This is part of a post I wrote ten years ago.
Today I am thankful that I can be thankful.
On the Easter Vigil where I came into Holy Mother Church I reflected on the fact that I had literally spent forty years in the wilderness. I had been chasing after false gods and idols and was totally oblivious to the miracles that God had created around me. I would have fit in easily with the hardheaded Israelites, ignoring every blessing and focusing on even the most trite inconvenience. I was suffering from spiritual autism, locked into only the material world and undiscerning of the spiritual world around me. I did not realize that I was afflicted with this eternal life threatening illness, nor did those around me inform me of my malady. After reading Franks Sheed’s awesome book Theology and Sanity I came to see my insanity for what it was. As an atheist the concept of thanksgiving was alien to me, I knew I should be thankful but to whom was I to be thankful to? It is difficult to give thanks to random eddies of atoms coalescencing into a cell. Oh chaos I thank you for we are wonderfully made just doesn’t sound right. How can you be thankful for your flukeness, your undesigned accidental existence. Luckily, as most atheists I did not dwell too much on the actual meaning of these unbeliefs. Thank you God for bringing me into the promised land of your Church.
