I wonder....

If you have a faith I envy you. If you can reconcile that some omnipotent, supreme deity created the heavens and the earth I can almost applaud you. I nearly admire you. It must be a great comfort to have faith, to believe that there's more than just this existence and actually 'know' it. I wish I had that comfort, I truly do. It simply can't filter through to my questioning cynics mind that an all knowing, benevolent being has a hand in all of the things that occur in life. I just can't do it, so called 'free will' aside, not with what I've seen. My many, many years as a Police officer have convinced me of this unassailable fact.
Then again, I've seen what I believe are miracles. The miracle of nature in all it's complexities, beauty and yes, its glories. The infinite, mind boggling universe stretching away to who knows where. This can't just be some biological, mineral and electrical happenstance or coincidence can it? The absolute miracle of birth for example. That thought always dumbfounds my mind. Yeah, yeah, the sperm and the egg and blah, blah, blah, but have you ever really thought about exactly what happens though? Sure, science has its version. Some boffins can even do it in a dish which is a true miracle for those who struggle with conception. They've even filmed it, but there has to be some spark in there. Some unknowable event that occurs when the actual person begins. The knowledge in the sperm transfers to the knowledge in the egg and on and on and on. Soon enough, voila!!, a person is made. A miracle to me if ever I saw one.

On the other hand, I'm going to feel like such a jerk if, when I inevitably do relinquish this life, I find myself standing on broken paving stones during a dark cloudy day in front of some off white, rusty garden gates between a crumbling red brick fence. There's an old guy sitting on one of those collapsible wooden garden chairs at a rickety, peeling, dark blue painted old wooden school desk just to the right of the gates. His vacant expression stares at me from a weathered, dour face. The unshaven old gent's of an inestimable age and wearing a blue workers singlet and dark blue labourers shorts. There's a filthy, cold, half smoked, roll your own cigarette drooping from the left corner of his meager thin mouth. It looks cemented there by a mixture of dry spit and nicotine. He has short wavy unclean grey hair. Dirty black work boots cover his feet with grimy olive green, socks rolled down over the tops of the boots to keep the dirt out. He's got a faded blue tattoo of "Mother" on his wiry right upper arm and another one of a sailing ship on his scrawny left forearm. Tufts of grey hair poke out of the top of his singlet and hide another dark blue tattoo that I just can't make out. Maybe a rudimentary crucifix? He looks like an old sailor to me. Behind the gates, I can see a typical Australian, front yard with some purple and white azaleas growing alongside some straggly white gladioli. There's a few dead carnations here and there in the dry earth as well as two fallen over, faded plastic pink flamingo statues lying next to a broken, dusty, used to be white cement fountain on a patchy, dry buffalo grass lawn.There's even some oxalis weeds that need digging out, but it's not too shabby considering it's eons old. There's an old Federation house way off in the distance, but I can't see it too well. It's behind a sort of mist.
"Name?" he'll say in a raspy, old smokers voice. I'll tell him and he'll cough and scroll through some butchers paper laying on the desk and say,
"Sorry mate, you're not on the list." he'll reply.
I'll ask him to check again and as he sighs and goes over his dry papers for the second time he'll look up at me over his grey stubble and say, "Nope, definitely not here mate."
I'll ask to speak to the manager,
"He's out." he says.
"Okay, I want to see your boss." I'll demand.
He'll tell me that's not on, the boss is pretty busy what with the world and all the universe and all that. I'll get defiant and tell him that I'll just stand there and wait. He tells me that it might be an eternity before the boss goes on a break so I might as well just toddle off.
"Go where?" I'll ask.
"Suit yourself." he responds. 
"Where else is there to go?" I question.
"Well, there's the competition," he'll say, "just go down a few flights."
These words make me anxious and I start to sweat. Now I'm really worried.
"Listen mate, I had no idea that you blokes were actually in business up here." I'll plead.
"Sure I've seen your ads and met some of your employees. I have to tell you, some of them aren't exactly keeping to company policy if you know what I mean."
He'll just sit there scratching his chin and nod.
"I've even been into a few of your stores over the years for weddings and christenings and such," I'll ramble
"but I'd always sort of figured you weren't really around, just a sort of myth you know. Some sort of propaganda for this huge money making rort. Hey!!" I'll shout, "I did read your rules though, all ten of them. Now, I haven't actually followed them as a rule you know", I say and laugh nervously, "and I have sort of broken a few and bent some of the others but fair go, I've never actually killed anyone, not that I know of at least."
"Sorry son," he'll say, "rules are rules. You had your life and you blew it. You haven't done enough. Now, one's your lot so be off with you, you're holding up the line."
I look behind me and see no one at all, just more empty, broken, paving stones laying in dusty, red earth stretching away into the distance. It becomes clear to me that I'll find no solace here.
As I meander off with my hands in my pockets, if I even have pockets, the sun begins to shine unduly brightly which causes me to turn to where I'd stood only moments before. I begin to watch jealously as I see the old fellow opening the screeching, protesting gates to usher through a naked, portly, middle aged lady. He sees me staring and I notice an almost imperceptible change in his tanned mariners face. 
"Try the Buddhists around the corner," he calls out, "they offer more than one time around."
Saved !!

That's all frivolous I know and I don't in any way mean to trivialize anyones faith in any way, shape or form. It's just one of several conversations that play around in what I laughingly call my imagination...but seriously, what if?
I might go see the Buddhists early I think. Trouble is, the lives they offer you to come back with can start as little as a bug depending on how you've conducted yourself this time around. I'm sure they wouldn't go higher than a slug, not with the things I've done. I may try to plea bargain a little, perhaps go for a snail or something.

These are the thoughts that plague me in the wee small hours as sleep eludes me and age nonchalantly erodes my body. I've actually looked into some religions, done some readings, pondered some ponderings and I've come up empty. I think I've been trying to make a quick, desperate sort of end run around the misdeeds of my life. Just in case you know, but sadly, nothing, nada, jack, bupkiss, diddly squat, bugger all, no mind altering inspiration anywhere. The closest I've come to any sort of amenity was the Gospel of Thomas. It's a bit flowery and still full of Jesus speak. I guess it has to be, he's alleged to have said it of course. I mean, if you read it, it's not all doom and gloom and promises of this and that. No fear involved at all. No bowing and scraping, no churches but for nature..sort of...it's complicated and open to individual interpretation. I can see it being said by a little Palestinian rather than the flowing brown haired caucasian that the conventional religions offer. Have a read if you're as tormented as me. You can bet the Vatican has called it heresy. It threatens their billions of dollars and their power. Not a fun read for those chuckle bunnies at all let me tell you.

All in all I've concluded that God is love. I look at my children, my two older boys and my two babies and the love is all consuming. The power of this feeling makes me almost weep at times. Simply an overpowering feeling at times when I hold my babies and worry for the world they're growing up in. It's a love I'd die for and do anything to protect as would you all for your own.

Yep, these are the thoughts of a man who's gone past the half way mark in his time on this spinning galactic bauble. I've looked upon literally hundreds of deceased people over the years, of all ages and in all of the common manners that made them that way and some not so common. There was even a time I was on a first name basis with most of the morgue attendants and some of the Government Medical Officers at a particular Morgue. Never once did I ponder my own mortality..not even once. What a thing it is to wonder on that now.
To steal a line from the late, great Dave Allen, may your God go with you.
Still, there's also much yet to accomplish and babies to raise, a wife to love and bills to pay. Maybe the Buddhists can wait till next week...God willing.