This morning when I woke up I looked out the window and we were covered in a deep and thick fog. I live down in a valley and when the fog settles in down here it stays awhile, it may thin out some but until the sun finally burns through it it stays.
I have always found the fog to be fascinating. When you go and take a walk in it you never know for sure what it is that's in front of you and if you have an imagination like mine you can come up with all sorts of ideas.
One of my favorite books when I was a kid was called "Fog Magic" by Julia L. Sauer, the story was about a girl who had moved into a house in an area that had heavy thick fog and the experiences that she had while walking in it. That story has always affected the way that I see fog and how I perceive what could be in that fog as well.Sometimes when I look at the fog I can be convinced that no one else exists and that the world as we know it has disappeared and only I and my family are left. Who is to say that I am wrong? Think about it, when you are covered up in fog, how can you be certain as to what is out there? If you get fog like we do, it's almost like a wall has been put up and unless you have xray vision your not going to know.
While watching the fog burn away, you start to see a little bit more at a time until it finally all burns away and you can look and see that there is more out there to see, but as soon as you get to that limit, you realize that there is still more to see and to know and it keeps on going. You can climb to the highest peak on a clear day and still only see and come to know a small fraction of all their is, so why do we get so wound up in trying to prove that we know more then everyone else?
Sometimes that lack of knowing can be scary but personally I have found it to be comforting. The more that I have come to know, the more that I realize that I don't know and that has brought me more peace then you can imagine.
I have heard of people hurting themselves trying to gain all the knowledge that they could only to get to the end of their lives and realize that what they thought that they knew was little more then a drop in the bucket of things that are out there to know.
In the religious world we are much the same. I don't care what your brand of religion is, we all think that we "Know". We know more then others , we know the truth ,and the whole truth at that, and yet what is it that we think that we know? We are mere mortals put on this earth to worship G-D and to love our fellow man, nothing more is needed. If the whole world just followed those 2 principals we would live in a much better world. It's strange to me to comprehend how it could be that the worlds 3 major religions all can agree on the Torah (The Law) and yet fight and kill each other over the rest. What is it that you think that you know that gives you the right to judge others and or to kill them?
It is said in the book of Proverbs that the fear of G-D is the beginning of all wisdom.I would only add to that that the realization that you know nothing would be a close second.
I used to sit on the porch with my grandfather back when I was young and watch the birds or just listen to the wind or the silence. He was never a man to say a whole lot, what some might term a typical old time New Englander,but when he did speak people , including me ,would stop and listen, not because he knew everything but because when he did speak you knew that what he had to say was important. A wise man. He didn't know everything nor did he pretend otherwise.
We need to get off our high horses and come to grips with the fact that we don't know everything that we think we do. In this age of reason, reason has lost it's grip on reality until we have become a world of know it all's ,condemning others, without understanding that we truly don't know it all.
We are all still sitting in our valley's looking at the fog around us and still thinking that this is the whole world and there is nothing beyond the fog.
As I have stated; The more I know, the more I realize that I don't know.
Love G-D , serve Him, and love your Neighbors that's what you really need to know.
Shalom,
Ignacio
