I apparently pruned the tree more severely than I should have. I won't go into the theory of persimmon cultivation; anyway, my imperfect practice of it tends to disqualify me from stating it.)The slices were delectable! "How can a persimmon get so sweet," my wife asked in awe.
This morning, as I was walking our poodle Wally around our cul-de-sac, I remembered the Fuyu slices and felt a rush of gratitude that we had had them to enjoy. My natural impulse was to thank God. But then I remembered: I don't know that God exists. My next thought was that I don't know, either, that God doesn't exist. I believe neither that God exists nor that God does not exist, which is not equivalent to believing that God does not exist. The former is a statement of agnosticism, the latter of atheism.
But I realized that, when gratitude rushes over me so strongly that I want to express it, I prefer to say thank you to God who may or may not exist than to have the feeling stifled in what would amount to the solipsism of atheism.
At any rate, that's how I feel this morning. This is how far my thinking has so far brought me.
I suppose you could thank yourself for all of the Fuyu you had last year. But you'll have to take blame, like you did, for only having one this year. It is easier than giving credit or blame on a God who may or may not exist.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of it before your comment, but I didn't think of blaming anyone (a possibly existing God or myself) for the difference in harvests from last year to this. The difference was just a fact, probably on account of the reason given.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember ever getting "angry at God" in my life. Ironically, that may be an indication that I have never really believed in God, since it seems to be the very devout who, when they lose a child or a house, can become extremely vehement toward God, whose image in their mind has been damaged by their loss.
But while I certainly didn't credit myself either for the goodness of the one fruit we enjoyed—since I couldn't begin to create a persimmon—I did feel a spontaneous effusion of gratitude. Maybe my search for an object to direct the gratitude toward was simply to fulfill the grammatical requirement that "to thank" must have an object.
Maybe the human tendency to think that God exists and can be the active subject of sentences is a linguistic artifact? That is, a product of the way the human brain has evolved, with its tendency to be grateful and to need to be logical?
Thanks for your ever thoughtful comment, Steve. I appreciate it, and I'm grateful to have someone definite to thank in this case <smile>.
Oh, dear. Steve, I love ya to pieces, but why the need to take the easy way out? Nothing worth having comes easily.
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