religious crisis I'm having a religious crisis of sorts, or a crisis of faith. This morning I dreamed I had a book, a sort of manual written by God that told about Christianity from the point of view of Marxist social consciousness. Obviously religion and activism can exist together, especially if religion plays a quiet role, available in the background as a place of rest. It's good to imagine a clear, still pool filled with cool water, surrounded by forest and all the unselfconscious cycles that are played out there by the moss and the rain and the trees. It's good to have a place of return that is eternal. It's especially needed if one's daily life is one of conscious struggle, of wondering whether the hoped-for final battle will ever come. These are after all apocalyptic times—or so it seems to Americans, whose world-view is disintegrating—and I'm helping to make it that way. Am I just running blindly, in a state of panic, surrounded by demons, unsure of where to go? There must be a place, if only in the mind, that remains untroubled by all this. A Catholic friend of mine used to go on retreats when the confusions of student life and his own flesh became too great. I smirked a little, but I envied him. Planned retreats are better than unwilling ones.
	location: Berkeley, California date: May 1985 average rating: [not rated] your rating (0-10):