Musings written by pencil onto paper

Musing 1: Pencil onto paper when I rested seated yesterday afternoon atop a boulder surround by countless purple lupines

Perhaps the prelapsarian Eden was that state of the Earth sometime between 5.4 and 6.3 million years ago, that time when our ancestors parted way with those who followed the Chimpanzee tribe, those who remained in that world of innocence, a world where thorns are thorns and thistles are thistles and pain is pain and sweat is sweat and life is life and death is death. For that Eden was lost to those with a brain that became a mind that could conceive of a lapse -- a fall from grace -- that moment when suddenly guilt and blame sprang to life as the next universe-transforming event took place -- the birth of self-awareness.


Musing 2: A goose that called Konrad his mother

Interesting how the developing brain of a child has a myriad of short windows of opportunity for imprinting, and once the imprint takes place, then that is what the mature brain is left with, or has to deal with, as in the case of the young geese that Konrad Lorenz raised as their "mother." The infant geese knew no one other than Konrad, the one that fed them and protected them and taught them, and so they followed him as mother goose, and forever more Konrad was mother goose to them.


So here we are, all of us with our own imprints seared many years ago into our developing brains -- some "natural" and others "unnatural" -- perhaps early imprints of an infant religiosity that has since been modified by the learning gleaned from systematic knowledge? Could it be that when we try to reason away that infant religiosity with a mature religiosity, the seared part of our brain rebells, clinging to the imprints of infancy, unwilling, or unable, to let go?