An adobe evening
For me, adobe walls bathed in soft evening or morning sunlight seem to have a magical quality, a soothing quality. One of the places that MJ told me to go be sure to see was the Carmel Mission. I took his advice and am glad that I did. Perhaps it’s a certain wavelength of light that causes deep thoughts, who knows.
I walked onto the mission grounds. There was an evening Mass in progress. As I walked past the door of the basilica, I could hear the faithful do their chants, many of which I still remember from my days attending Catholic church. This caused me to pause and think back to when I used to attend church, fully because of fear of what might happen to me if I didn’t. From my earliest recollection, I was forced to attend church. Usually, especially when I was in high school, I would do whatever I could to get out of going. Soon, my parents relented and I was not forced to attend. After I moved out, I didn’t attend church again for many years, until I met a girl that I dated for a while who attended Catholic church. Then, I was going to go with her, not because I believed or wanted to go. At least in Catholic church, Mass was only about an hour, as compared to my Baptist upbringing where church was a solid two hours, minimum.
After passing the basilica, I sat in the courtyard reading my latest book, The Four Agreements, by Jose Luis Ruiz. In the introduction, he talks about rules. Rules come from society, from our parents, aunts, uncles, etc. When we are born, we are born much the same as other animals, with only an instinct, if you will. There are no predefined rules. However, as soon as we are born, the rules start to be applied. You learn the rules of your language. You learn the rules of your church. You learn the rules of your culture, etc. You get rewarded for following the rules set forth, punished for disobeying, All through life, rules, rules, rules. Now, some might say that rules help to keep a society in order. I would agree that rules are necessary because people don’t love themselves very much, if they did, they couldn’t conceive of hurting another in any way, therefore making rules archaic. There would not be a need.
I once heard a story of a woman who used to cut off the ends of her ham before she put it in the oven. When asked why she did it, she said that’s what her mother taught her and her grandmother taught her mother, etc. After some digging, it was discovered that the ends of the ham were cut off long ago because it wouldn’t fit into the small oven that her ancestors owned. So, here for generations, they were following, blindly, an archaic rule without knowing why. We have many such unquestioned rules and each time we execute one of them that is against our own values, we get a nervous feeling. However, if we don’t follow the rule, we feel guilty. If we’d listen to our own internal compass, we’d find that that particular rule does not fit within our own values.
A bit of time for meditation
My example: Vera, my wife, is from Brazil, a country with very strong Catholic underpinnings. When we got married, we couldn’t get married in a Catholic church, because each of us had been married before and didn’t have an annulment. Rules of The Church. For years, we attended Mass nearly every Sunday, took our kids through the rites of passage in the Catholic church, even sent them to a Catholic school. Then, one day, the walls came tumbling down. I proclaimed to my wife that I would no longer attend any church at all. I explained to her that I didn’t believe in God and that there was no point in attending church. She tried, at the time, to convince me to attend ‘just in case’. I refused. This left my family dazed and confused for a bit. My wife continued, for a while, to attend church for her own reasons, we opted to let the kids decide if they wanted to attend. They chose not to. Now, none of us attend. We all have our own individual beliefs and it is what works for our family. We don’t adhere to the slogan: The family that prays together, stays together. My wife still likes to go to the Catholic church and meditate or pray when she has the opportunity. She says that it brings her peace.
Attending church had always seemed fraudulent to me. You see, this was one of those things upon which I had formed a belief, but was afraid to act upon. I never believed, but here I was, a big ole hypocrite, sitting in the pew each and every Sunday, reciting the lines, doing the ‘right’ thing, which was really the ‘expected’ thing. Now, I have freedom to chose … true free will. Now, at this point in time, I immerse myself in the Tao. If you read some of the parables of the Bible and compare them with the Tao, they are nearly identical in content. The Bible, however, has a powerful deity, the Tao has none.
I am not speaking out against religion at all. As this was the most significant change in my life, to date, I just thought that I’d share it as an example of how we can follow rules, unquestioned, and get lost. The same applies to photography. In reading some blogs, I see that there is such a desire to follow certain rules to gain acceptance for one’s pictures, etc. Why have those rules at all? Rules lead to judgment. IMHO, there is no absolute right nor wrong. Those things only come into existence when we create them. Creating a ‘right’, automatically creates a wrong. Creating a pretty, creates an ugly, a tall, a short, a wide, a narrow. All things must be measured to be understood by the mind. The mind seldom seems to be satisfied with what is, needing instead to solve problems where they don’t exist and categorize things that don’t need it.
As I said: Soft light, adobe walls, and deep thoughts…
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