This is not a church. It's a story. And really stories are all we are.
This story began a while back. There was an episode. I'll go into more details of the episode in another chapter but, for the introduction, we'll just call it the episode, maybe a brainstorm. The time when everything changed. And during this episode I felt the presence of a, or more correctly now the, divine, maternal creator, the creator of our universe. I am very aware that this could easily, and maybe most likely, be a construct of my mind based on a multitude of factors, possibly including drink and drugs, but, for the purposes of the story and for me personally it was divine. Now a divine presence has no gender, and I believe is unimaginable, outwith our thought process, but, again, for the purposes of the story we're going to use 'she', and for brevity, and familiarity, let's call 'her' 'mum' - mom, mama, maman and similar all work too, a child's first words? - that sounds like one of mum's jokes. I felt the love of the divine and her desire to nourish her creation, see us develop and evolve, she would have what we could call 'maternal' instincts towards her creation. Are we not, essentially, a matrilineal species, all created by our mothers? That's why 'mum' seemed right - maternal leaning - the idea of an old authoritarian man with a long beard never really rang true.
Back to the story. I felt mum's presence and felt her love for humanity, how she wanted us to live together in peace and harmony, to cooperate, to progress, to love or at least tolerate each other. She celebrates the progress humanity has made as we have evolved from animals and created stories to explain our existence. She inspires the stories we tell and the most important of those stories, the ones written or spoken that have lasted through the centuries, the religious stories, at their fundamental level were so similar - empathy, social harmony and personal integrity - love your neighbour, help the poor, weak and marginalized, welcome the stranger, the Golden rule, honesty. But she also explained where we'd be going wrong because throughout history almost all the stories were written and passed down by men. Nobody listened to the women's stories, or the stories of the powerless. As those stories were recorded, the men imagined that gods would be like them - wanting power and worship and riches, they called them kings and lords and created control and punishment when all the stories were really about love and empathy. When all the stories warned against a greed for power and riches. Then men created organisations and hierarchies to spread their stories, and again they forgot about the women, excluded them, only men can understand the stories, only men can understand the divine. The irony, the arrogance. So many of the stories preached against greed for power and riches, and so many made it about power and riches and conflict. Divide and conquer.
So mum is the main character in this story, the creator and ongoing nurturer of the universe. She guides and inspires us through art, literature, music, science and culture - to progress - and so much of that inspiration is about love. She's not neutral, she wants us to choose good over greed, love over fear, cooperation over conflict, and she knows that eventually we will find the right path. Civilisation is not a competition about acquisition, it's an understanding that humanity progresses when we work together and cooperate. We can celebrate the beautiful, multicultural diversity of humanity, let our ideas for progress compete, but cooperate with our fellow human beings. Most people just want to enjoy a peaceful life, family, friends, culture, sport, music art. Those are the things that make life worth living for most people. Those are the things we should celebrate and share. Curiosity is also what defines us a species, we want to know about other people, learn about other cultures, learn from each other, share. That is fundamental, share. Philanthropy is good, hoarding is wrong, so, so wrong at the moment, and not just wrong but corrupting of society. It's all around. Those are the ones mum really scorns, or maybe pities is better, are the ones that think you win the game by getting the most power and money, all of humanity we have been warning against this - we should be sharing power, spreading power as widely as possible so we can all just live and enjoy our lives, tell our own stories. Mum likes stories. I like to think that she's written the best story ever, the story of humanity and the universe.
So, if you've got this far, this is just one part of the story, there's lots of other exciting things that have happened since the episode. angels with demons, madness and sanity, love, connections and a lot of weirdness. There's already bits of the story out there in comments and posts and messages, I like to think of the story as cross-media art project haha - bits here and there, some of it sitting in files yet to be read, lots of it yet to be written, and the bits already out there, the posts and messages and replies and interactions all becoming part of the story, part of the bigger story. And, if you like the story, you can interact with it, become part of it. I remember that's what I always wanted as a kid, o be able to be part of the story I was reading. We are the stories we tell ourselves. For me it's like a big puzzle, a hidden 'conspiracy' even, #panon. The story is ongoing and I'm not sure when it will end, but mum did promise me a happy ending. I haven't figured out what that means yet.
In the blog I've posted some chats with AI that helped the story become a little clearer as I was pretty sketchy on the history when the story started. Maybe you'll find them interesting.
#churchofmum #spreadthelove