Oh, Happy Days! A Newly Revised Poem and a Note About What I Am Anti-

A Stained Glass Window with No Religious Iconography

Yes, it is true. Regarding the nature, content, and tone of the poems in Atheists and Empty Spaces, I have had several people ask me, "Michael, why are you so anti-religion?" Well, I am not anti-religion. I think that religion has played a significant role in developing communities of support for the weak, the poor, the downtrodden, and the hopeless and helpless. Religion has fostered many revolutionary ideas that raise the rational human above the trappings of irrational, instinctual animals. Religion has made many people better people, many communities better communities, and many societies better societies. However, it has also fostered and supported the most atrocious and uncivilized behavior imaginable, excused the abuse and neglect of women and children for thousands of years, and created false beliefs that keep religious people ignorant and easy to control for the wealthy and powerful. I am not anti-religion. I am anti-hypocrisy. You cannot love and worship a God who created everything if you do not love his creations, every piece of it, including the plants, animals, and fellow beings within it. That is impossible. I am not anti-religion. I am anti-believing that rules, doctrine, and dogma created for a wandering desert tribe four thousand years ago are relevant to modern American society. I am not anti-religion. I am anti-acting like God is a genie in a bottle who grants wishes through prayers. I am not anti-religion. I am anti-filling one's life with so much other superficial stuff that whatever god a person believes in has no room to fit. That is what the whole book Atheists and Empty Spaces is about. Religion is pretty much what we SHOULD use to fill the empty spaces in our hearts and minds. When we run out of things to do that must necessarily be done for our survival, religion is the thoughts and activities that we turn to after we have done what must be done. Thus, the vast majority of people that I know are anti-religious. Most people I know spend most of their spare time gathering money, property, or play pretties, judging others who do the same, and hating those who are different, even if their differences are beyond their control. That, my friends, is exactly what anti-religion looks like, and I am none of those things. Well, I don't know. Maybe, I like to gather stuff into piles here and there, but not obsessively. In Atheists and Empty Spaces, I am simply pointing out all the effects that anti-religious values have on all of us when we fill the empty spaces with fear, anger, hatred, desire, etc., all unnecessary things. The great sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin once wrote in a short story, "Happiness is the just discrimination between what is necessary, what is not necessary but not destructive, and what is destructive." I am anti-what is destructive. Sadly, sometimes, that is religion.

Anyway, here is one of those poems that many have labelled "anti-religious." Read it and explain to me what is anti-religious about it. I dare you. As always, ENJOY!

Oh, Happy Days! They Dream but Not of You

I.

Oh, happy days! The people play

As all unwitting do

And carry on their merry way

And dream, but not of You.

They trust their lives are full enough,

They fill their bags with empty stuff

And search for nothing new.

They learned this from the words of sages

Whose dated thoughts fill cryptic pages.

II.

I’ll not ask them if gods age

Or if their souls mature.

I’ll not ask them how to gauge

A timeless life so pure

That it extends beyond belief.

I’ll not present a godchild in relief

So clerics might immure

A virgin birth within a myth

And make a human god to bargain with.

III.

I dare not ask them if gods change,

A trait that is too human.

A halfling god seems mighty strange

And figures to illumine

A simple mind’s imagination

About the facets of creation

Which I find myself assumin’

Is the making of all godlings only once

And surely in that line would be no runts.

IV.

I dare not ask what they may know

About the myth that’s real

When any time the zephyrs blow

They turn to it with zeal

As if they were the first cocks to be blown.

The lucid mind has always known

How windswept zealots feel

And marveled when the faithful gather

To blow back at the wicked weather.

V.

Oh, happy days! They look to see

But do not understand

That all their myths are poetry

Beyond their rude command.

Their sacred book is much too long

And brimming with inspired song

Of a highly private strand.

Of this, they only fathom bits

With much strain on their feeble wits.