Like layers of varnish on an old painting, my culture obscures the beauty of what is real. The innate aspects of beauty fade away, hidden by the constructs that human culture, my culture have layered on my experience.
For me, religion has obscured more of the beauty of my world than any other aspect of my culture. Rather than rely on my experience of ‘what is’, the role of a God has been layered over my experiences. Images from someone’s imagination have put layer upon layer of unreality such that it has become difficult to be absorbed, to become one with what is natural, what is.
I have been urged and taught to look for the unseen hand of an imagined God when I have simply needed to see what is.
My culture, influenced by religious imagination, has taken sexual activity, physical contact, human closeness and covered it with all manner of rules that obscure the simple joy of people being wholly present to one another. Thanks to my teachers, I’ve missed the point for years.
The layers of my culture have become such a demanding distraction that I can scarcely see what is actually there. In the Smokey Mountains, my culture builds a roller coaster on the side of a “natural” hill, turning a thing of beauty into a distracting entertainment. I am surrounded by rules, norms and entertaining distraction.
Does a sculptor ever look at a block of raw stone and penetrate, absorb its natural beauty before chipping away to represent an image that until then only existed in her imagination? Humans have made idols of gold and clay when it would have been more joyful and unifying to stare in wonder at the unshaped gold and mud.
I am daily removing more of the varnish that has kept me at a distance, kept me from the joy of being part of what is actually present. I know that what I have created in my imagination has been keeping me from being at home in what is real.