Orange Christmas

I noticed this year that it seems like a lot more people are stringing up orange lights for Halloween.

Not just on the porch with a few Jack O' Lanterns and some stretched-out cotton ball webs. But into the bushes and up near the roof.

It was a lot like Christmas tonight.

In more ways than just the lights.

First, there was the woman whose National Guard husband has been in Afghanistan since February and will be home around Christmastime. She simply can't wait. So much so that she's already put up her fully lighted, red-white-and-blue Christmas tree.

But that's not all that got me to thinking about Christmas.

As I walked around the neighborhood tonight, I noticed how so many people had their porch lights on and how so many people were walking around the neighborhood with their children and knocking on doors to accept gifts.

Granted, they were dressed in costumes, and there was a strong contingent of the half-dead oozing puss and blood.

Still, there they were. People opening their doors and giving and knowing each other.

I can't help but wonder why we use this day to open our doors and close our doors on the day that we should open them the most.

'Saying It's All Your Fault Is Just A Sympton Of Narcissism, Because If You Think It's All Your Fault, You Think You're All Powerful'

OK, this is a strange way to get into such a thick subject, but ...

I'm addicted to House, M.D..

Tonight Dr. House met a kid who got into a car crash and died for 97 seconds. It was the best 97 seconds of his life, so much so that he stuck a knife into an electrical socket to see if he could recreate it.

The Dr. House character typically struggles with the existence of God and in fact is written quite witty dialogue in the script to poke fun at God and those who are inclined to believe in God.

So, Dr. House decided to stick a knife in a socket, too. To see what it's all about.

He's an atheist, you'd think. But he regularly shows faint signs of seeking. Which is something.

The knife-in-the-socket-thing didn't do it for him.

Oh well, on to my point ...

I'd be the first to tell you that it's difficult to imagine an afterlife of ornately ordained castles with clouds for floors and streets paved with gold as you listen to praise music focused mainly singing about how we should spend all our time on our knees.

(No thanks, I guess. Unless the other option is ultimate oblivion. Somehow I hold out hope that I could smuggle in a few Rage Against The Machine CDs and launch a battle to change the culture of a heaven like that).

Here's the thing:

I'm not really caught up with that.

I realize that, either way, there's no way around what is known. What's known for sure is that my body will return to a physical state of being a self-unaware element of the fabric of the universe.

What happens when a life moves on? What happens in that transfer of energy? Is the sum total of humanity's capacity for awareness of the very workings of the universe just an intangible idea floating in the ether?

What I know -- and, well, I guess I could say I have faith in - is that there is no good explanation for why it's not possible that there is something more. There are explanations for why it might not be likely. Or whyight not be the sure thing that so many people believe it to be based on poorly formed theological arguments.

I think humans trip over their own guilt and embarrassment when we come these realizations -- that seem enlightening at the time -- that we're really not as important as we think we are.

Indeed, we cannot escape our humanity, such an awkward state of being for a living creature as aware as we are.

But who says we're not important? Because we're such a small part of everything?

The expanse of the universe no longer frightens me. Its magnitude is only relative to my perception of distance and time.

I just know that I'm a part of it.

This is certainly not a new concept.

But feeling it instead of thinking it is new to me.

I look beyond the tapestry of the sky and I see it and I feel it.

And I know this, and it comforts me:

We are all in this together.

Everybody. And everything.