Laughing with...

Funny because I think of this song at various times throughout the day and each time I do, I tell myself that I need to make a blog post about it. When I finally sit down to start, I see that I already had the title and the song pasted within the text. So I will take that as a sign from my subconscious to free the idea already.

I've been thinking a lot about why I think about God so much and religion for that matter. It seems obvious that if you grow up in a religion that permeates nearly every facet of your life, that it is bound to happen. I can't escape it. Even if I wanted to, it is my heritage, my tradition, my culture. But oftentimes I find that it proves difficult to reconcile the way you are taught to feel things at church and to think things at school. In my opinion, to discount either method, would in many ways be ignorant as both methods for experiencing life and the world around us have value.

So I work to find that happy medium. Personally, I do this not by trying to fit the world, and everything in it, into a religious context. In other words, when we learn something new or observe something in life, I try not to immediately squeeze it into my religious beliefs. If we did so, we would end up with an exclusionary process because not everything is going to fit. It leads to turning a blind eye to those things that are "cast out". It leads us to see things in terms of black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. The problem with this is that the world, the place in which we live here and now, is not that way.

Instead, I do the opposite. As I've been trying to see how religion fits into the world, naturally I have a lot more questions. But I have also found that it allows me to see things as they are. For example, I've been trying not to look at the decision making process in terms of good choices and bad choices or right choices and wrong choices. Decisions are decisions. They produce reactions, effects, repercussions that we should be ready, able and willing to own, bear and deal with. {My apologies, I just read Boris ate a Thesaurus with Jadon the other day.}

OKay, now to this song. I heart Regina Spektor. Just listen to it...



There is another way of looking at this song aside from pointing out times when people either draw closer to God or curse God. To me, whether she knows it or not, Ms. Spektor could be taking a very Hegelian approach toward God in providing us with a synthesis of two opposing positions about God. The thesis (statement A) would be something like: God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. This would be based on things like a personal feeling about it or the miracle of life or the Grand Canyon, the creation of earth or some other majestic natural or heavenly body. The anti-thesis to that (statement B) would look something like: God is dead and non-existent because based on statement A, how could it be possible for God to exist "in a hospital or a war or when someone is starving or freezing or so very poor," basically in horrible conditions full of pain and suffering.

As for the synthesis? Perhaps it can be found at the end of the song: "No one's laughing at God, we're all laughing with God." Maybe she is trying to say that God exists within us or among us so that is why we would be "laughing with God." Or maybe she is trying to say that God is there if you believe in God and God is not there if you don't, as if it is something that exists for us in our minds.

Now to tie it to my previous paragraphs of rambling. What if she is just trying to say that God is simply God [whatever that means] which is different to each individual. What if we tried to think about God not in terms of what God is or isn't but to see God for what God is. Then we could probably all come to the conclusion that God is...

God.