I know, I know. What a title, right? Not a lofty or ambitious title at all. Well, I’ll try to do it justice.

I’d like to preface all this by saying, first and foremost: I AM NOT RELIGIOUS!!!! I do not think of myself as a “Christian” or a “Buddhist” or anything else like that as far as words go. As far as labels go. I can’t stomach it.

Joe Bloe “Christian”:

How’s your walk with Jesus, Graham?

Me:

Walk!?! Fuck you! I’m running!!! Jesus is back at the 7/11 calculating my splits.

That disclaimer out of the way, I think there is magic in this world,

and science may well one day find it, explain it, quantify it, and put it in a textbook. Phenomena of collective consciousness, weird episodes of déjà vu, inexplicable, serendipitous moments.

In my previous post where I claimed “logic is my god, and religion is neurosis” I argued that to attempt to make these weird occurrences out to be more than they potentially are by automatically ascribing some detailed and totally arbitrary meaning to them, and then attempting to get others to believe the same thing (religion), often has disastrous consequences.

See:

The crusades, Jim Jones, radical Islam, Heaven’s Gate, Benny Hinn, etc, etc.

I stand by every word I said in that video. In tonight’s post it may seem like I am attempting to alienate as many people as possible, and lose as many followers as possible, by delivering a seemingly contradictory message. It makes me laugh. One day bashing religion as hard as I possibly can, and then the next day talking of “speaking in tongues.” Oh well, fuck it. Whatever.

What happened tonight.

I was listening to this song:

running in the cold, bracing air, alone, on a rather dark night

I had felt (due in part to the runner’s high and the numbing blasts of frigid wind coming in from the sea as I crossed the bridge) almost separate from my hands, arms and body prior to

approaching this moment in the song where all the imagery it elicited in my mind, and the sensations, coupled with the warm, perfumed smells from the home I was running past, and feelings were so...

big? warm? lovely? otherworldly yet impossibly familiar?

that my tongue just kind of started fluttering from all these uncontainable feelings as I attempted to express them and define them better. It was a kind of gibberish language.

I may upset a lot of the religious folks reading this, but this is, in my view, what churches call “speaking in tongues” and “anybody and they mama” who is feeling the true force of life and beauty and just that other-worldly, desperate, beautiful, deep, ineffably so real and vastly expansive and so familiar something other, can do it. Kids can do it. Dogs can do it. We all can do it. It’s a gutteral howling of the spirit yearning to be free, and speaking things that words of our standardized language and grammar just can’t. i.e. “tongues of angels.”

Of course, churches have turned this into big business, and interpreting “tongues,” making prophecies of them, and deciding who “has the gift” and who doesn’t, is an excellent way to leverage power over guilt-ridden, desperate people, and to fleece them of cash, time, and other resources. It would be interesting to see how many times the gift has suddenly appeared in someone (i.e. been acknowleged and labeled as such by church leadership) immediately after the offering plate was been filled adequately with “seed money” by the adherent desperate enough to “give in faith” to receive said gift. I am not saying that the interpretations of tongues given at churches are never “real.” There’s really no way to prove that, either way.

I’m just saying the whole thing has been bastardized and misunderstood, in my opinion, and turned into a legend. A myth.

Well, there it is. That’s about all I have to say. People’s interpretation of the Bible is both true and not true regarding “tongues,” in my view.

True in that humans do it, not true in that flames of fire literally rested on people’s heads while they spoke, or that it is some kind of gift magically imparted after being dunked in water.

That’s just my opinion. People from all over the world, from many different religious backgrounds (or lacks thereof) express themselves in this fashion, it seems to me.

All I know is that tonight I felt something beautiful. And I suppose, for now, my final take on all this stuff is:

There is something that I know, and it’s impossible to say.

_*

~KafkA

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Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)

Fuji 5Lakes Training Blog - 11.23.17 - Speaking in “Tongues” on a Runner’s High