2008-01-17

The GOOD legacy of a fundamentalist and cultic life: 2

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by Neil Godfrey

Sense of the Profound

Marlene Winell wrote in Leaving the Fold (p.106):

You also learned to consider things deeply. As a religious person’:” you had to wrestle with ultimate questions of life and death, good and evil, truth, love, humility, dignity, responsibility, freedom, destiny, finite and infinite. While your life may now have become more simple, it will never be trite. You are likely to retain a certain richness in your thinking, a capacity for appreciating the profundities of human existence. As a result, you may always desire some depth of meaning in your life. Ambition and materialism will not be primary motivators. You are not likely to fall prey to keeping up with the Joneses.

Marlene goes on to offer an extract from another ex-fundamentalist who has expressed my sentiments precisely, so it’s probably preferable for me to express my thoughts here.

Sometimes I look at those who seem to be so content and fulfilled over a cup of tea and biscuits with a chat, or with a beer at the local, and I think I really do wish sometimes I could be like them — chatting happily and contentedly with the local gossip, or about someone who got lucky or unlucky (no difference) with a quiz on TV, etc., all the while sipping tea at a coffee table in the afternoon or drinking a pint at a bar in the evening.

But I never seem to be able to hold that wish for long. Otherwise I wouldn’t be excusing myself from their company and retreating to a space where I can indulge in some deeper thoughts with a book or my own reflections.

Although I could never deny, if it came down to a choice, that I’d opt for the beer at the bar in the evening in preference to the tea at the coffee table in the afternoon. 😉

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Neil Godfrey

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