June 16th, 2023
“It’s not that I don’t believe in anything. I just haven’t found the thing that makes sense to me yet.”
That’s how I usually answer the question of whether I’m religious or believe in God.
The formal term is agnostic; I learned that the difference between being agnostic or atheist is that atheists know for a fact that there is no God, and agnostics aren’t so sure. About anything, really.
I’m spiritual. Shit gets real weird here. I am open to learning about different ways to be in this world.
It’s a difficult but necessary space to live in. Religious and non-religious people alike need us. I know people who have fallen to deep extremes on either end, and those people don’t usually come back; they often wage war against those they believe are against them, and this is more regularly leading to one-man armies.
That’s where the two major groups in Cold World came from: the Knights of Christianity, founded and funded by billionaire Jonah Mesh, are the settlers of a brand new world, Flora, and on one side of the scale; the Neo Atheists, who will kill you for just saying that you have faith, are weighing down the other.
And Calef, just like me, is balancing right in the middle.
I mentioned in the last essay that I sometimes have a hard time talking to religious people about my loss and grief. The tools they use to deal with their pain don’t fit in my hands; my body just isn’t designed to hold them and they don’t work right for me.
The Earth in Cold World, the frozen land of reality, is where I live, too. After Calef’s mother died, his father and siblings left for Flora, leaving him here to get through his grief alone. There isn’t any wrongdoing; each member of the family did what they felt was right for their process.
In real life, I value the good that religion can give to my family and friends, and I am genuinely envious that it is not something that is available to me.
In fact, Calef doesn’t have a problem until people tell him that he, or the place where he lives, can be “saved.”
Same, dude. Same.
Without spoiling any more (please read my book!), Calef finds other sources of comfort, which are some of the same sources I tap daily to not only stay alive, but to create and light candles where there were none before.
There are countless ways to fight the dark.
None of them are wrong, as long as the light you’re emitting shines on everyone the same and hurts no one.
I haven’t found the thing that makes sense to me yet.
But I keep following sources of light in the small chance that I’ll stumble and fall into it, diving towards hope with poor form and reckless abandon.
The Den 