A Hole Torn In Life - a serious note

I am reading this book called Long Journey Home. It’s about the search for meaning in life, which I have been doing a lot of lately. I kind of decided to hell with love, that’s exhausting anyway. Plus, I shied away from a bunch of good guys and then accidentally hit on a gay one, so I'm not exactly batting a thousand.

The thing is, if I could only have one thing in life, it wouldn’t be a spouse/kid/family, it would be purpose. So my friend Andrea, who you probably remember as “Ma,” recommended I read this book, Long Journey Home. It's taking me quite awhile to read because 1.) finding the meaning of life is time-consuming and 2.) Os Guinness' writing style makes me bonkers. He writes like this:

Quote #1 by someone

Quote #2 by someone

Quote #3 by someone

Story about someone

Quote #4 by someone

teeny tiny original point by Os

Quote #5 by someone

This makes it very difficult for me to discern what he is trying to say. Plus, and I kid you not, he ends every single chapter with exactly the same sentence. No idea why that is. I got the idea after the first 3 chapters.

Anyway, Os claims that the vital divide between people is the one between those who care enough to think seriously about life and those who don't. In order to think seriously about life, we need a meaningful event to jolt us out of our complacency and rupture our existence. This, he says, is what sculptor Alberto Giacometti described as "a hole torn in life," or the catalyst that forces us to confront the eternal.

I had a hole torn in my life once. I was 17 and my parents sent me to this "worldviews training camp" for 2 weeks. I was supposed to learn about every world religion -- or at least the top 20 -- and then why they were all wrong and Christianity was right. I was the only person there who didn't drink the Kool-aid. That was my triggering event: I realized that Kool-aid exists, and that I could drink it and be happy and be like everyone else, or refuse and be miserable.

Since then I have been on a long journey. If there is a God, I want to know him, more than I can say. But I've tried to believe in him for a really long time and I just can't seem to. I pray. I've asked him to find me or reveal himself somehow if he's there. But nothing. Surely, if the God of the Bible exists, he would have answered me by now. It's been years of searching.

Andrea told me once, "How do we know that God exists? Because he speaks it to our soul." But what if he doesn't speak it to my soul? Then perhaps he doesn't exist. Or perhaps he just didn't choose me.

Andrea's husband died last week, unexpectedly. One day we were having tea and scones and the next day we were pasting pictures onto memory boards for his funeral. It was a terrible thing, being at that funeral and thinking that he would not be there to meet any more of my boyfriends or play hymns on his guitar or any of the rest.

A few days later, one of the guys in the Job & Leadership Training program I volunteer with was shot and killed.

And I get that it's very comforting to believe that they are in a better place now. But what if we just believe that because we have to believe it, to survive? To not go crazy? What if, like Karl Marx said, religion is just the opiate of the masses?

If that's the case, then what is the reason for our striving? Is life just a tale told by an idiot? If it is, then the best we can hope for is a friend to walk through the idiocy with us. Hence, relationships, I guess.