Or the teapot, which is the best I can do.
You all remember good old Bertrand Russell, who went running around in the first half of the 20th century smoking his pipe, being a Lord (OK—an earl / Earl, which is worse), writing the most important book on mathematics of the century, and generally being insufferably right.
Of course he was right—he was smarter than the rest of us.
Well, he also wrote a book entitled, Why I Am Not a Christian, which may make him not-so-insufferably-right in your eyes. It may make him only insufferable.
Right or wrong, he gave us a teapot—not much from an English earl, you might sniff, but there are a lot of us. And the rich don’t get rich (and certainly don’t stay rich) by giving that money (or the ancestral lands, or even a few sheep skins for the spines of my books) away.
So Russell left us only the damn teapot, but that said, I have learned to love it. I am, in fact, resigned to heaven…so much so, that I’ll proselytize.
Lord Russell (the earl, not the lord—which is confusing to simple types like me), much like little Marc, set himself to deal with the problem of religion. But did he fiddle and faddle, running from a theistic deity at 10 AM and settling into nihilism by noon? No, he plowed ahead, relentlessly using logic to settle the vexing issue of the vexing Master of the Universe.
Bless him, he was honest, as well as atheistic.
Ooops—sorry, he wasn’t an atheist.
He can’t be. He has faithfully examined all the evidence for the existence of God, and concluded that that evidence is faulty. He can assert, with utter logic, that there is no reason to believe in god (capital omitted, since why bother?)
He can’t believe in God (damn, habits…) but he wasn’t an Atheist (justice!).
He cannot prove that there is no God.
Enter….
Suppose that little Marc gets it into his head that a teapot is orbiting the moon. Granted, given the amount of junk we have thrust into outer space, there may extremely well be a teapot (as well as a lot of Tang wrappers) up there. But not the teapot above.
In the world, this sacred vessel contained only the libation of (English) life—tea. It served its purpose whilst on this mortal veil, but in the rarified atmosphere of the moon, its essential nature was revealed. The teapot contains the meaning of life, it pours both love AND justice generously from its spout. All time and all history dwell within its translucent, thin walls. The wisdom of the ancients, the joy of a toddler—it has all the emotions we can know, and some we must never know. Poets and law professors abide within, as do we all, in perfect amity, indeed love.
The Teapot (reverentially capitalized) is God.
I know.
I am little Marc, and can you prove I’m wrong?
HAH!
Well, you may be scoffing over there in the corner with Lord Russell, but neither one of you can prove that there is no 1851 Spode (think it was) teapot with sacred qualifications up there orbiting the moon.
There is, of course, a little problem (which there wouldn’t be, if I could just live in that damn teapot).
I gotta prove the teapot—with all the wonders it contains—is really up there.
This is called “the burden of proof….”
Fortunately, I have the answer.
(I don’t, but I think I do, and that’s all that matters….)
As I dimly remember it, nobody can tell us exactly what was going on before the big bang (nah, Big Bang) blasted us all into this wretched state of affairs. True, the physicists may have been using their time in the last half century to do something other than daytime drinking…so maybe they have settled the ultimate question, but that’s no concern of mine.
I have my teapot.
Because whatever caused the Big Bang created both the physical world that we can see and that the good scientists (no irony here!) can beautifully explain but…
…the realm of the spirit as well.
Which dwells within the you-know-what.
That takes care of the little problem of my sister Jeanne, who professes no belief in God / Teapot, but did tell me that the love she has for Tyler, her son / my nephew, will never die.
The TP (and no, that’s not toilet paper….), of course.
She was basting the Thanksgiving turkey at the time, and so busy that I immediately believed her.
It also takes care of the problem of little Marc, since really, did my addled brains get me sober? Or did it lead to that daytime drinking in the first place?
I love the teapot!
I address myself to the teapot, generally by speaking out loud to God (I drop the teapot nonsense when it gets serious). God speaks to me through a sol trunco, which is “a broken sun” in English, and also that architectural device through which light and air enter the room above a doorway. I showed you a teapot, so here is a sol trunco….
Only now am I contemplating the phrase a couple of paragraphs back: an “architectural device through which light and air enter the room above a doorway.” A poet, which I am not, could run with the image of light and air which have been used as images for God / Teapots since we dreamed up the concept. Living in the sunlight of the spirit, I am a feather on the breath of God.
Sunlight…
Breath…
Illuminating the door—mystery, through which we may not pass.
And cannot help but do so.
Oh dear…
“What is the meaning of all this,” I demand of God / Teapot / Sol Trunco!
They’re all smarter than me, which means that they don’t speak. They know better than to try to argue with me. I’ll win that one.
(I won’t, of course, but I’ll sure think I will, since I am Lord Russell’s spiritual if not legal—dammit—heir).
They’ll turn on YouTube, and play me the tune that at last resigned me to heaven.
Tea, anyone?
