The Divinity Would Not Mind

 I find it quite depressing to read the daily death figures from the Muslim religious observance of the hajj in Saudi Arabia. The numbers vary widely, some focusing purely on restricted groups reporting only in double digits, but now major news outlets are projecting a death total exceeding a thousand souls perishing in temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a card-carrying Compassionate Agnostic, (a CA for short -  I need to remember to have those cards printed) I occasionally feel compelled to speak out on behalf of the Divinity:

It is not pleased. Come on now, here we have almost two million devout believers - many of them elderly, a demographic in which I am reluctantly included - trudging across a desert in triple digit heat to demonstrate their devotion to the Divinity.

The Divinity gratefully acknowledges the devotion, but proposes a tad more ”calendarical” flexibility for the event - especially considering global warming. (For which the Divinity is withholding judgment. All tied up with the free will choices of humanity, you know.) So moving the hajj to a less virulent time of year - like December? - would be fine with the Big D.

However, the Divinity is not holding its breath. And can we blame it? Consider our time on earth for Divinity’s sake. Seemingly, the planet has run red with “holy blood” ever since we first figured how to carves clubs and knap flint into knives, hatchets and spear points. The Divinity is quite displeased with the rampant bloodletting done in its name. It is not amused. Not at all. 

It is bad enough when, as parodied in Dr. Seuss’s delightful Butter Battle Book, two sets of contrary “believers”, bloody each other. From ancient sacrifices to crusades to pogroms to holocausts to modern armed conflicts, the Divinity is chagrined. But even more, when we visit unnecessary mayhem upon our fellow travelers, within our particular the family of belief, as it were, well, again the Divinity is not amused. 

The Divinity would far prefer that we learn to be gentle with each other, and certainly be compassionate in performing those rituals intended to show our fealty to the Divinity’s core of lovingkindness.

* What is a “compassionate agnostic?” Glad you asked, particularly since I have encountered folks who think “agnostic” and “atheist” mean the same thing. Not at all. 

To use an example from my old home, The Old North State, aka North Carolina: Folks in other parts of the country often confuse the Wolfpack of North Carolina State University, where I spent 40 some years teaching, with the Tarheels of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from which my daughters secured various degrees. The two institutions share portions of their names, but there the similarities end. The same is true with agnostic and atheist. 

To clarify:

An atheist - a-theist - denies the existence of a supreme being, a god.

An agnostic - as I use it, acknowledges the existence of a transcendent force that guides, but does not control, the nature and evolution of the cosmos.

A compassionate agnostic (CA) - again in my usage - believes that that transcendent force is compassionate, and that we, in our own little diorama of existence here on the third rock from the sun, should seek to manifest that compassion in our own lives. I have discussed elsewhere in these pages - I know, I know, sometimes at tedious length - Distilled Harmony, my own attempt to carve a path towards compassion. We CAs can natter on as we try to clarify that path. 🤪