Of Marx and Deity

At brunch I sat glumly, my mind a swirl around Marxist alienation and well aware that this was not acceptable fare for Christmas morning. (Don't have experiences that are different from everyone else's, and especially don't understand those experiences differently than everyone else. Whatever else you may then be, at least you won't be alone. This passes for humor, darkly.) At least when Dad asked what I was thinking about, he rescued me by then supposing that yesterday's drive was tiring. It wasn't, but at least then we were then talking about driving rather than alienation, though in some ways I suppose it amounts to the same thing.

After things were put away I sat to read for a bit and flipped my book to the marked page, my eyes falling first on a sentence three-quarters of the way down the right hand leaf:

Similarly, limited points of view emphasize the isolation of individual consciousness.

It's hardly acceptable to speak of Marx and deity in the same sentences, but of deity I must speak, because a single sentence at once distilled and crystallized my unutterably inchoate thoughts, and for this I blame deity.

(Parenthetical #1: Yes, lately I'm a theist. Deity could always retreat just beyond our reach and grasp; it would stand to reason, after all, and is the sort of absurdity that, given everything else, would only make sense.) (Parenthetical #2: We are alone, but also each alone with the Alone. That news is all comfort, and none at all.)  


So I leave these thoughts with you, dear Internet, because they're hardly the thing to send to anyone on Christmas, to start, and I don't know who would talk with me about Marx and deity, besides.