Not Fasting

Tonight begins the yearly Day of the Dread, otherwise known as Yom Kippur. The fasting officially begins at 6:37 PM. And the atoning shortly thereafter.

Though never a practicing Jew, I and my family, always swore off food and drink for the mandatory 23, sometimes 24 hours. If you'll forgive the turn of phrase, 'I was religious about being at least a little religious.' 

This year, not so much.

I don't mind a little introspection. I think it's actually good for the soul (whatever, that is.) Nor do I mind asking forgiveness for my transgressions, limited as they may be. But if anyone is going to absolve of my sins and my guilt it's going to be me. And my therapist, who also happens to be a tribe member. I know I'm paying her to say it, but it's nice that someone does, "You need to stop being so hard on yourself."

I also need to be true to myself. And if I'm going to proselytize the atheist gospel of Christopher Hitchens, which I did not long ago, I have to be willing to go all in on being all out of the religion scene.

Not to get all existential, but I'm no fan of the personified god of Christianity and Islam -- Jesus and Mohammed. Nor am I an adherent of the all encompassing ethereal omnipresent god of my people. As Hitchens so aptly put it, "there is evidence of neither." 

So who or what will do this forgiving, in response to my tortuous temporary abstinence from substance? Or even a stiff drink? 

If I may paraphrase Carl Sagan, I have seen the magnitude and incomprehensible scope of our universe, and the universes that are beyond our own, and find it hard to fathom a being or force caring whether I have a big salad, a nice filet of salmon and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon while 16 million of my brethren choose not to? 

OK, I can see getting dinged for the wine pairing, but so what.

If anything, god should be asking us for forgiveness -- for the absolute horrors he has made us capable of. And his unwillingness to step in and do something about it. I guess he used up all his miracles and interventions from 3000 BC -- 1200 AD, and then had somewhere else to be. Because from what I can tell, he hasn't been back since.

Funny how it has only taken me 67 years to shed these medieval rituals that arose from a very dark age of almost complete ignorance. When men were men and sheep were always on high alert.

Perhaps it's a powerful indicator of how a narrative, told over and over again, across generations or across the Internet, can result in the mass abandonment of critical thinking.  

That's not my bag. Forgive me.