Choosing My Religion

by Bill Corden (June 2019)

Plains of Heaven, John Martin, 1851-53

 

 

Einstein solved

the way things work,

the way things come together—

Stephen Hawking also knew

how black holes last forever.

 

With blackboards full of symbols

that make our psyches tremble,

they tell how pulses in a void

gradually assemble

into the universe we know—

and why that yellow sun does glow.

 

It has no outer limit.

And likewise when we turn around,

there is no centre to be found.

 

But no answer for the great beyond 

that sets our senses reeling.

 

We know how little levers act

Science can explain it all

all you need is fact.

 

For all those non-believers

than this reacts with that.

 

—

But he says that he speaks from God

He tells us all, that all there is

is the work of his creation—

and everything we do and see

So which one do I turn to

to justify my corpus?

Am I just a happenstance

or do I have a purpose?

The great religions of the world—

each one of them serene—

insist I put my faith in

an entity unseen.

We must be righteous in our path

So underneath these words of love

is vengeance, threatened from above.

To get to your eternal rest,

your life must pass the moral test.

 

Now Einstein and the Doctor,

they offer us a choice.

They say there is no point to life

and that we have no voice.

 

No voice in the hereafter,

just let freedom ring.

 

 

Science or Religion—

One says there is no point in this,

the other says salvation.

 

and finally—

 

Why are we here?

 

Philosophers throughout the ages—

all the gurus, saints, and sages—

All the books and all the essays—

all those who tell us do it my way.

all religions . . . all mankind.

 

none can tell us what comes next.

All our concepts of divinity

We understand the quantum world

We watch the grand design unfurled

just like a newborn feather.

 

We know it flows in perfect order

In harmony and symmetry—

As we delve, delve ever deeper,

the road we travel just gets steeper.

Every little nut we crack

sends us down another track.

We measure tiny blips and waves

but nothing takes us past the grave.

 

Kant, Descartes and Plato, too,

knew little more than me and you

about the final, great unknown—

the place to which . . . our souls are blown.

 

And so we turn in desperation

to our own imagination.

to be the crutch . . . on which we lean.

 

in an omnipresent wraith

the meaning . . . of the life we led.

 

 

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Bill Corden is a happily retired sports columnist living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Now he writes, plays music and makes people laugh.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast