Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | American Atheist Magazine

The Judas Horse: notes toward an ecological understanding of dying a Christian death.

Article Excerpt
And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious,



most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. --John Steinbeck The crisis of plausibility has rendered our traditional stories unsatisfying in their accounts of how things are, and the crisis of relevance has rendered them inadequate in their judgments about which things matter. These concerns indicate a significant need, both psychological and social, for a new story to provide the means for a transformation of the species on a global scale. --Loyal Rue

A light snow fell as I drove through the morning dark toward my brother's house. I had lived in Utah for much of my life, but now I was a visitor, or a guest, or something for which I have no name. The snow on the road was just deep enough to have captured the tracks of a wandering dog. Naturally, I followed them with my eyes until they had crossed the street and were drifting down the sidewalk I glanced at the sign on the corner and realized that Christian and his old girlfriend Pinto used to rent a house not far from here. That was ten years ago. I turned off of State Street and headed east, already feeling the pull of the past. Carved pumpkin bags filled with leaves grimaced from the side of the road. The last time I saw Pinto alive was in the spring. We were out on the porch drinking beer and watching her cat leap for moths. I can't think of that night without remembering how the breeze in the trees, the stars, and her eyes--half shut and wet with laughter--are still one of the most beautiful and saddest things I have ever seen.

At the time of her death, Pinto and my brother were no longer a couple, but they were still friends, and Salt Lake was such a small city that I would see her from time to time. We were never really close, and yet until recently her death had troubled me. I would often dream about her, and on those occasions I would watch her very closely to learn how she felt about being dead. But I could never tell. The dreams were just too equivocal. Before I learned about their biological origins, I treated dreams as presages or--when the dreams were of dead people--glimpses of the afterlife. I therefore paid special attention to my dreams about Pinto. Might she not reveal secrets of cosmic significance? Contrary to my hopes, the dreams were disquieting. She would never speak, and I would always feel like she was accusing me of some folly or trespass against her memory. Still, I enjoyed the richness of the dreams, so I recorded a few of them in my journal:

(10/92) Flames and vines own this house. I look up through a hole in the floor, the mouth of the house, where tips of fire made their first appearance here. My brother's dead girlfriend is climbing a charred ladder into the sky. She wants me to go with her,...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!