A Philosophy of Life

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 1

A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

Simple Spirituality

K W Covington

The simplest things may touch the greatest truths APhilosophyOfLife.com © Copyright, Pseudonymous, 2003


CONTENTS

One: For the Lost and the Wondering Two: The Comfort of Location Three: Our Rainbow of Beliefs Four: Our lost Simplicity Five: Nurturing Six: Freedom Seven: Assurance and Uncertainty Eight: Finding our Best Selves Nine: The Prospect of God’s Existence Ten: If God may not Exist Eleven: Acceptance and Appreciation Twelve: Must be so and Might be so Thirteen: The Propositions Fourteen: Toward Genuineness and Unity

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 3I

FOR THE LOST and THE WONDERING

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e were made to wonder. We wonder at our world and ourselves. Historically, we humans have always been intrigued by our supernal thoughts. We see that our very existence is immensely remarkable—even implausible. Still, this world happened somehow, so we wonder what else might be happening that is just as profound. Could scenes as amazing

as these continue beyond mortal sight? Does life have incumbent rules? Do we have souls that survive death? We are like orphans in search of our origins; we seek deeper explanations and occasionally our efforts reward us beyond words. Yet at other times, in the hard realities of living, we feel betrayed.

For some it’s religion that fails us. The resulting dismay has been expressed by such popular phrases as: “You can believe without belonging.” or, “You must separate spirituality from religion.” When shaken by spiritual pain, it’s common for people to question their past and, in doing so, to occasionally find that their former devotions, even if intense, were never really secure. • At one extreme their commitments may have been driven by social conceits and airs of

cultural superiority. “We alone are the chosen,” they once told themselves, but this satisfaction was prejudiced and eventually felt childish and shallow. It often said, “Others must be inferior.”

• At another extreme their commitments may have been driven by imposed fear, undue shame

or desperate needs for belonging. A mass zeal for conformity and obedience once offered relief and a semblance of love, but the underlying lesson was this: “You must lie in order to be loved.” Over time this message brought self-alienation, rejection and despair. “I can’t truly be me.” it said, “For the real me is unworthy to others of importance.”

For many disillusioned souls such assaults on their trust, including crimes, end in excessive

cynicism, denial or depression. Some grieve that their inner and outer selves are no longer the same—or never were. Others are consumed by bewilderment, guilt or rage.

Regardless, all are souls starving for genuineness.

Principled genuineness is personal integrity often driven by the hope for inner renewal and peace. It is a gravitation to the center of the soul where no substantial inconsistencies are found, only a trueness of being that remains whole regardless of time or place. Independence, healing and good conscience reside here. In this protective home abusive guilt and cultural conceits are finally powerless, and the pain they once inflicted—give or take—is kindly absolved.

Whether it’s religious discouragement that provokes this journey or personal hope, today we’ll address the search for genuineness. And we’ll begin in an unlikely place.


II

THE COMFORT OF LOCATION

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magine a traditional surveyor as he whistles through the fields balancing a tripod and transit on his shoulder (this before G.P.S. technology). The surveyor’s goal is to say with confidence, “This is where I am, and this is how I got here.” Whether it’s physical or philosophical, the need to establish one’s location is ageless. It’s primal evidence of a developing culture or child, but no

person or society is perfect and matters occasionally get confused. Typically a crisis confronts the real world with the ideal. These dilemmas are only notable by their degree however; maturity is the life-long process of reconciling desire with reality.

Here’s how the surveyor handles things. After admitting he’s lost, he returns as far as necessary to a monument. A surveyor’s monument is a point of established certainty, a heavy stone or cast metal set in the ground. Usually it’s engraved with an x that literally markets the spot. From this point it’s possible to move forward again with the greatest confidence at hand. To avoid making the same mistakes twice, however, the surveyor may try a different rout to the destination, or replace his equipment. The simplest rout is desirable because it holds the fewest opportunities for error. Changing equipment can be useful for detecting flaws.

Our application to genuineness is this: • Face the reality of your condition • Determine your monuments • Seek simplicity • Challenge prejudices by trying new methods, tools and ideas • Move forward again with a fresh, optimistic attitude

It’s important to know that monuments are the most dependable knowledge at hand, even if they feel disagreeable. For instance, admitting your own contribution to your problems is an indispensable monument. Monuments are also those things that have great meaning to you, perhaps art, or nature, athletics, science, relationships, or your life’s ambition—things that say, “This is who I truly am.” Monuments aren’t just facts alone, they are also dependable methods for dealing with facts.

Basically, monuments are those places that hold your greatest certainty, whether that

certainty is comforting or disquieting. One method for finding Monuments is by asking these two classic questions: “What do I really know?” and “How do I sensibly deal with the rest?” The rest is a mixture of what you don’t know, and what you can’t know. This process also helps you realize when you are pretending to know or be things that truly aren’t so. With these facts firmly in hand, the goal is to find and match your pertinent needs with your available resources.

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 5 In this search, simplicity and open mindedness are welcome aids. Simplicity keeps you from

worrying about the wrong things and asking the wrong questions. Following an avalanche of information the most useful question is: “What is it that I don’t need to know?” Simplicity removes the camouflage of non-useful details and reduces the hindrance of purely self-interested parties. With this burden gone you can be more receptive to your options and see past yourself. Eliminating prejudices opens your mind, assists your intuition, and vastly widens the universe of opportunities.

Candor and receptiveness are vital here. In the right setting, and with the help of good

friends, they can open miraculous windows. This atmosphere is Principled Genuineness, which says: “If I am honest but happen to be wrong, I will position myself to become educated. On the other hand, if I am honest and happen to be right, I will educate others.” Both are mutually beneficial. Often it’s more important to be honest than to be correct. Without candor, social pressures for “correctness” may overpower all else so education becomes neither the objective nor the outcome. Recall grade school when teachers ask who doesn’t understand the lesson. Students’ eyes shift about but their hands freeze. As a result, neither students nor teachers benefit. Alternatively, candor is a form of enthusiastic, preemptive hand raising. When shared in the trust of common needs this experience can be one of the most enlightening and liberating adventures imaginable—a flight of mutual discovery.

Still, it isn’t always easy. Sorting out issues of truth can be immensely challenging to say the least; it has consumed civilization since the beginning. Nevertheless, you’re entitled to your own sovereign turn. Your very need to search implies that the past, no matter how extensive and revered, still hasn’t brought completeness to the present. Consequently, you have the right to discover your own truths and, if necessary, to do so regardless of tradition, conventions, or domineering people. The world may surround you with highly intimidating achievers, but these authorities often contradict each other and they too have their failures. Considering this, you may freely find yourself without defending your way to anyone. You too have the right to be right. As imposing as others might seem, none was born less naked than you—and none can possibly know you better than you.

A good aim of Principled Genuineness is finding reliable inner and outer perspectives. Most of the solution is probably within yourself, the rest you may find in trusted friends and professionals, including those you meet in literature. In all cases though courage is required—courage to seek reality, courage to face adversity and society, courage to change, and courage to realize that even when searching for purely intimate truths, there may be no full guarantee of success. Still, the rewards of genuineness, even if approximate, can be immeasurable and the better the plan, the better the odds. Start where the starting is best.


III

OUR RAINBOW OF BELIEFS

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espite the disappointment of some people, many others find that organized religion plays a vital and rewarding role in life. It provides structure, kinship and a practical stage for shared beliefs. It is a way of linking arms and approaching the world with confidence. Many devout souls are fortunate and when their lives are sincere and beneficial to society, they

deserve all our respect. This is their Principled Genuineness and to them religion is imperative. But as we have seen, everyone does not finally benefit from organized faiths in this same way. When religious dissonance does occur, it’s common to think in terms of failure—either failure of the institution, or failure of the person. In these unfortunate contests it is the individual who often suffers most, and unfairly.

Unfair because it’s prejudicial to assume that religious people alone can find spiritual or personal fulfillment. In reality, there are many non-religious ways for relating to God or otherwise finding purpose in life. It can even be argued that this is manifest by creation itself. If God’s existence and will were meant to be organizationally explicit, God could have literally written those terms in the stars above for all to see, or better still to physically rule among us. Certainty would be ours—and inescapably so. Yet God is doing nothing of the sort. Instead, what we find is the very absence of such divine incontrovertibility. At first we may shiver at this thought, yet precisely because it is factual, it provides a good monument. The absence of divine certainty can be interrupted in at least two ways:

First—God may not exist

Second—If God does exist, that God may be giving us great freedom for our spirituality

Later we will deal with the idea that God may not exist. For now though, we’ll examine the

view that we’ve been given a world of ways to find spirituality and meaning in life. This view invites us to imagine God spreading a banquet of useful beliefs before us. From this array we might happily suit our productive lives to the tastes of our own free will. In order to provide us with this banquet, God may be granting us mortal freedom in exchange for mortal certainty. If this is so, there might be a divine necessity for the grand mystery we now experience—and perhaps a divine nurturing as well. Mysteries can be exciting. They can also be educational. Perhaps God has a good reason for hiding.


God’s Mountain The Japanese have a beautiful saying: There are many paths up Mount Fuji. Using this

metaphor we can picture God hovering above the great mountain of creation which is wisely adorned with countless sides, and surfaces, and human challenges. As God’s children we can be pictured moving upward, each of us improving ourselves on that particular path which best suits our personal needs and abilities. This means that even though we may not see or understand each other’s chosen way, we could still be on the same journey, and on the same mountain, yet mostly unaware. Some of us may climb by way of science, some by religion or mysticism or magic, some as artists, as athletes, as politicians, mechanics, gardeners, actors, or comedians.

If we choose to take this attitude, we could decided that all upward effort is spiritual effort,

and therefore all who improve and move upward are justified. This offers rapport for those who do not believe in deity. Of course atheists can contribute to the collective journey and it would be a divine decision how God regards them, not ours. After intentionally hiding, God might even have sympathy for the atheists’ conclusions, or see the purity in such travel that proceeds ethically without aspirations for divine reward or fear of divine punishment. We might also be considerate of those souls living on the fringes of society; God alone sees through their eyes. Ultimately, what may please God most is the stunning beauty of human effort and aspiration—wherever it’s found. Truth is a seed that can grow in many diverse gardens. Consequently, of those who earnestly climb, there may be no spiritual superiority on God’s mountain, just specializations.

This could explain why God populates our earth with this wide spectrum of skills, backgrounds, worldly circumstances and access to knowledge. Privileged or poor, acculturated or remote, each of us may have an opportunity to fulfill our own portion of the now-unseen Divine Wisdom. The great hope is that the pain and injustices we suffer along the way—the handicaps, the poverty, the illnesses and the crimes—all of these will be taken into account upon reaching the summit.

Still, it’s curious that we endure all of this with so little evidence. Onlookers from another

dimension might gaze in their microscopes and whisper to each other, “They know it’s useless, why do they care?” The answer is faith. This includes those aspects of faith which believers and unbelievers share. Faith is the fact that we persevere so determinedly against the harms we encounter in life. Faith is the fact that we fundamentally trust a journey whose destination we cannot see, or see so faintly from our vantage. Faith is the fact that we can find joy.

Universal Improvement

From this metaphor we might decide that our requisite spirituality is nothing more

complicated than improving ourselves and helping to improve each other. This would include safeguarding our world, for it’s reasonable to ask what all our accomplishments amount to if our environmental home and fellow creatures are endangered. We might decide that whatever the source of its creation, our world and its people are beneficent gifts and that those gifts deserve gracious care.

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 8 Universal Improvement, our mutual upward motion, expresses that gratitude. This work

includes safeguarding good society. Honorable soldiers, police, judicial officers and activists—anyone who protects us from those who would obstruct our climb—serve us in this effort. We are also entitled to defend our own freedom to thrive. Still, upward motion doesn’t always require heroics; small improvements are still improvements and the greatest of accomplishments is comprised of the smallest of details. For the handicapped and those with great hardships, no motion may be apparent from the shore, yet from their view they do move and with strength, for they are rowing against a current. Most of us know when we are honestly trying our best, and we can extend that courtesy to others.

Plain Ethics and Plain Sense

Overall, it’s possible that God has granted all of us an intuition of this simple ethic, then has

given us the privilege of arranging the details as we personally see fit. It’s our shared improvement that counts—not the particular path we select. As plain as this idea is, its austerity is compelling. • Does this simple message need to be seen in the stars overhead in order to be believed? • Does it reject isolated groups that never heard of any “correct” religious creeds? • Does it require arduous searching in distant or secret places? • Does it belong exclusively to one authorized group? • Does it demand deep scholarship? • Does it cost anything?

The answer is no in every case. This philosophy is free, it’s intuitive, and it kneels to embrace the simplest or most secluded souls. It’s exactly what you might expect from a wise God who, from creation’s first curtain, gave earth’s children an inborn script that was sufficiently universal to encompass all the peculiarities of history and geography.


IV

OUR LOST SIMPLICITY

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he reason we may balk, however, is because we’ve been raised to trust complexity, not simplicity. Marketing is responsible for this. The marketplace excels at exclusive claims of “additional features” and “new and improved” ingredients. These are the patented and monopolized details that elevate products above their competition—including religious

competition. In these contests, patrons are often compelled to find the one true franchise of spirituality supremacy (we will refer to these beliefs of supremacy as dogma here). Often too little thought is given to the fact that the supremacy of some can cause the inferiority and demeaning of others—or that civilization’s broad circumstances could never grant all souls an equal chance to make such exacting choices.

Dogma places a special burden of respect and humility on such religions, for if used to

extremes it may impede others who climb God’s Mountain (which we will alternatively call Life’s Mountain to suit believers and unbelievers alike). Conversely, it’s highly commendable when these religions take care to see that no harm materializes. Either way one issue is inescapable: In addition to the crimes and psychological pain inflicted, tyrannical dogma has ignited innumerable wars.

Each follower rightfully decides whether claims of supremacy add or subtract spirituality in

their lives, but when disappointment results, it’s often the latter. This distress is partly the focus of our work today as some search for new perspectives. Perspective is a foremost casualty of supremacy’s thinking. When spiritual simplicity is distained, institutional embellishments can grow more important than the foundations below them. Additionally, when believing is confused with belonging, prevalence can be confused for truth. All this is obvious when things grow too extreme. “If my religion weren’t true,” Some may finally say, “I don’t think I’d believe in anything.” Social conditioning can make the loss of embellishments feel like the loss of foundations—and even the loss of identity. Furthermore, the incessant arguing may lead some to conclude that everyone is wrong. As they recoil from such discoveries, it’s not surprising that even the most devout souls might long for their genuineness.

People who fear that they won’t believe in anything are usually wrong however. The longer

view, seen in a retreat to simplicity, often brings greater clarity to native beliefs. Here, there’s less confusion and greater comfort. Simplification brings spiritual ease because people no longer fear those institutional claims that might go amiss or become discredited. Overall, faith becomes immune to doctrinal susceptibilities or scientific finds. For many disenfranchised souls, the contest for embellishments only brings diminishing returns; it tries to sell a maze of doctrines and rites to overextended people who, in a complex world, have given up just trying to program their video recorders. By contrast, these same souls gain even more freedom of belief combined with the relief of knowing that there are virtually no battles for their underlying simplicity—like air, simplicity is too free and un-branded. This relaxed state refreshes the mind. Plain and peaceful, there’s less to go wrong and more to go right. It’s liberating.

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 10 With their newly found freedom, they find that even regrets become useful. Some may see

that their journey on Life’s Mountain was not always upward—but sometimes sideways—or maybe down. Mistakes happen. This isn’t failure though, just valuable knowledge. Progress often means going up more often than going down, so mistakes and disappointments come with the journey. Seeing this, these sojourners can take downward steps in stride, learn from them, and start again. Taking personal responsibility is remarkably healing. Healthy children come to learn this. Perhaps a Divine Parent already has.


V

NURTURING

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Good Parent—this may be one of our most desirable images of God. It’s why the word Father is so familiar to believers. No one is compelled to view God in this way, but if one chooses, then it’s instructive to ask what a good parent hopes for. Solid nurturing often heads the list. Nurturing means teaching children to be productive and independent so that

they will metaphorically grow wings and fly away, yet occasionally return in love. True, we may not actually know God’s aspirations for us; just the same, most of us readily know our own parental joy: • Children who develop constructive abilities and independence • Children who likewise nurture their siblings and others • Children who demonstrate appreciation for the world and all they have

Most parents hope for Universal Improvement in the next generation. Here we find an

intriguing coincidence—these parental hopes generally agree with widespread reports of Near Death Experiences. These popular stories typically describe a God of unconditional love who, upon the threshold of paradise, asks mortals what they’ve learned in life and how they’ve demonstrated love. A common conclusion is that learning and loving are foremost on God’s mind. Little is said about proper observances and affiliations. While these stories don’t prove God’s existence or will, they can point out some implications of Universal Improvement:

The Possibilities • Educating and Loving Ourselves—God may want children who, in healthy Self-love,

improve themselves as best they can. • Educating and Loving Others—God may want children who, in selfless love, nurture

others and champion their world as best they can.

—Therefore— • Virtue—Might be whatever we do to improve ourselves, our world, and the well being of

our fellow travelers.

• Iniquity—Might be whatever we do to continually thwart our own improvement, the improvement of others, or to abuse our world.


VI

FREEDOM

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reedom is essential to this task. Without freedom of action we wouldn’t be God’s children, but God’s robots. As robots we could never call our efforts our own, thus making any climb on God’s Mountain a mindless herding, not a nurturing journey. Without freedom to deliberate and decide, we could never learn independence or gain wisdom. We could never

become ourselves. As if designed to prevent this, our world is rich with opportunities, choices and

consequences. These consequences, however, say that risk is the price of liberty. In a truly liberated world, freedom must run both ways. • Just as we are free to help or harm others—others are equally free to help or harm us. • Just as we are free to help or harm nature—nature is equally free to help or harm us.

God’s great bargain may be that if we are free to enjoy life’s opportunities, we must also be free to endure life’s perils. And free to reject good parenting at our jeopardy. Consequently, our growth involves considerable danger. Stepping aside and out of sight, God may have granted us the powers of good and evil while exposing us to the inherent gifts and hazards of natural law. In making this harsh choice however, God may be keeping us from being robots.

Self Knowledge

Our identity springs from this freedom. By experiencing the good or bad consequences of our actions we virtually learn to “own ourselves”. This isn’t just learning what actions we own, but how we own them. Mortal solitude shows us who we are by letting us watch ourselves when we think we’re alone. Because virtue is easy when we’re being watched, God may have metaphorically left the room. This act of isolation enables our growth.

It applies to society as well. Truth often surfaces when others are gone, when social

distortions are absent and we are left to be ourselves. One’s true purpose is often found in anonymity. Christ’s biblical suggestion to do alms so that one’s left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing exemplifies this self-knowledge—good or bad. Our private acts expose the truth of our charity, or of our vanity. They expose the fact of our honesty, or of our deceit. They separate our convictions from our pretenses. They disclose our motivations. In all, they tell us who we are and why. These candid scenes reveal our monuments and monuments, pleasant or disturbing, can be places for starting over.


The New Leaf

This raises the issue of forgiveness. A robot programmed by God would never make mistakes and therefore never need forgiveness. For children, however, it’s virtually impossible to learn anything in a flawless way, so remission is essential to education. Knowing this, a good parent helps children transform mistakes into useful knowledge. While evil is an on-going and intentional effort to do unwarranted harm, mistakes are just efforts that are misguided and failed. This attitude is useful for reconciling the past and provides the needed optimism for starting over. One of the most beautiful thoughts—the very essence of hope—is the belief that you can learn from your past and begin again, that you have permission to write a new story on that wondrous blank page.

Imagine a judge and a courtroom where all your sins and regrets are piled high on the bench. The judge asks what you’ve learned from this mess and what direction you will travel now. Following your sincere reply, the order comes to remove the pile to the alleyway to be burned and forgotten. This is learning, recovery—and blessed freedom.

The forgiveness we want for ourselves, we might also want for others. In time God may be that loving judge we envision, but we’re here now. With God’s current absence and questionability, we are left to be the mortal judges on earth—judges to ourselves and advocates for each other. Today we are the ones who must decide what will be burned and forgotten. But how better to gain wisdom?


VII

ASSURANCE and UNCERTAINTY

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rom all of this we might conclude that God is hiding so that we will learn to do things on our own. We might also conclude that mortal solitude and uncertainty help us build independence and character. This is reasonable thinking. Nevertheless, as much sense as this makes, it still doesn’t make complete sense. Consider this inevitable question:

How could a divine parent ever be entirely useful—if totally absent?

As much as we need uncertainty and solitude—we also need assurance and help, yet these needs seem to contradict one another. What might a good parent do?

Parents have always wondered where the line is between helping or hurting their children. It isn’t easy to know. Stepping in and taking over may weaken the child. Stepping away may leave the child too vulnerable. Teachers face a similar problem balancing challenge with rewards. Too much challenge and the student may give up. Too liberal with rewards and the student may lose needed perspective. The struggle is finding that balance which brings optimum growth. As good parents we would strive for the best of all worlds for our children. As children ourselves, we might hope that a nurturing God is doing the same.

Because uncertainty and assurance each have their inherent gifts and burdens, balance is needed. This can be seen by isolating the two so they no longer offset one another. Imagine what our lives would be like if we lived in either world—minus the other.

A World of Absolute Uncertainty

This world provides no sense of celestial wonder. We have no endearing dreams or explanations. Miraculous and comforting manifestations don’t exist. Heaven isn’t even a word. There is no idea of a loving God. No just hereafter. No wisdom beyond life. No sense of impending resolution. Rules seem random or arbitrary. While some of us may function sufficiently in this world, all are deprived of numerous gifts from the rest. With little to believe in and no spiritual incentives, many don’t contribute as they otherwise would. Widespread depression suppresses society’s potential. With nothing beyond life to anticipate, many of us live in unexplainable dejection. Hopelessness is a poor climate for any classroom. In this bleak world, life is not so much a mountain, as a pit.

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 15A World of Absolute Assurance

This world provides total composure. We can literally see God in heaven where a beautiful

and just hereafter awaits. Because perfect justice is assured, we don’t suffer our losses greatly. With little fear of loss, we have less appreciation for our belongings. Because everything is perfect, perfection isn’t apparent. Likewise, eternity seems commonplace without terminality’s contrast. We don’t comprehend Justice without injustice. Without the pain of death we don’t sufficiently value life—it even seems dull. Yet, everything is reliable. The outcome is that we are like spoiled children who don’t know how to take our mortal challenges seriously. Instead we relax knowing that all will be ok in the end. In this classroom of content, learning is nice, but not really necessary. Unearned bliss makes living not so much a challenge, as a pastime.

The Mortal Balance

It’s our good fortune that earth resembles neither of these. Instead it seems to finely balance

both. Science sees the uncertain and willful randomness of quantum physics played against the assuring reliability of classical physics and relativity. Religion sees the assurance of faith and divine revelation played against the uncertainties of mortality and contrary facts. Faith and fact are always in dynamic tension as they challenge, cancel or confirm one another. These intense struggles provoke our intrigue, involvement and knowledge. Nevertheless, society progresses in what may yet prove to be a state of provident stress. Outcome may be the evidence of intent: Perhaps God, as a wise parent, is stepping-in and stepping-away for our good. We may believe this as we please, but our earthly search probably won’t yield any certain answer—only hope—and that is the point in itself: God may be sternly challenging us with uncertainty—then subtly rewarding us with assurance

Our Roles to One Another

More often though, we are God’s surrogates. Imagine beginning a mystery novel only to discover too late that the bindery has inserted the last chapter first and spoiled everything. Likewise, imagine reading one in which resolution is suddenly hopeless because the last chapters are forever missing. This defines exasperation. Conversely, uncertainty and assurance are the push and pull that we use to put zest in each other’s lives. We regularly read and write these roles to one another. In a God-like way, our stories cleverly spin uncertainty and intrigue and then gladly declare assurance and resolution. Our characters, seen and shown, are as varied as our faces and occasionally for fun, we switch or share roles. This is one way we mutually teach and learn. How we climb Life’s Mountain.

The implications extend from here to the hereafter. Many Near Death Experiences and some

religions say that we learn and develop eternally. This implies that we may take the strengths we gain in this temporal classroom and then apply them to the endless opportunities of immortality. These afterlife hopes are astounding and beautiful; still they are hotly debated and unproven. Instead, the earthly uses of uncertainty and assurance are far more obvious and accessible. For the most part these roles are in our hands, not God’s.


The Players of Assurance The Players of Assurance comfort and inspire us by testifying that they’ve seen divine

certainty. They’ve knelt before the proverbially burning bush, had visions and visitations, witnessed lights and voices, or survived Near Death Experiences. These teachers and their followers speak to us in chapels and in seminars, in self help books and Holy Scriptures. The rest of us may choose to believe them or cynically walk away, but to society’s breadth the gifts they offer are immense: all of us can enjoy their consoling traditions and festive holidays; their inspiring ceremonies and imaginative insights; their useful moralities and their enduring hopes. Life would be at a great loss without them.

The Players of Uncertainty

The Players of Uncertainty excite our minds with the vast unknown and teach us to deal with

the fear it occasionally brings. They expose the grand mysteries of philosophy and science and sometimes prod us mercilessly for our good. They teach us to face stark reality with the conviction that questioning is an act of faith and not questioning is an act of fear. Here too provocative artists challenge our too comfortable minds or show us realms of beauty beyond our everyday eyes. These teachers help us to search resolutely and grow beyond our fields, produce new things of quality and become intellectually self-sufficient

Climbing God’s Mountain requires the balance of both environments—who would want to

live in either of our “isolated worlds”? It’s also important to know that few people are found strictly in one camp or the other. With a willingness to learn from differing views and to question yourself, you come to stand on your own ethical feet. This willingness is another sign of Principled Genuineness. Destructive Obstinacy is its opposite; it is the product of one-sided obsessions where there is a great deal of expounding, but no will to learn from oppositional views. The results are these:

There is such a thing as rejecting life’s gifts in the name of faith. Some zealots become so

invested in the hereafter that they no longer live here. At this extreme they may reject life altogether and for their heavenly aspirations ardently kill themselves or others. In this way God’s name often fuels the flight from accountability; all profanity considered this is perhaps its most vain use. Principled Genuineness helps believers see through such fugitive devotion. Once entrenched, that devotion rarely has the courage to see itself, so these others must challenge the excesses that can distort religious assurance into pernicious dogma.

There is also such a thing as rejecting humanity in the name of knowledge. Wars and poor

politics can produce intellectuals so seduced by power that they viciously experiment on fellow human beings. All this in the name of science. Principled Genuineness helps science see beyond itself where a greater source grants all humanity “inalienable rights”. The concept of a source superior to humanity is absolutely essential; otherwise humans could claim to be that source and therefore have the power to rescind those rights. Science alone can’t prove these rights exist; so principled scientists must intervene and ask those questions that keep healthy inquiry from becoming frigid blindness.

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 17 It’s worth repeating then: Of those who earnestly climb life’s mountain, there may be no

spiritual superiority, just specializations. Growth needs everyone and everything of worth. That worth comes from the value of contrasting and cooperating players. As with athletics, such teams work best when the right players have found the right places. Which is to say, when we as individuals have found our own right places. Principled Genuineness—our truest contribution regardless of place—is the way in which we become the finest of players, or students, or teachers. It’s how we best improve ourselves, others, and the world.


VIII

FINDING OUR BEST SELVES

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etting there is the issue, but not always a mystery. Usually you know when you are truly contributing. You have a sense of deserved pride. You feel useful, needed and appreciated. This isn’t a superiority that would diminish others, but good effort that benefits and inspires all. A fresh smelling building with polished floors and clear windows doesn’t happen by

accident. A profitable company with popular products and satisfied employees isn’t accidental either. Nor is a perfectly tuned and humming engine, or a loaf of savory warm bread. These are the results of good choices and hard effort. These are the products of people who have found their right roles in life and, for all the fears and difficulties encountered, rightfully enjoy their lives. This is the uniting of the spiritual and the temporal. It is contributing well—and pure faith in living. A few things are helpful in finding your best place: On the temporal side, you may consider three questions: One; what things do I naturally love doing? Two; of these, which ones am I reasonably good at? Three; of the remainder, which ones are beneficial and practical? With labors of love, only the first answer matters. With professional hopes, all three are important. The spiritual side has similar questions: One; what spiritual explanations work best for me regardless of other opinions? Two; do I feel elevated, secure and peaceful? Three; am I a better person in a better world, uplifting others and—significantly—not impeding anyone else who is attempting to climb Life’s Mountain?

The individual answers are nearly infinite in number and will likely evolve. As life changes,

you will change, and as you change, aspects of your destination may change as well. Life’s work is knowing how to deal with this. Things that adapt thrive.

Our ethical questions confront us in a similar way. While many moral issues are blessedly

black and white, many more are disturbingly gray. Grayness offers the greatest potential for growth, but also offers the greatest potential for social conflict and error. As society and science advance, so does the depth of our moral dilemmas. Principled Genuineness is increasingly challenged here. It’s akin to a college test that starts with the easiest questions then proceeds to the excruciating ones. God may have given us more power than we want; yet if the test doesn’t exceed us, it will limit us. What can be fairly expected then? Without divine intervention for guidance, we might hope that God grants commensurate leniency as life’s dilemmas get grayer and grayer and as honest effort becomes so profoundly difficult to know. This is being reasonable with our limitations. It’s realizing that the more the test progresses, the more we might be wrong.

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 19 We can only understand and do so much and at times it’s discouraging. This is true not only

of scholars at the leading edge, but also of the rest of us. The nightly news regularly kindles our frustration by neatly delivering scenes of tragedy, confusion and malevolence. Our inclination is to either turn the TV off, or turn our minds off. We aren’t necessarily indifferent; more often we are overwhelmed. Here it’s helpful to remember what is within our power. An ideal view says that compared to earth’s wide population, disasters affect relatively few souls at any given time, so as numerous as the rest of us are, basic assistance from each of us would greatly help.

The realistic view, however, says that many don’t respond. Still, we can. When we can’t

help directly, we can compensate elsewhere. On Earth’s grand scales increased contribution here helps balance our helplessness elsewhere. We can make a difference with whatever we have and wherever we are. We use stories of abused children as incentives to become better parents. Scenes of tragic accidents make us more conscientious. Anarchy and corruption incite us to be more attentive citizens. Handicapped people inspire us to greater appreciation, understanding and helpfulness. Our unreachable past prompts our reform. Misery inspires our charity. Pain inspires our care.

In all, we can soften the frustration from earth’s wide disasters by letting the worst there

bring out our best here. Whether it’s directly or through deserving institutions, we do have the ability to assure our immediate decency. Small as it is, a measure of peace comes from knowing that we act as others should and that this is our considerable and salient power. Immanuel Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals is an excellent resource. Occasionally it’s worthwhile to wonder how different the world would be, if everyone acted the way we do.

Compensate that which you can’t control by that which you can

Compensate that which you don’t know by that which you do


IX

THE PROSPECT of GOD’S EXISTANCE

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hen you don’t understand the cause, try all the harder to understand the effect. If you don’t know that God exists, compensate by asking what you do know. Is there any rational basis for believing? Pure undefended faith is always your right, but sometimes that option makes reality seem menacing. In unguarded moments even the best believers

may worry that faith is another word for foolishness. Skeptics may also wonder if there’s any sensible bridge that connects faith with fact. The concern they shared is whether notions of God and the Soul can be rational.

First, we need to decide what we mean by God. Even our most acute scientists feel free to refer to God in the most liberal sense. Einstein, for instance, said he didn’t believe that God played dice with the Universe. Such usage is justified by the argument that the Universe manifestly exists, therefore “something” is responsible. That “something” can be stipulated to be God, provided we leave it at that. In this view the issue is not whether God exists, but whether God is excitable, loving, nurturing, vindictive or humorous. In other words—whether God has a personality.

God as a personality is conceivable even in the scientific view. Science regularly states that human beings achieved personality in a relatively short evolutionary span. This respected theory says there’s a perfectly reasonable process that starts with mud and ends with Mozart! Clearly, nature’s laws have the spontaneous wit to produce personalities like us. If our planet is complementary, those laws might be spawning other personalities in great abundance across the sky. Many may wonder, considering the splendors of conscious life, could the cause of the Universe be inferior to that which it designed? The final question isn’t any more radical: If, in a relatively short time, we diminutive earthlings achieved personality through natural laws, through unfathomable realms and dimensions—couldn’t God?

The possibility of humans having souls can be addressed in somewhat the same way. Many

scientists state that no sentient entity exists apart from our physical makeup. Everything we are—our ethics, memories, feelings and hopes—is explained by the unique arrangement of all our atoms and molecules. Thus, there is no mysterious non-substance called the “soul”. Theoretically, every one of our human attributes—everything that gives us identity—could be described and mapped by knowing the exact placement of these myriad particles. That’s that.

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 21 This explanation may be true, but the very answer poses a question: Couldn’t this map, all on

its own, constitute a soul? Doesn’t it perfectly define the person, yet exist outside the body? Couldn’t this information survive death and preserve all that the person was? Might this mathematical picture be broadcast through walls and across the Universe? Perhaps to be reassembled afar in Star Trek fashion? Suppose it constituted a life form just as decipherable knowledge? Digital entities are not a new idea, nor are their implications. Viewing sequential maps could reveal an individual’s lifetime. Likewise, the entire history of the Universe might be reviewed like frames flashing through a projector (although it is questionable in what other cosmos this much information could be stored). In this highly imaginative prospect, even the Universe would have a soul. And so it escalates.

With the prospect of the soul comes the prospect of being reunited with our loved ones who

are gone. Nothing may be more encouraging and reassuring in our lives, so ideas of particle maps and digitized personalities easily capture us. The more wonder science takes out of our existence, the more it returns, but it doesn’t always return as fact—just speculation. There’s a wide supply of rational workouts that provide bridges to our hopes, but it’s unlikely they’ll provide more than that. The underlying fact remains that, short of a divine manifestation, we’ll probably continue balancing assurance with uncertainty. And that balancing act rests on an inescapable adage:

“Possibility isn’t proof”


X

IF GOD MAY NOT EXIST

Multiplying One “if” by Another “if”

So far we’ve luxuriated in a world of fun possibilities. As we theorized we forged a chain of “if statements”. Our links have been these: If God exists. If God is nurturing. If Human beings have souls. If there’s a just hereafter—and so on. Yet, as desirable as they are, these links are vulnerable: Every time if is added to any argument, the odds of a desired outcome drop. While

the Players of Assurance insist that these links don’t come from imagination but from Divine Contact, the rest of us don’t know. We may hope, we may believe, but we don’t know. To balance assurance with uncertainty then, many of us have to consider the prospect of God’s non-existence.

Dealing With The Unbearable

We may find it’s unbearable to think that there may be no personal God, and yet the matter is out of our hands. In extreme cases this chilling thought may bring us to panic attacks. Panic attacks are an overwhelming sensation of the unbearable combined with a conviction of being forever helpless: Think of a car on an icy road thrown into a spin with useless breaks and steering wheel; or fingernails eternally and unstoppably scratching a chalkboard; or a tidal wave of impending doom. At first there seems to be no way out from panic, yet patients with proper therapy not only recover, but often report being stronger for the experience. They develop courage and coping skills by learning to face that which they fear. Acceptance is the solution. Eventually these patients learn to accept what once seemed to be unbearable. For this, they can thank the law of stimulus and response: things that we reward grow stronger to us, while things we don’t reward grow weaker. This is how we “construct” ourselves. With unacceptable things, our natural response is either to fight, or run away—the fight or flight syndrome. But with panic’s inscrutable nature, both fighting and running reward and strengthen the stimulus!

As Dr. Claire Weekes points out, the one healing response is acceptance. When it comes to unchangeable things, fighting or running reward the fear because both responses prove to be useless. Because acceptance is neutral and doesn’t reward the fear, it eventually makes the unbearable, bearable. And so we arrive at the classic rule: That which we can’t change we must accept. We can accept the feelings of panic yet remain committed to living the life we want (giving up on our needs would reward the fear). This is the healing response. When it comes to matters of God’s non-existence, something we’d be powerless to change, the answer to our metaphysical anxiety is acceptance—combined with a commitment to good living.


XI

ACCEPTANCE and APPRECIATION

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the cond

hile many people hold the comforting hope that God loves us unconditionally, little is said about us loving God unconditionally. This reciprocity is disturbing to many because, minus ition that God must have a personality, they’re unsure what’s left to love. If we are the

created and not the creators, we can’t expect God’s nature to switch back and forth to suit our changing needs. Thus we are left to wonder how can we love something that might be impersonal.

Actually, we do it all the time. We love things like sports cars and sunsets, crossword puzzles, flower gardens, warm underwear, or pinball machines. We regularly love impersonal items and we instinctively express that love through acts of appreciation. We photograph, we finance, we clean, we display, we employ, and we protect. All are acts of appreciation for insentient items. If acts of appreciation are acts of love, we might ask what is ultimately responsible for those things we love. The protocol was this: “The Universe manifestly exists, therefore ‘something’ is responsible. That ’something’ can be stipulated to be ‘God’, provided it’s left at that.” Appreciation of God needn’t be conditioned upon God’s requited love—to love a sunset it isn’t necessary to know that the sunset loves you back. If you unrelentingly believe in a personal God, you might be consoled to think that if a personal God does exist, that God might enjoy being loved regardless. Whatever the case:

Although we may not know or care, through our acts of appreciation we may be expressing

love of God, whatever God’s form. Appreciation enhances the things you already have. If keeps you from taking people and

possessions for granted. Appreciation is an inexpensive solution to the devaluation of the familiar. It can rekindle your initial excitement and keep you from mindlessly acquiring things that too quickly dissatisfy. Imagine preparing to sell an old but working car. You fix it up, polish it, shampoo the interior, touch up the paint, and afterward step back in surprise. You realize how beautiful it has always been. It may someday be a classic. Your efforts have increased its value and, compared to financing a new car, it’s now a relative moneymaker. So you keep it.

Appreciation is something you give and assurance is something you get in return. The more

you concern yourself with the giving side, the less you worry about what you’re getting. In turn, the act of worrying less brings comfort. This is the basis for Christ’s assertion that you find yourself by losing yourself, yet it needn’t be taken religiously. For believers, unbelievers and the uncertain, Acceptance and Appreciation can be a purely practical matter. It applies sensible actions to common life, it respects the unknown, and it allows for Universal Improvement as an ethical guide from within the Rainbow of Beliefs.

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 24 Acceptance and Appreciation may also be helpful if you believe in God but nevertheless

struggle with religious dictates that interfere. Your discomfort may be emerging genuineness. One example of uneasiness goes like this: Suppose you were to forgo acceptance and write a long list of the terms by which you will consent to believe in God: God must be a man. God must be white. God must have a beard. God must speak like an Englishman. God must believe in the same things you do—on and on. But odds are the bedfellows of uncertainty; what are the real chances that your “terms” will materialize? Suppose you die with list in hand, only to discover that God is none of the above? Do you reject this Deity? How? For that matter, why? In truth, if an unanticipated God greets any of us, we’ll likely become gracious listeners. Considering our odds, it might be wise to practice that graciousness in advance. Put another way: If God were a dark fish swimming in the blackness of the Universe, would you cast a small net, or a large one?

In a more considerate view, it’s probably rare that we actually try to dictate the terms by

which we will consent to believe in God, more often our latent genuineness wonders what beliefs will work best to express our appreciation. For those who need more freedom in their spiritual lives, Acceptance and Appreciation can help bridge the worlds of faith and fact. Regardless of the uncertainty of God’s existence, they can be certain about their own and compensate their greatest ignorance with their greatest knowledge. Accepting that which can’t be changed, releases time and energy for that which can—and we can learn to act appreciatively.

Humility is another product of Acceptance and Appreciation. Continuing the scenario, if that

unanticipated God should ever lean forward and whisper, “Brace yourself, I truly did make you from the monkeys.” a good reply might be, “Thank you.” Certainly we would be hard pressed to indignantly demand our un-creation. Dignity has its place, but if appreciating your existence is the surpassing truth, why sacrifice one issue for the other? Then as now, the humility of Accepting and Appreciating puts the emphasis on matters like whom do I thank, not how was it done.

Omar Khayyam asked, “Who is the potter pray, and who the pot?” It’s a good point. We

naturally want to create our own God, but when we do so, we often break our own rules. By definition, God would be superior and independent of us, which raises implications that we often don’t like. Acceptance and Appreciation introduces practicality; in this case we may ask ourselves which makes the most sense—me changing God’s nature, or me changing mine

Acceptance and Appreciation is an inclusive solution for many points of view. It can be

sufficiently rational for skepticism’s sake, yet amply comfortable for believing. It basically says, “While I may be ignorant of any ‘creator’s’ specific nature or will, I can nevertheless live to be appreciative of the most certain outcome of that will—me and my world.”

Acceptance and Appreciation can be a rational way of loving God unconditionally


XII

MUST BE SO and MIGHT BE SO At first it may seem necessary to give up our imaginations of God in the name of reason. Yet this isn’t necessary or realistic and The Rainbow of Beliefs is still ours. It’s unlikely that a caring God would place creatures like us in this curious world then not expect us to fill the void with fantasies about how we got here. These fantasies are not only inevitable, but often quite useful. Still, it does sound contradictory: Do we accept God, or fanaticize about God? The answer is in keeping things in their proper places. Acceptance deals with what must be so, whereas fantasy deals with what might be so—one is knowledge, the other is belief. Both are reasonable if they’re kept separate. When we originally asked, “What do I truly know?” we were also asking, “What do I truly believe?” Such separation of what you know from what you believe is an extraordinarily essential discipline. With this discernment your efficiency greatly improves, without it you may be endangering yourself. Numerous disasters are born of the fact that knowledge and belief are so insidiously similar. Consider a jetliner that once rolled down the runway, took off and crashed not far away. Everyone died because the wing flaps were not properly deployed. It’s inconceivable that the flight crew knew the flaps were in the wrong position; if they had, they would never have made the attempt. Clearly, their perception was knowledge, their survival instincts demanded it. Just as clearly though, their “knowledge” was actually belief in disguise—a deadly disguise. Accidents are one thing, intention is another. Too often such disguises come in the form of deceit. If a “Con man” were to be realistically portrayed on the stage, it would only confuse the audience. Playwrights long ago put thin mustaches and slick hair on these characters and made them talk fast and shake hands insincerely. All this so their audiences easily see what the gullible stage actors don’t. “Con” is short for confidence. A con man is the very last person you’d expect to be deceitful; he is the image of your soft-spoken, amiable uncle, a gentle lamb that shows no sign of any wolf. Your survival in life and your ability to thrive may be closely linked to how well you can look past appearances, separate knowledge from belief, and resist the emotional tug of Must be so from Might be so. Principled Genuineness is how courageously you question yourself and others even under immense pressure, intimidation, or emotional longing.

This process might be seen as an extension of Freud’s division of responsibilities in the mind. The realistic side cannot recognize any form of imagination because imagination is made from things that aren’t real. Likewise, the imaginative side cannot allow itself to be destroyed by the dictates of reality. Consider how much trouble you’d be in should your think that an imagination is real—or that something real is imaginary?


Reality and Useful Metaphors When working strictly side-by-side however, pushing and pulling at each other, knowledge

and belief become life enhancing—they enable you to accept reality when necessary, or change reality when necessary. With each tool working unhindered by the other, you become less susceptible to deceit and foster your secure individuality, your genuineness.

The religious application of this might say: “Although my fantasies may not have the power to change God, they have considerable power to change me. Therefore my fantasies aren’t necessarily contrary to my acceptance of God; because they have the power to change one side of the relationship, mine. Once again, what is the more realistic issue, God changing, or me changing?”

The value of my fantasy relationship with God is not that it will change God, but that it has a good chance of changing me.

This is the difference between saying: God might speak like an Englishman to suit God’s

pleasure; verses God must speak like an Englishman to suit mine. With this attitude you can worry much less about reality menacing faith. Many obstinate believers spend a great deal of energy fearing facts and avoiding what they don’t want to see. By assuming the worst, this very suppression contradicts their faith. The phrase obstinate believers, however, doesn’t apply to the religious alone. In balance, many of our best scientists have succumbed to the same must be so pressures. Einstein regretted his cosmological constant. Newton once fudged the speed of sound. Forming a fantasy about God doesn’t mean abandoning acceptance of God’s final nature any more than forming a theory about a scientific experiment means refusing in advance to accept the experiment’s outcome.

Lao Tzu said, “When you have names and forms, know that they are provisional.”


XIII

THE PROPOSITIONS

Life is simplified when you keep tools in their right places and only use them as they were intended. This avoids the friction of misdirected effort, time spent on fruitless results, and rational discomfort. Immanuel Kant addressed such efficiencies when he said that the purpose of philosophy is to determine what can and can’t be changed and what should or

shouldn’t be changed. Your journey toward genuineness is a similar matter, though a highly personal one. In your deliberations, what follows might offer some useful considerations:

Four Propositions

Acceptance deals with that which we can’t have and can’t do Appreciation deals with best using that which we can have and can do

Uncertainty deals with finding the boundaries between what is and isn’t possible Assurance deals with the fundamental faith that makes this grand attempt worthwhile

Upward Spirals

Appreciative acts show our unconditional love of God founded by Acceptance

Acceptance helps us to heal from the anxiety of ultimate Uncertainty Uncertainty’s trauma teaches us to be more Appreciative

Appreciation leads us to greater inner Assurance Assurance inspires acts of Appreciation

Such progressions don’t have to happen, but you may choose to help them happen. There are

many configurations like these; they are the upwardly improving spirals that you’ve encountered throughout your life; you’ve instinctively constructed them. Just as God’s Mountain may have numerous paths and people, you climb using your own destined means. Principled Genuineness improves your search; trial and error still apply, but there will likely be less of both. You construct your spirals as you please—spiritual, intellectual, emotional, professional—whatever. The material above is just one departure, not a destination. Destination, monuments and pathways are rightfully your business.


Progress One evidence of progress is when you open doors—that open other doors—that open still

other doors. Another is when things get easier with practice. A new swimmer strokes then unnoticeably glides slower, then strokes again the same way. This unevenness repeatedly fights inertia and brings exhaustion. With good training however, the swimmer’s rhythm brings smooth motion so inertia is faced only once at the beginning. The surplus energy is then available for greater speed and endurance. Think of pushing a car smoothly, or in fits and starts. Improvement is not always a matter of expending greater energy, but of learning a process well. Athletes refer to this as being in the zone.

For Believers

Believers may consider that progressing on either path—great doctrinal structure or virtual

lack of it—may be acceptable. We’re all different. Ultimately the main issues may be these: One, how we’ve constructively used our chosen beliefs or; Two, what we can learn from having haplessly misused them. Being wrong isn’t necessarily being bad, it’s just being human. The alleyway outside God’s courthouse may be littered not with the ashes of humanity, but of humanity’s mistakes.

Most of us do try our best as we climb and ponder things, so perhaps the God who made us

to wonder will someday put an arm around our shoulders and say, “Let’s see how close you came?” Unconditional love may be God’s acceptance and appreciation for us, and for the divine realization of our potential yet to come. If we do face our final judgment, it might be precisely that—how we finally judge ourselves. God may be there to comfort us and help us understand what we see. And more, to help us comprehend how we still may grow. This is parenthood.

For Unbelievers

Unbelievers may approach similar goals, but on different paths. Players of Uncertainty are

especially led by matters of pure practicality, and by examining concepts for their abstract values. After subtracting the concept of a personal God, they may reasonably ask what outcomes of this philosophy still have worth. But theirs isn’t just a matter of logic alone; they have their own unique expressions of faith and transcendent thought. To them, fearless questioning is the best evidence of faith, and this questioning exposes how much is beyond human understanding and awareness, which is transcendence.

If God were defined purely as truth, dedicated Players of Uncertainty would be seen as

seeking God as much as anyone else. They too are judged by their accomplishments or errors as experiments tell them “How close they came”. Through their dedication scholars and scientists enhance everyone’s journey on Life’s Mountain by finding the necessary knowledge that betters our lives and sustains the environment that sustains us. They accept facts, they find new opportunities, and they assist the climb for everyone. This is science.


XIV

TOWARD GENIUNENESS and UNITY

Simplest Common Denominators

T he ideal is that all of us, believers and unbelievers alike, might find our best places in life by seeking our destined genuineness. By extension, this would improve overall society as more people find the best means to fulfill each other’s needs. When we reverse the course of complexity, many issues gain clarity. What can we most easily share? What makes the

simplest sense? The final question is whether atheists, believers, and the uncertain can most confidently agree on the purest distillation of the original metaphor:

Improve ourselves Improve each other Improve our world

If God is there, this approach stands a good chance of being acceptable. If God isn’t there it’s still plainly sensible. It may work either way. For believers, unbelievers, and the uncertain, it aims for the common denominators of decency and practicality. It attempts to balance all of creation’s eminent needs. It hopes to maximize our mass potential by uniting us rather than dividing us. It motions us away from elitist notions and toward our inclusive hopes. It shows us why it is in our own best interest to appreciate and improve all others in society. In response to this approach, we can respectfully speak of “God” and “Spirituality” in the greatest shared abstractions. We can also agree that our mutual benefit needn’t depend on whether God does or doesn’t have a personality—or whether humans may or may not have souls—or whether there may or may not be a hereafter.

History shows that societies best prosper when that which naturally unites a population far

outweighs that which would divide it. This requires sufficient freedom, mutual respect, education and laws that enable every person to fulfill their own productive potential.

Our inner worth eventually translates to shared worth and there is no shortage of

opportunities in the home, work, or community. Good families are the building blocks of good societies. Effective labor means survival for society. Helping others in need assures society’s soul by bringing some justice to a hazardous world. In this regard, across every community there are numerous civic and humanitarian organizations that desperately need help. All of this is rarely a mystery or an ordeal; more often it is a matter of common sense and ordinary effort—but effort that is intensely rewarding!

A Philosophy of Life – KW Covington 30 Widen your view and the world is yours. With a new determination and perspective you may

return to the faith that once disappointed you. You are equally free to find justification in many unlikely places. Fulfillment is abundant in classrooms, rock concerts, carpentry tables, or bowling leagues. Genuineness is an intimate thing; opportunity is a banquet. You know. You decide.

The Rainbow of Beliefs is an overarching reply to life’s gifts. It welcomes all healthy

viewpoints from responsible dogmatism to ethical atheism. In this, we may share more than we know. Life’s wide-spread pleasures exist because so many people are doing their best in a host of un-numbered ways: Traffic lights that work; shopping isles that are neatly arranged; movies magnificently produced; hamburgers served hot; needy children as they’re taught to happily bowl strikes.

To appreciate humanity is to appreciate humanity’s source and the vast wonders of life. From

the intricate mysteries of the lowliest leaf, to the call of distance stars, we are snared despite ourselves. Whatever the cause, in every small moment of your life—in whatever direction you look—you will see the miraculous.

Life is opportunity. Gift for gift, we receive and return, each to each other—and perhaps all

to God. Ours is the privilege to enlarge the product of our best parts: good knowledge, good reasoning, and good conscience. With this comes the hope that someday, in our own and varied ways, we may each touch the transcendence we seek. And there, standing at that threshold, openly greet the final questions of either heaven or earth:

What did you learn? How did you love?

END

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A Philosophy of Life