Since I have added "College Student" to my list of roles, I have to write a paper now and again. As we have established, I am a lazy sod, so I chose King Charles the First, and his lack of head at the end of his life, as my subject. It may not sound like the lazy man's true path, but I have studied this period of history pretty extensively so the research is mostly walking over to the bookshelf and pulling this or that tome down.
What piques my interest, as I venture back into this time period, is how soft and lazy many of us have become. The Reformation struggled on in blood and fits and starts for 130 odd years depending on how you count it. During that time, one had to choose a religious belief and then hold it so closely to the heart that when faced with a bloody or fiery death one could derive comfort from the brand of dogma one had chosen to live with and die for. This was not a rhetorical or theoretical possibility. Good citizens all across Northern Europe and England, both prominent and common, went to the scaffold or the pyre with regularity. They were escorted to their end by other good citizens who believed just as fervently that they were doing the right thing as did those about to bleed, hang, choke or burn.
During the Reformation, Religion was a serious business. More accurately, for this discussion, Christianity was a serious business. There were no other options for most of the populace unless one moved very far south and embraced Islam. Way south My Brother.
Today, I can be as blasé as I wish with regard to my religious beliefs and no one is going to tie me to the pyre and set me alight while ooo-ing and ah-ing as I scream my pathetic life away. I have never been set alight, but I think I can rightfully assure you that if I were, religious pleading would not be the first horrible sounds issuing from my big fat mouth. But I digress. The point, if there is one, is that I can be whatever I claim to be, going so far as to invent my own sect or creed and I probably won't die for it. I am not required to have the fierce conviction of old that I would hold to my end. In fact, today I am free to change dogmata at a whim while still avoiding the flames, at least of this world. I can be a Bokononist today and a Buddhist tomorrow and suffer not the slightest singe, even to my conscience.
Rest assured, there are still vestiges of the pyre-builders at work in the world. While most sects and creeds have adopted an almost universal "no-burning of other people" policy, there are those that would like nothing better than a big infidel bonfire. Before you rush to the conclusion that I am pointing my heretical finger at my Islamic brothers, I would tell you that I believe there are just as many closet pyre-builders amongst the so-called Christian Right in America as there are amongst Jihadists elsewhere.
Even with these deluded fanatical manics lurking about here and there in closets and governmental positions and behind pulpits, I have become soft and lazy. The odds that a group of these ignorant nutcases will actually take the time to find me, drag me into the park across the street and try to immolate me with damp Northwest firewood are so small that it allows me to continue to live a life of lazy impunity with regard to dogmatic choices.
And so I remain a lazy man. Perhaps not as lazy as Jefferey Lebowski, quite possibly the laziest man in Los Angeles county, but lazy enough in my amateur standing. I do not fondly remember, or long for the days, when one's creed was one's ticket to the fire or eternal salvation, or both. I will take the course of Taoist water, around the rock, or whatever colour my water chooses to be today. When I am standing in it, I can chant my simple mantra: "Water good, Fire Bad"
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