On the Subject of Gods

 

We-mortals, we are stories.
The Gods are tropes.

 

This too is an oversimplification, of course; I just think it strikes closer to the marrow than most on the subject.

To suggest that the Gods exist independently of ourselves is just as ridiculous as to suggest that tropes exist independently of stories.
Not a bit less ridiculous than that.
... And not a bit *more* either.

To suggest that the Gods do not exist *at all* is just as ridiculous as to suggest that tropes *are not real* at all, that there is nothing there to *talk* about.
Not any less ridiculous than that. Nor any more.

 

 

We live by all the patterns that humanity is shaped.
Patterns in the ways we love; and in the ways we ache:
In summer heat; in night and day; we fight, we eat, we dance, we pray;
The sky seems very far away; We yearn to seek it anyway.

We can seek out the patterns, to remember how to bend.
For we are shaped, this way to break, and in that way to mend...
To owe the patterns more than this, I'd like to not pretend;
That whether sought, by us or not— they'll find us in the end.
(—  we are them, in the end).