Life's Long Day

TGBaker
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Life's Long Day

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Life’s Long Day

Of what worth Man's sleep without its dream
That sleep for which Life does scheme?
Is it that all consuming veil
 From whence the conscious mind does fail?

And what purpose that noble rest
Not to wake from mortal nest
And to fly from Life's Long Day
Off finite shore to eternal bay?

For is Man's quest for an Evermore
Merely a religious chore
To bide his time 'til Life has past
To prepare his soul to meet its last?

Or is man's ebb an awakening
To prepare him his reckoning
Of his mortal stay so brief
At last to greet his soul's relief?

"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa

http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism


Brian37
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Nice flow to it.A poem about

Nice flow to it.

A poem about struggling with our mortality, I presume.

But, not sure what to make of the message. Is it that we should accept our mortality and skip the fictional afterlife stories?

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


TGBaker
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Brian37 wrote:Nice flow to

Brian37 wrote:

Nice flow to it.

A poem about struggling with our mortality, I presume.

But, not sure what to make of the message. Is it that we should accept our mortality and skip the fictional afterlife stories?

Thanks. I wrote it right out of high school.  It is the struggle.  I think you point to the important element at least for me then and now. We want the answer about death when really the god answer and the no-god answer can be very comforting.  Actually the no-god answer seems better in the sense you get to sleep in forever ( soul's relief).  The theist idea of being in heaven and having an enlightenment where you can take joy in the eternal punishment of others really has pissed me off over the years. Now that I have children the idea that I could rejoice with god at his burning a child of mine eternally compels me to conclude if there is such a god I would choose to be with my child.  Given the inevitable increase of suffering in the world and with old age the eternal rest (non-being) seems a more moral conclusion to life's story ( your life as a finished book) than an eternal bowing to a despot and agreeing to large scale torturing of disobedient people.  When you really look at life (not for most of us fortunate westerners) life is mostly pain and suffering. death and pain is constantly occurring throughout the world , natural disasters, intentional rape, torture and cruelty to large numbers of people. If we were really to be aware of what is going on constantly throughout the world our natural empathy as humans would drive us to mental illness. We therefore live our lives through attention to minor pleasures (a movie, a good scotch, beer, enjoying our friends and family) while there are untold screams of agony echoing around the world as an unending choir of pleading unanswered by us. This is my old hippie politics. And I find no politician or political system that really gives a damn.

 

 

"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa

http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism


Brian37
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 Without all the wordyness

 

Without all the wordyness to your explanation, there really is no "struggle", there are merely people who don't want to face the fact that this is all there is and that we are finite.

But you do bring up points we bring up all the time. The idea that this life is all about kissing one guys ass and if you don't you get, not only not to hang out with him, but you get tortured forever. That is a sick and immoral concept as a claim.

Once it is over, it is over. No human morns the rotting of a leaf, and the leaf doesn't live to worship a tree god or else burn in a tree hell. The sun doesn't worship a sun god, and when it dies won't be tortured by a sun god.

We are here for the time we are here, and just like the leaf, we too shall pass and be forgotten in this huge cosmos.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


TGBaker
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Brian37 wrote: Without all

Brian37 wrote:

 

Without all the wordyness to your explanation, there really is no "struggle", there are merely people who don't want to face the fact that this is all there is and that we are finite.

But you do bring up points we bring up all the time. The idea that this life is all about kissing one guys ass and if you don't you get, not only not to hang out with him, but you get tortured forever. That is a sick and immoral concept as a claim.

Once it is over, it is over. No human morns the rotting of a leaf, and the leaf doesn't live to worship a tree god or else burn in a tree hell. The sun doesn't worship a sun god, and when it dies won't be tortured by a sun god.

We are here for the time we are here, and just like the leaf, we too shall pass and be forgotten in this huge cosmos.

yep

"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa

http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism