"God's plan"

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In another venue, my thoughts ran to ... "God's plan."

"God's plan" is very much like "everything happens for a reason:" Both are copout ways of addressing life.

If anyone knew "God's plan," they would have to be God and, aside from the certifiably insane or the insufferably arrogant, I know of few people who have that sort of courage.

And if "everything happens for a reason" and yet, in the face of unexpected or unpleasant circumstances, you don't know that reason, how the hell could you claim to know that "everything happens for a reason?"

Still, it is comforting and it is human to fall back on "God's plan" or "everything happens for a reason" or "it is written" or "destiny" or some fucked-up definition of "karma."

Institutions and gurus of one sort or another love to take credit for consoling those in need of consolation with such unexamined nostrums ... nostrums then absorbed and reiterated by those once in need of similar consolation. Like some creeping crud, the word is spread and it informs and consoles, even as it eats away the honest decency and pure light that individuals possess.

Human. Consoling. Kindly. So smoothing and soothing and close enough to the mark so that, perhaps ... I hope ... it is the mark.

But "close" only counts in horseshoes.

And life ain't horseshoes.
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