Manchmal ist ein Vogel wirklich nur ein Vogel

[muckefuck]

"I hope I'm not offending you, Maureen, but to me religion creates fear where there's nothing to fear...and it gives you hope when, actually, there's nothing to hope for.'"

When I read this line in Finbar's Hotel, I figured the speaker must be paraphrasing someone. So far, though, I haven't been able to find a close match. It's not a particularly original thought but I don't know that I've ever seen it formulated so neatly before. My first thought on reading this was, Not just "religion", but spirituality in general. It immediately recalled to me the widows in my online groups and their desperation for "signs".

I had a "sign" just the other day: several times I woke up or came home to find the thermostat had been reset to 76°F. The first time it happened, I just assumed I'd mistakenly turned it down instead of up (since 66° is a plausible temperature for me to set it to). By the third time I knew something was up. When he was sick, Monshu was always cold and we had the heat jacked up for him. Could he be tampering with the thermostat from beyond the grave?

I tried cycling through the settings, but that didn't fix it. Eventually I figured out that what must have happened is that I'd inadvertently switched it from "MAN" (for "manual") to "PROG" (for "program") and that 76° was a setting presumably created by the previous owners (obviously some species of lizard people). Monshu and I had never bothered to pre-programme it ourselves, which is why it took so long for the meaning of "MAN" and "PROG" to finally dawn on me.

Yesterday someone posted about a cardinal flying into his window. Stunned, it let him pick it up, and then flew away again. He asked for thoughts and the response was predictable, people falling over themselves to proclaim it a sign from a dead spouse. I contented myself with responding "I think cardinals are very pretty but they aren't very bright". That is, dumb enough to fly into a window and colourful enough to capture our attention (and our imagination) when they do.

That's all--a dumb bird flying into a pane of glass he never evolved to avoid. Nothing left to hope for and yet, like a dumb bird flying into a pane of glass, you persist.