Belief Percentages

non-subject: dark spell
AWW ~ 1/26/11
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"God is light and in Him is no darkness at all."

Thus states the Bible in the Book of I John, chapter 1, verse 5.

As I write, my body tenses. My breathing stops. I tell myself to relax.

Why does writing out "God is light and in Him is no darkness at all" cause me to get tense?

Perhaps the answer is because I am letting go of certain long-held beliefs.

I took a "belief" quiz today; I had taken the same quiz twoish years ago. Two years ago, the quiz graded me as 80-something percent Protestant; with a leaning toward the conservative side, I think.

Today, the quiz graded me as 100% Secular Humanist. I was a little surprised, at least on the "secular" part; not so much on the "Humanist" part. I was definitely surprised at the 100%.

I don't know what I'll be two years from now.

"God is light and in Him is no darkness at all."

How can one know there is light without darkness? What is darkness?

Darkness doesn't mean pitch black, though it could. Typically though, we don't experience pitch black. I guess maybe with our eyes closed. But when my eyes are closed, I don't notice the darkness. My mind plays. Even when I used to meditate, I felt a voidness and fullness at the same time. But I wouldn't call it pitch black.

In darkness there are shadows.

I guess if a person is blind, they experience pitch black.

Yet even if one can't see, one can feel and hear and smell.

Darkness has gotten a bad wrap.

In my previous belief system as a true believer of the Bible, I equated darkness with death, with "negative" experiences. Darkness was being "out of fellowship with God," not being in the light. Darkness was a distorted view, taking away the colors of life fully lived.

It must have been around the year 2000. Myself, my ten-year old son, and my twelve-year old daughter were camping at Standing Indian Campground in the Nantahala National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. It must have been springtime, during the week as opposed to a weekend. The campground was sparsely populated. Because we home schooled, we were able to visit places when crowds were thin.

We were staked right across from a water supply spigot; a straight steel pipe came up about two feet out of the ground with a crook and faucet at the top. A one-stall shower house wasn't far away.

Campsites at Standing Indian were placed far enough from one another, with thick patches of woods between the sites, that we couldn't see or hear the people in the site below us.

2:00 AM I awoke to the sound of something crashing.

I lay completely still, getting my bearings. I was camping. My son lay asleep on my right, my daughter on my left in our tent designed to supposedly sleep six bodies.

What in the hell was that, I wondered. Was it a pop-up camper falling off the mountainside? Oh my gosh.

My eyes opened. It was pitch black, the darkest I ever recall. I put my hand in front of my face with my palm touching my nose. I could see absolutely nothing.

I lay still.

"Did anyone else hear that?" I stated aloud expecting no response as my son's soft snoring floated through the darkness.

"Yes," my daughter answered.

Surprised that she had awakened to the sound, I asked, "What in world was it?"

"Maybe it was a tree falling." my daughter stated.

"Ah. You're probably right. It sounded like a BIG tree."

We lay still in the silence.

"It's really dark," we both agreed.

Nantahala. A Cherokee word that means, "Land of the Noonday Sun." Yet, every night it gets dark, a canopy for creatures. A quiet through which giant trees slice, making known their presence.

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