I Am A Light Bulb

I am a lightbulb. A self aware lightbulb. I am lit when I am born and I go out when I die. The light switch may be shower or faster depending on circumstances but that’s the general idea. As a self aware lightbulb I get more and more convinced of myself the longer I last. I learn about my lightbulbness through history lessons and civics classes at lightbulb school. I learn that I am an American lightbulb of the majority white light male variety and that I have certain privileges associated with that. Because I was made in the same shop as some of my elder bulbs I look like them and I come to see myself as part of the family. I develop family loyalties.

The longer I last before my filaments give out the more attached I become to my self definitions. I see myself as the culmination of thousand of years of historical lightbulb generations and I really feel my weight. I am important. Sometimes I think that something as important as I am can’t just quit so I look around for a way to salvage my self. What would I do without me?

Extra-natural theorists tell me that there is an after glow for bulbs like me. They say that under certain circumstances and after a certain exemplary lifetime I may continue on to another sphere of existence. I like this idea because it gives me more time to be with myself.

The nuts and bolds crowd tell me that I am only made of wire and glass and when I go out that’s it. This is disturbing to me because I don’t like the idea of seeing myself when I’m burnt out. I imagine sitting next to my lifeless bulb self for eternity. All that darkness. The first idea is better so I go for that one. There are some unscrupulous characters who pretend to have some secret knowledge and they try to frighten me with stories of bad places and after burnout miseries. They say that they can help me to stay in the good graces of the Great Candelabra so that I will more likely be recycled. I don’t know what to think, but just to play it safe I do the behaviors and tithe.

The realists say I’m being silly and the extra-naturalists say okay, but what if I’m wrong? Better to be on the safe side. So I walk the fence. I “keep an open mind.” Then one day I have a vision, a dream. And in that dream a magical electrician speaks to me and he makes a lot of sense. This is what he says.

First of all he says that being alive as a self awareness is like being a focused point of light. There has to be something to focus that light through, he says, and in my case its’ my lightbulb self. Before that self came into being the light was diffuse. Then he asks me if I can remember anything from before I was born. I say no and he says that’s because I didn’t exist. The “I” that he is referring to is the focus point that I call “me.” Through years of life as a fully operating focus point lightbulb I get used to myself and seriously define myself as a Subject. I won’t take no for an answer, I am Somebody, damn it! Then he says that at the moment of death the light doesn’t just go out it loses its focus point and goes diffuse again. This is because the wire and glass that is my physical bulbness craps out. There is no “me” to survive afterwards in any definition because “I” was the focus and that’s all gone now.

“What about my light,” I say, almost pleading for immortality?

He smiles and says, “It’s diffuse, gone like smoke.”

Then he tells me to imagine a glass of water and an eye dropper. He tells me to imagine putting the eye dropper in the glass and sucking up a little. Then squeeze until one drop hangs above the glass. “That’s you,” he says, “an individual. Now squeeze some more until that individual drop falls into the glass.” I see it in my mind. “It’s still there,” he says, “but you will never find it again. You can take another drop out of the glass but it will never be the same one.”

“I guess I’ll find out when I die,” I say and he says, “No you won’t. There will be no you to do the finding out. That’s the hardest part of this whole thing. But it’s very democratic. It happens the same way to everybody.”

I must have looked disappointed or something because put his hand on shoulder and said, “But there is an after life.”

“There is?”

“Of course. Just like Martin Luther King Jr’s afterlife is happening today. And Beethoven’s afterlife happens in the symphony halls. It’s what the world does with you after you’re gone.”

“Then some people don’t get one. Everybody can’t be famous. Most of us are anonymous.”

Again he smiled. “Everybody leaves and impression, everybody is essential. Beethoven wouldn’t have amounted to a hill of beans without an audience. And Martin Luther King Jr had to have all those people to march with and come hear him speak. Don’t fooled by spectacle.”

I had a realization, and then I woke up.
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This Is Not the Original Starbucks

If There Is A God How Come We Don’t All Know About It?

The question in the title is simple and obvious but it doesn’t seem to get dealt with very much, at least not out in the open. Think about it: a one true deity (or 40, or 50 of them, depending on your version), all powerful, all knowing, always there at all times. Creator and destroyer, best friend and worst enemy. With a plan and a morality and a penal code for breaking commandments. The original source and the final destination. Wouldn’t we all know about it? Wouldn’t we all get born knowing? In the real world everybody knows about the wind, and the rain, and the sunset. It’s just there. Wouldn’t we also know about god? We all know that it hurts to get hit with a brick. Wouldn’t we also know about a great supernatural personality hovering right there over our shoulders?

Why do we have to be convinced? And why do those who are already convinced have to re-convince themselves over and over again? Are they afraid they’ll forget? Why is the most dangerous tool in the devil’s arsenal The Doubt? Isn’t the doubt just the first foot in the door to discovery? Wouldn’t we still have small pox if somebody didn’t doubt that it was incurable? Wouldn’t we still have slavery if some people hadn’t doubted that it was the natural order of things? And am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that Christians take credit for abolition when the institution itself was biblically sanctioned? Isn’t it almost impossibly crazy that slavery is both scripturally endorsed and condemned? Can you really have it both ways if you believe strongly enough?

Mother Teresa explained in diary how her purpose in Calcutta was to harvest souls for Jesus. She wasn’t there to heal the sick, or to alleviate their suffering. She didn’t even give people any pain medication. All they had was aspirin. And it wasn’t for of lack funds - when she got sick she got heart surgery and a pace maker. But treatment for the poor of Calcutta was never her intension. She was harvesting souls. And for that to happen people had to die first. That’s why she baptized them at the last minute. But again, if there is only one true story, one true god, why the baptism? What are they baptizing you away from? What other story are they protecting you from?



In the Bible, in Luke 19:27, King James version, Jesus is quoted as saying, “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.” Is this really the Prince Of Peace? Damn! You could use a quote like that to do all sorts of damage. Columbus, the Inquisition, Salem. And you could truly say that you were a follower of Jesus. Yes you could! Pat Robertson is not a fake Christian, he is true to the fold. As was Jerry Falwell. You can wring your hands and ask for clarity, you can blame it on the translation, but the fact remains: these are the words that are attributed to the Lamb Of God in the book which was written by the Hand Of The Almighty. Scary, isn’t it?

I’ve been doing a lot of digging into this stuff over the past few years, as you can probably tell. I was raised agnostic and quite naturally became atheist over time. Anything else is embarrassing. It’s like walking through a smoky hall of mirrors, a land that is reflective of our own real world but does not actually connect to it. It informs the opinions and values of many of our fellow travelers but does not ever truly affect either the outcome or the beginnings of our situational existence. As far as I can tell religion by itself amounts to almost nothing. People gaze into the interior of colored Easter eggs and see angels. That’s fine. But when religion partners with politics, when it gets in bed with the State with all of its police, courts, armies, and so on – all of its thug force - now it becomes dangerous. Now we have the Dark Ages.



Billy Graham was the official State Magician of America for years. He ministered to several successive administrations. Whenever there was a war he was in the White House on his knees with the President praying for the success of the bombing raids. He had weekly lunches with Ronald Regan, talking about the end times, looking for signs in Middle Eastern affairs that would signal the approach of Armageddon. A nuclear war, they knew – and they said as much – would be good for god’s plan. It would bring on the Second Coming. Why was Billy Graham not publicly denounced as a dangerous psychopath? Is religion really that strong?

I think I might have an insight. I remember reading about a photographer back in the 1800s who traveled extensively throughout the West taking pictures. Sometimes it got dangerous. When they asked him how he kept safe he told then that if he found himself surrounded by hostiles he would play crazy and they would let him alone. There seems to be a universal human taboo against hurting crazy people. I used it myself once in New York City, 40 years ago. It was just instinct. I was surrounded by young toughs on a deserted street with no help in sight. One of them had a knife, I had nothing. So I played crazy, it felt like the right thing to do and it was. After a short harassment they left me alone. Is this what religion does? Do we tolerate madmen and obvious charlatans because they have faith? Do we feel sorry for them the way that we feel sorry for people with mental disabilities? Is it a no-go area like making fun of retarded people? It certainly seems so. When a devout person makes an obviously stupid faith-based comment most people get a little quieter and change the subject. Do the faithful do this on purpose?

Again, I am suggesting that religion itself is nothing, and nothing to worry about. It is the political power that counts. And I think that for the purposes of overall progress and the advancement of the human condition it is correct, at least at this point, to continue to use tolerance in the presence of such belief. But we must we very careful about where to draw the line. Religion should under no circumstances be allowed to infiltrate into our national affairs. They should stop swearing in Presidents on the Bible, they should stop opening congressional sessions with prayer, and they should take all magical references off of our money and documents. The State, if nothing else, must be atheist. In over 200 years we have elected no one other than male Christians. We finally have a black man in the White House, and that’s good. Some day a woman. Maybe some day a Buddhist, a Jew, a Hindu, even (gasp) a Muslem. Some day a lesbian, some day an openly gay man. And some day, some day an atheist.

A parting shot: One day about 20 years ago I stopped to get gas a local convenience store. A banjo player friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in ages suddenly stepped out of a blu van on the other side of the pump. He was wearing grease stained overalls and his hands were real dirty. Donny,” I said, “I haven’t seen you in ages, how are you? What you been doing?” “I just finished putting a new transmission in that van. I’ve been taking care of those two wonderful men,” he said, motioning toward the two figures in the van. “They are so wonderful! They don’t use money. They live entirely on faith!” “Donny,” I said, “you just did hours of work for them for nothing. At an auto shop it would have cost real money. They don’t live on faith – they live on labor like everybody else.” He looked at me like I just didn’t understand. And I still don’t

It’s like coming out of the cave after a long winter. There are still shadows everywhere, long solid arcs of darkness obscuring the countryside. We hear sounds but we can’t see what they are. We imagine things. We are prey to the carnivores. We stick close to the fire, we are afraid of the dark. But the sun is rising now and the day is getting light. The shadows are receding and the sounds are only the falling leaves or running squirrels. Disease is no longer demon possession, witch doctors are obsolete. We know that we are not the center of the universe, that there is no malevolent intelligence directing the floods and the earthquakes. We can take these ancient weights off of our shoulders and stand up straight. What a relief