I called God "stinky."
Figurative war is so compelling that it can be applied to a lot of things: debt, bureaucracy, crime, drugs. And everyone knows these are not real wars, right? We are not carpet bombing the national debt (although it might be argued that an excessive capability for carpet bombing is a significant cause of our indebtedness).
One does have to be willing to adopt at least a bit of a counter-cultural attitude to pursue a mystical experience because so much of culture — at least Eurocentric culture — is filled with false promises that the desire that pulls John of the Cross out of the house in the middle of the night can be satisfied by a technological advance.
The only thing notable, it seems, about the road he has taken is that he did, in fact, take it. 42 is old enough to realize that things often don’t work out “better” or “worse”; they just work out differently.
I’m not crazy about the idea that my imagined existence as a yeoman famer turns out to be nothing more than three prison guards in a trench coat. I’m even less enthused by the realization that Nelson Rockefeller doesn’t give a damn about me.