No Illusions

And perhaps it’s this
that defines the atheist:

the intuition that,
were we to believe in God,
no amount of religious code,
no matter how muscular,
could ever prevent us
from falling headlong into him.

Because we know ourselves.
We have no illusions.
We recognize perfectly
our own insignificance, and with it
how feeble our claim on sanity really is.

We cling to the earth with our toenails.

-- Oliver Broudy, The Convert
(arranged quote)

The Meaning

What does life mean?
A silly question, really;
the grammatical equivalent
of an Escher staircase.

Why should life mean anything?
And who should have reason to care,
except on those long nights
when the void looms so far and dark

that by sheer force of nothingness
the question is sucked into being,
implying the existence of an answer
larger than any you have at hand?

-- Oliver Broudy, The Convert

(arranged quote)

Susceptibility

In effect, revelation is
an act of violence perpetrated
on a system of knowledge.

Anyone possessing a system
of knowledge, therefore,
is susceptible to revelation.

-- Oliver Broudy, The Convert
(arranged quote)