crazy-busy emotional days, everything changes, and then now I'm here, waking up, with two huge piles of stuff, a billion digital photos, and nothing I have to do. I'm probably in some kind of withdrawn autopilot state... and I think maybe it's time for a sweaty afternoon nap...


I sitting on the couch now. It's hot, and I'm getting good at killing flies and mosquitoes in the style of the president (not as a metaphor --- that clip where he snatches a fly out of the air in the middle of an interview,  remembe?) They keep asking me if I want coffee or food, and have cut up a peach and brought it on a plate to me while I sit here.  I won't post any more photos right now. It's sound like too much work. But I'll take a laptop photo. And then be out.

Who Untangled Kite String

In our garden

my grandparents untangled kite string.

Now they are unraveling.

Georgia: Bright Green Umbrellas Sleep Furiously

It's three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon,* and I just got home. The rain ruined our plans to walk to the river, and rather return under a borrowed bright green umbrella, I waited it out at Merissa's, unskillfully breaking open sunflower seeds with her host family. I decided not to walk home under a bright green umbrella, to not be stared at and chatted about, and referred to as the American boy who walks home with his bright green umbrella. Short of donning my flower hat, it's perhaps the most unmasculine thing I could do. So unmanly are umbrellas that they are used along with pipes as symbols to differentiate women's and men's toilets. Also villagers like to talk, and a lot about the Americans that have apparated into their village. I heard through the grapevine that a few weeks ago I was seen around the school at night with a bottle of beer, but I don't believe a word of it.

My host brother, Giorgi

Ironic things things are more amusing and more fun to write about too. What I mean is, don't mind me if I sound negative sometimes. Boring is hearing this and this were so pretty and so-and-so is so nice and I like all these things,and here's a list I made. But it really is beautiful here, and the people are good-natured, the mountains are far away and enormous. I am glad I came. I like it a lot. And anyone who saves up a bunch of money and comes here (or joins this), I will show you everything.

I have language classes everyday for almost four hours, and the language is hard. And it turns out I'm not very quick when it comes to learning languages. It would have helped if I hadn't been trying to get by in my meager Russian at first. For a while they just said everything in Russian to me. There are about forty of us new Peace Corps volunteers in Georgia, the G12 group they call us, and put us up about 5 to a village in what are called clusters. "Oh. Your clusters? That's so cute!" was how an American we met at a monastery put it through a lisp. "So, are you guys, like, in the same cluster?" We're lucky. Our cluster all gets along well. Still people weren't meant to spend so much time together. It's unnatural, I think, and unhealthy, and I've had to confront and manage some of the less people-oriented aspects of my personality. I was joking once wondering what it would be like to say in the Peace Corps interview something like, "Helping people is cool and everything, I want to do that, but the thing is, I don't really like people very much. Will that be a problem?"

It's true though, I was not made for groups. In groups, I have no eloquence. My thoughts are trite and uncertain of when to insert themselves into the social environment. Our minds and thoughts are unique. It's all we have. I think groups hijack it. A group imprints itself and imposes imperatives and manipulates thoughts. And the energy some gather from groups, from attention and from "leadership taking," is a kind of insecurity, in my opinion. The outsourcing of self.

They wear me out too. To engage them must be a constant and willful action on my part. I can't help but be aloof. I worry I seem contemptuous. I can become irritable, and then fear everyone suspects it. It is too easy to disapprove of the social outlier. Groups are designed that way. To force interaction, to compete, to ostracize and condemn those who do not participate. Such group-preservation strategies must have been naturally selected for since that very first group. When I am in a group, I have to pee often. My body is trying to escape the group I think. By making me need to pee.

It's not the group members themselves that are unlikable. As groups shrink, the people in them become proportionally more interesting and easier to talk to. People are not themselves in groups, and in compulsory groups in particular as apposed to those that form spontaneously. They are hijacked puppets, possessed by some evil god of groups, whose will becomes their own as they are brainwashed with a collective delusion that the group is the whole world and it's dynamics are one's own. Nonparticipating elements are like diseased body parts that must be treated, altered, or surgically removed.

It's not that bad of course. And again I'm lucky. My cluster is efficient and cohesive unit when it comes to doing things. And I do my best to keep up.





I'm the only boy in my cluster now, since the other one in our little group went back week 2 or 3, after realizing PeaceCorps wasn't his box of donuts. I never knew I would miss bro time, but I do. There are three guys in the cluster nearest ours, and next week I think I'll go there and go castle drinking with them, which is where we share a bottle of wine in an abandon castle. This is probably boring to them by now, but sounds to me like possibly the coolest thing I'll ever do. Castle drinking! One of them claims to have seen Noam Chomsky smoke opium, but I assured him that was utterly impossible. He also told me something he once heard about Peace Corps. Volunteers to Asia he said return to America zenny and enlightened. Volunteers to Africa come back with appreciation for all the nice things and opportunities we have. And Peace Corps volunteers to Eastern Europe return with cigarettes and a drinking habit. He had a hangover the other day, and I wanted to connect or something, so I told him about my last bad hangover, which began in Philedelphia just after our very first Peace Corps event, and didn't peter out until the following evening. Let me recount it for you too.

After our all day long session, hello and welcome to the peacecorps etc, I went to my hotel room and got on the internet for bit, had the last of bottle of jager left over from John and Katie's, and then left about 8:00 to find something to eat. The part of Philly we were in was old and quaint, and I walked a long way, and finally went into a restaurant. Inside everything was wood paneling, and steep wide wooden stairs went down to a bar. There were booths on each side as you descended, and at the very bottom was a stage where a man was playing guitar and woman was singing. It was in fact an Irish bar and there was an open mic going on, and I signed up and sat with some philly originals, Irish Catholic descendants with the strongest U.S. born accents I've ever heard. They bought me a drink or two, and I for myself a drink or two. And I hadn't had anything to eat, so I had some spicy soup of some kind, with another beer. I waited a long long time for my turn through a lot of bad stand up. And then I was introduced by the same Philidephian I'd been fraternizing with all night. I got up and sat down at the bottom of whole place and looked up, and raised the guitar, and realized, Ryan, my boy, you are little soggy. And then I began to play, and then sing, and realized, Ryan you are drunk. Quite drunk. Too drunk to even finish this song. But I accepted this in stride. Tried another song. Much the same. I gave up. Handed him the guitar. Apologized, and escaped. Up and out, and walked back to the hotel. I took a shower, and vomited there. And then I fell asleep, and my roommate woke me up and said under his eyebrows, "Did you sleep in clothes?" And on the bus to New York I was discreet, a ninja even, but could have been found there again vomiting quietly to myself.

It was a mistake. I didn't mean to. I was hard on myself. "Ryan, Ryan, what are you doing? You about to leave for the Peace Corps, and look at the state you are in." We waited all afternoon in the airport, and by the time we were about to leave I was feeling better. I've been much better since.

May 1, somewhere over the Atlantic

The most beautiful creature in the sky is sitting a seat back and across the aisle. She sleeps in my periphery. She adjusts herself, and I wait for the new way her black hair will fall on the vinyl of her airplane seat. She is smallish, the calm of the unconscious in her serious face, across her mousy features. Her feet, socked and stretching in the aisle are big, and the proportions add to her creatureness. Beautiful creatures are strange, because they look like strangers in the world. They almost always have black hair. She is sleeping, and I wish she was here sleeping on my shoulder as we fly against the night.

In a few weeks we go to our permanent sites. I will be in east Georgia near Lagodekhi in a village called Apeni, two hours from Tbilisi. We are not Peace Corps Volunteers yet. We are trainees, still in preservice. We haven't yet been given our wings. I will miss my PC fledgling host family a lot. They are wonderful people, all with good senses of humor, and we drink their homemade wine every night with dinner around 10pm. The men do not drink too much, and the women always ask me if I'm hungry. They make me kasha in the mornings, and I remember to make my bed everyday so as to not find it made for me. The food here is good, and would be even better if all recipes halfed oil, salt, and sugar content, and then halfed them again. There's bread at every meal, and hachapoori at almost every meal. And always a bowl of good tomatoes and cucumbers and a little dish next to it with salt that everyone but me takes pinches and sprinkles on these, or on their already salted food. There are many dishes, usually the same ones. I was familiar with the majority of Kakheti food within the first week I was here. Kakheti is the region I'm in, and the cuisine of every region in Georgia overlaps some and differs some, as do the traditions and temperaments of the people. Kakheti is also the region I will stay in --- I am one of the few --- and it is known for it's epic grape harvests, which I will witness in a few months.

my room

Georgians smile the perfect amount. In the streets they don't smile at strangers, which makes sense to me. Sometimes a little one to make a foreigner feel welcome but no big grins like in the States. They think walking around smiling at everyone is a little creepy, and it is. We Americans can be loud too, and somewhat obnoxious in public places. People stare, and I've heard Americans say, "Oh, no, well, in America it's not weird at all! Lots of people act like this, and it doesn't bother anybody." This is almost true. It always occurs to me that perhaps in America they simply hadn't notice if anyone was actually bothered. To be fair, Americans tend to become more silly, not serious, when they feel uncomfortable, anxious, out of place. But we are all welcomed well, and greeted, and given fruit in the streets. Georgians love guests.


I like how they speak in imperatives all the time too. Eat! they'll say. Sit! Come! If your trying to do something, they don't ask, "Do you need anything? Can I help you?" They either raise or lower their eyebrows and wag their hands and say something like, "Just what ARE you doing?" If you don't eat enough, and say you don't want more food, they tell you again, "Eat! Eat!" As if to say, "Clearly you haven't accepted the fact that you must eat." I think they are surprised sometimes we survived long enough to make it here to Georgia.


I feel I have been adjusting well. In Utah, I know I was an atrophied human soul. I felt like a ghost, haunting myself. Places I would go, I had been before many times, but as a different person from the past. And he was more real than me. He was discovering himself, having new sensations, experiencing pain and passion and happiness and uncertainty. He was restless with twitches. For him these places were the coordinates of a new sensation, something profound, a realization, a fight or a kiss, something funny, all visceral and solid and real, and all in the past. And then they all became the coordinates of memories. And what was I but a ghost going from memory to memory, and wondering what it all meant anymore. And even then I was a stranger. And the places I remembered were full of different people now and the places themselves were changing. As they changed, I found myself needing not only to remember who I had been, but also what the places around me had been too. I was a feature of the past, an impostor in the present.


But maybe I'm wrong. Before I left, in Utah I had good times and new experiences, and I didn't feel like a stranger with my family or friends. I wasn't always a ghost. But I remember now, whenever I was by myself, I was a ghost always. When I was driving. When I was at a park, or walking into a store. Or coming home late at night.When I was looking out the window, or suddenly distracted.


It's difficult here sometimes, but I have never felt as if going back would solve any emotional crises or problems, which is the gist of homesickness. Of those problems, the worst is the same I've had in the States for a long time, a constant absence. And here now it is internalized, and not a constant feature of the environment, not a fellow ghost always a little ways off, not something I might meet in a coffee shop by accident or see pull up nearby at a traffic light. It's not easier, but it's contained and predictable So I guess it is easier. Perhaps this is another reason why adjusting has not been too difficult. The hardest stuff is just old familiar stuff. So here I am. How's that for elusive writing.

Yesterday we celebrated Independence Day at a park in Telavi. They did a great job, with almost-hotdogs, and almost-hamburgers and even soyburgers, and almost-condiments, like ketchupy mixed with a barbecue something, and a darker more poignant mustard with the wrong consistency, and in the wrong bottle. And they had chips too, and soda, and they even brought a big cake, for America's birthday I think. It was, that's right, because the national anthem was sang, and then right after the Georgians amusingly and spontaneously sang their national anthem, probably because they are all so proud of Georgia that they couldn't help it. They all seem incredibly proud of their impressive little country. Even the ones who don't want to live here. "I want to live in America," kids will sometimes say, "But Georgia I love."


What else... my host family has a toilet, a real flush one. I'm the only one in my cluster to be so lucky. When I got here, I took showers by dumping water on my head. I would heat it up with their electric kettle and then mix it with cold water in a bucket. But a small hot water heater was recently installed, and now the showerhead in the concrete bathroom has hot water. I've heard this called poshcorps by some. What else... they way they drive is interesting and terrifying. It may be the reason they all believe in God a toast to him every evening at dinner. For example, a marshutka driver I patronized drove fucking in the middle of a two lane road passing everyone he could all the way across the country. Full speed. That's not the worst. He stopped and backed up in a tunnel, cars swerving around him, so he could pick up someone that had flagged him down for a ride just before. I still remember his jowly face, the fleshy grin in the mirror.


We have two weeks left before we become are sworn in as honest-to-god PCVs, to commit ourselves mind and body to the three tenets of Peace Corps, and to protect the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic. As for me, settling in and getting to know the community where I will live and work for two years will be good, mind and body. To get used to this appointment. I always thought Wesley said that in the Princess Bride, but what he actually says, in response to, "I must know," is, "Get used to disappointment." Am I alone on this? Anyway, the first month with a host family is always pretty awkward.... one down, one to go... And with that...


*written over the course of a week

Georgia, open letter to OPA 4th grade

It never worked. Borrowing someone's laptop for a few seconds. And happy birthday John! It's your birthday, right?

-
(last week sometime)
This internet is awful. We're five weeks into pre-service training, and it's a lot of work. We have four hours of language classes a day, six days a week, and then a bunch of other type classes, health and safety classes, how to be a teacher, how to not get into trouble, how to not get aides. Lot's of breaking off into groups and role play stuff and groupwork, small group communication workshop stuff that probably is helpful but brutal nonetheless. Anyway, not much time for anything. This lasts another 10 weeks. And I don't have internet anyway, but I ordered this cool like cellphone internet modem, so hopefully i can get it working and reestablish some sort of working internet presence.

Last week, was able to send a letter to my fourth graders back in the states right before they went on summer break. I'll post that here now, if it be the internet's will. Our bus leaves in twenty minutes, and if I can post this one damn thing before i leave, I will consider hauling my laptop here worth the trouble.

-

Letter for Opa

Hello everyone!

I've been here in Georgia two weeks so far and it feels like much longer! I remember when I had only two weeks until I left, and I was like, holy moley, it's pretty much here right now! But now remembering to when I first came into Georgia off the plane seems like a very long time ago. I think this strange trick of time is because so many new things have happened and so many things have changed. I think it's kind of like walking for a mile or so on a straight road and then a mile on a road that has many hills a valleys and things to climb over. Even though both miles are a mile, the second of course seems much longer, just like two weeks ago seems so far off to me now.

I should tell you about some of these changes and new things, but first let me say thank you everyone for giving me such a kind good bye, and to Mrs. Miquelon's class, thank you for the pictures and notes you wrote me! I show them to the people here and they like seeing what fourth graders in Utah are like. Isn't it weird to think that someone all the way across the world has been seeing pictures of you? Anyway, most people in Georgia have darker skin and black hair just like many students at Opa. Perhaps they think that all fourth graders in America are like that, but when I learn the language better, I will tell them that America has so many different kinds of people that schools everywhere are of all different kinds too.

Before I forget, I want to tell you about a young Georgian guy, probably about my sister's age, I saw the other day. He was in his sports car and listening to Justin Beiber! I guess young Mr. Beiber is popular with older boys here, but then again maybe it was just the radio and he didn't know better. I was hoping he would be wearing one of those sparkly Beiber shirts too, but he wasn't.

I live with a very nice Georgian family too. They have two boys, one named Zaza, who is twelve, and one who is nine i think, and named Giorgi, which corresponds to the name George in English, like King George i guess. Their grandma and grandpa also live with them, which is very common in Georgia, and in fact people often live their whole lives in the same house with the same people here. It's not weird at all to be thirty years old and living with your parents still. And when you get married, you bring your new husband or wife home. They have to leave their house and their family of course, but that's okay because it usually won't be far away at all. In fact most people in the villages are related to each other, and there's lots of birthday parties to go to all the time.

Everyone has animals here, at least chickens, and they run all over the place. Most people have cattle too and pigs and often dogs. Dogs aren't really pets the way they are in the states though. Some are. A lot of the dogs are stray dogs, and a lot of them just stay outside all the time and aren't petted or played with or walked. Sometimes people aren't very nice them either, and will scare them off by raising their hand as if the strike when they want them to go away. I asked a sixth grader why are they mean to dogs, and he said that in America he knows we don't have dogs wandering around living in the street and scaring people. And I had to agree, we don't. We have dog catchers to pick up stray dogs. And then we take them to the pound and if no one claims we... well we all know what happens then. I guess if I was a stray dog, I would probably choose Georgia over America come to think of it.

I am learning Georgian and it is quite hard. I finally have the whole alphabet down and can write words out without checking my English key. I'm still having trouble though with some letters, for instance they have three different letters for the "ck." One that looks like a lower case "b" with a little arm, one that looks like a lowercase "y" but is a little more curvy, and one that looks like a very very tall and skinny backward "c" but with a line behind it like an English "d" has. And the crazy thing is that to everyone here they all sound completely different. They say, "no Ryan no, like this," and they make a strange "ck" sound, and I do a perfectly good imitation, I swear, and they shake their head and laugh and say, "Ryan, no, no." The different "ck" sounds are made with different places in the throat, parts I have only ever used before when a piece of food gets stuck there. Some of the words have four, even five, consonants in a row, and none of them are silent. I'm supposed to pronounce them somehow. So yeah, a lot of my time here is spent talking like an alien.

The schools are in very old buildings with poor lighting and pit toilet bathrooms outside. The first day i thought they had forgotten to turn on the lights. But nope, that's how it always is. But at the same time, the schools are really cool too, the buildings i mean, not the bathrooms; they're awful. The buildings though are really big with very high ceilings and huge windows. There are a few cows nearby in the back, and a few chickens and noisy rooster in the front and big trees and a statue of a famous author that that i think is from our village, which is called Keestaoori by the way. The children and classes are very similar i think, with desks and a teacher in the front and the kids all seem nice and smart although they are late to class more often than in the states I noticed. The only go to school from nine to two, but they don't have a lunch, and many of them have tutors afterward, mostly in English.

The closest big city is about 20 minutes away or so. It has a grocery stores and electronic stores and lots of people and cars. In our village though there are only a small shops that have the same sort of stuff as a 7-11, food and snacks and beer and soda and random stuff, like a shelf of shoes in one for instance. The little store buildings are old too, and some of them look more like some one's shed than a store. I guess it's the same in America in some places, like small towns in Wyoming for instance, if you ever go there. The  here are all really big, with very high ceilings, and, it's weird, windows INSIDE the house looking into other rooms, with curtains and everything. They have curtains in front of the doors and most of the time they'll just pull the curtain closed instead of closing the door. This is where I will live for the next few months until i complete training, and then it will be off to my permanent site, where I will live for the next two years if all goes well. I have no idea where that will be yet.

The meals are always big and very delicious, lots of food to choose from usually, and always wine. In fact wine is everywhere here. People think Georgia might be the first place ever to have wine in the world. Everyone grows their own grapes and makes their own wine, and it makes the villages look beautiful with grape vines everywhere, often even growing on frames above the driveways and in the front yards. Everyone makes their own wine every year, and then have some every night at dinner. Even the children are allowed a small glass of wine if they want, since they say red wine is good for you. I think they usually don't like it though.

The mountains here are also beautiful and the biggest mountains you've ever seen. They are a ways away, probably about fifteen miles or so, and i haven't got to see them except at a distance. They also make for very strange weather, and it can be rainy, sunny, rainy, then sunny, all in one day. Last night there was a lightening and thunderstorm too, but without any rain at all! It went on for hours and would light up the whole sky with cloud silhouettes.

 

There's more to say of course, but this is getting quite long. And I'm pretty tired. Tomorrow hopefully I can email this, and you can all read it! I hope you have a great summer vacation, and you all remember to read some good books. I'll be reading some here. Please email me if you want, and I will try to respond when i can. I don't have Internet yet, so it's pretty hard right now to respond, but hopefully that will change. Oh and I almost forgot, a few days after I arrived here there was a small earthquake. My first ever. I was upstairs in my room and the first thing I thought was that someone had driven a tractor into the side of the house. It only lasted for a few seconds, and nothing really happened. Things shook on the table a little as if someone was stomping around. Some people didn't even feel it at all, if they were outside. But still, an earthquake. I was in an earthquake! No one can ever take that away from me.

Okay. All my best. Be safe, and have a great vacation. I miss you guys.

You're friend,
Ryan

A Man Young And Old: III. The Mermaid

A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.

William Butler Yeats

On Not Keeping the Faith

An essay about belief, doubt, and why I am not a Christian,

by Ryan Sherman

Preface: a transcript of a long-ago internal dialogue
Am I Christian? What is Christian?
Someone who has a personal relationship with God.

Do I have such a relationship with God?
Well, I don’t really know.

But doesn’t it seem like the kind of thing one would know if one had?
Yes. So, if I don’t really know if I have a personal relationship with God, then I probably don’t.

Am I sincere? Do I pursue God? Do I pray?
Yes. I do. I think I do.

What about other people? What makes them sure about their relationship with God?
They feel his presence. They are filled with his joy when worshiping, and his righteous anger when faced with evil. They feel truth in his words in the Bible.

Have I felt these things?
Yes, I have.

Why do I question these experiences?
Because it seems that whether or not Christianity is true, we would still have these experiences. Because people from other religions seem to also have these experiences, to a much greater degree in some cases. Because no matter the religion, these experiences infuse our lives with a certainty and purpose that calms our fears and doubts and confirms to them that their lives are valid. And these universal characteristics among religions seem speak to the possibility that they fulfill common needs and play similar roles.

Like what? What kinds of needs and roles would religion play?
Like needing to feel that the suffering and unfairness in the world is somehow reconciled in the light of eternity. To pacify the smallness and helplessness one feels when confronted with mortality. To fill a gap left from childhood when we were utterly helpless and found safety in our caregivers whom we experienced as all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful. To project into eternity  what we already believe, that being kind and loving is better than being selfish and exploiting people. To comfort us when we feel completely misunderstood and alone, like no one knows us or loves us. To help us build good families and lives and communities. To reaffirm us when we feel unlovable or like no one would want us if they knew what we really were like.

CONTINUE READING