JUST ANOTHER WEEK IN PURGATORY

Sunday, a day of worship for many.  I went to church when young.  Christian services a block from my home.  My junior year of high school, I was talked into a series of Catechism classes.  Sixty years ago it was obvious to me that something terrible was happening then.  When I spent some time in Oxnard, my brother was president of the Nisei Methodist Church, so I went to various gatherings.  Then on to college, and I long thought Mem Chu (that's Memorial Church if you didn't go to Stanford) was Presbyterian.  However, I just checked, and it is non-denominational.  More and more Protestant churches are converting to this status.

Surveys show that three quarters of Americans believe in God and the Afterlife, that's down from 82% in 2009.  Also too, only 20% go to church with any kind regularity.   I wonder if TV sports programs are to blame.  Interestingly enough, this belief rate in God is "only" 68% worldwide.

But there is a reason for that, as, for one, you don't want to show your religious side in China.  I once gave a lecture in Hangzhou and in ignorance asked how many in the audience believed in God.  There was almost a gasp, for there are people in the room who will report you if you raised your hand.  I hope I did not condemn anyone.

There was a time when I believed in Santa Claus and something like a God.  My parents were Buddhists, but my father seemed heathen.  Around 8 I stopped believing in both, the former more than the latter.  It took me into adulthood for science to completely overwhelm what I now consider to be folk tales.

According to a posting in The Huffington Post:

The more education a person receives, the more likely that person is to become an atheist. Nonbelief also increases with intelligence and income. Residents of more-educated countries see religion as less important in their daily lives.

Further:

Why do religious people trash some implausible beliefs but keep others? Perhaps they get something out of the beliefs they keep. Once a person grows up, their parents no longer shower them with gifts during the holiday season, so they have no particular reason to sustain their credulity concerning Santa Claus, although they do pass on the belief to children.

And:

Why elevate the emotional aspects of religious belief over the cognitive or intellectual ones? One possibility is that religion functions as a form of emotion-focused coping. It provides a defense against life’s difficulties and disappointments.

Finally:

If religion is essentially a mechanism for dealing with unpleasant emotions, it is most useful when life is most difficult, as in disease-ravaged, poverty-stricken sub-Saharan Africa, and least useful when the quality of life is good, as is true of godless Europe.

Japan is kind of an enigma.  When asked in a national poll, 209 million said they were religiously affiliated.  The problem was that was double the total population, for Buddhism, Shintoism and Christianity are well-blended in the culture.  However, in a Gallup poll on atheism, 57% said they were religiously unaffiliated.  What has happened is that everyone participates in ceremonies, festivals and the like, but the education system sowed considerable doubt about the reality of religion.  I've asked innumerable people there what they thought about an afterlife, and the overwhelming majority seemed to agree with me.  At the end, there is eternal gloom.

But I still leave the window very slightly ajar.  If I can some day be convinced that there can be an afterlife, good for me.  Better be pretty compelling, though, and soon.  Thus, I remain mostly mischievous about this Purgatory stuff for levity, hoping anyone reading this with a different belief has a sense of humor.

Soon after I moved into my current seniors' community, I posted:

     COULD 15 CRAIGSIDE BE PURGATORY?

Over the years, I expanded Purgatory to include Waikiki, then, all of Planet Earth.

How can I not be living in Purgatory?  I go to my office on the Manoa Campus, and my car is shaded by rainbow shower trees:

I pick up a chicken and spaghetti bento from Zippy's and enjoy the view at the Diamond Head Lookout:

I go golfing at the foot of Diamond Head.

I come home to an Ox-Tail Soup dinner provided by 15 Craigside, enhanced with more vegetables and ahi sashimi on my lanai:

Pikake and anthurium bloom in my apartment:

For her 80th birthday, Pearl's sister, Doris, dropped off some flowers.  My wife was born in the year of the rabbit.

And, for dinner last night, I had a simple combination of Miyazaki Wagyu Beef with Hawaiian yellow-fin tuna sashimi:

I was watching a Peter Paul and Mary concert, here, Peter singing one of the ultimate Purgatory songs, Puff the Magic Dragon.  Puff lived in a mythical Honah Lee, but many in Hawaii like to think the real-life equivalent is Hanalei on Kauai, where supposedly lives a mythical dragon.

But, oh oh, this hedonism might not exactly be interpreted by the Heaven determinators to be purification.  This would matter if I'm really in Purgatory.  It's all in your belief.







So, if you're still reading this, be assured that you have attained status in my Purgatory, and all you need do is purify yourself to insure for a place in Heaven.  If you pass away and never get there, you won't be conscious to realize your plight.  At least you will  have been psychologically comfortable in the process of getting to Heaven, Hell or eternal gloom.

-
Hurricane Barry came and is now leaving Louisiana, bringing some rain and power outages:

-