Blog 866 – 01.06.2018

Tattoos

I grew up in a very narrow religious tradition that labeled almost everything a sin and to be avoided. On the very long and growing list of things that one should never do was getting a tattoo. Even my dad who was not a very religious man and had been both a sailor and a soldier in World War II did not think getting a tattoo was cool and discouraged both his sons from getting them. I was forty-five years old when I got my first tattoo, a crucifix with a person on it to remind me lest I forget how much God loved me. I had at that time been for quite a number of years a practicing atheist, with several short lived relapses. Like doctors and lawyers who do not even claim to be masters of their professions only “practicing” I was never very good at being an atheist. My problem even though I was mad at God and tried my best not to believe in Him or Her was that I could never deny my central belief in Love and since God is Love I was always conflicted as an atheist. I wanted to believe in Love, that I was loved, hence I got that first tattoo on my chest just to the left of center where they tell us erroneously that our heart is. Our heart is in the center and is what I believe keeps us centered. And yes, all you scientist out there, I know the physical heart is a blood pump that send oxygen and nourishment throughout our body through the constant flow of blood through it. But the spiritual or figurative heart is the seat of our affections where love is and flows through us and out to others making and keeping us truly alive.

Sometime after that first tattoo as many people do I learned some things that made me wish that I had waited and gotten a different tattoo. I came to understand that the dualistic philosophy, religion, culture, whatever that I had grown up in was off like that heart location thing. Instead of right and wrong, dark and light, God and the Devil I came to understand “God is One” to mean that “God Is All In All” and that I, we, everything really is Wholly and Holy in Him/Her. God is the whole enchilada or the entire Universe. And to me one of the symbols that typifies that best is the Ying Yang symbol – half light, half dark with even a small dot of the other in each to signify “It is all good.” So just to the right of center, my heart, I got a Ying Yang tattoo and that one really hurt. It took a while longer, and a lot more ink.

It has been about twenty-five years since I got my last tattoo and I am happy to say that I am still learning. I no longer think I need to write what I have learned on my chest but if I did I would get one more tattoo, the one pictured above the blog today. I do like pictures and symbols. Words are symbols too and those few words strung together are about the most important message I have ever heard or read. Even, at least to me, more important than somebody dying on a cross because he loved me or the great truth of Oneness. That cross business is really a lesson in “at-one-ment.” But I think Love began long before the cross and Oneness long before the ying yang. We are not here to die on a cross or even to learn the great lesson of Oneness so much as to learn to love ourselves and thereby to learn that is truly loving God and everyone and everything.

We all are born with a tattoo on the inside of us. It reads “Love.” Once we truly see it for ourself we are proud to show it to others. I’ve shown you mine. Yours is beautiful. You really ought to show it off more. Did you really mean to get it there? Cute.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

Epilogue: (Ever since I saw The Fugitive TV series as a boy I wanted to do an epilogue)

Getting a tattoo is not a sin. Judging people who have them definitely is. But a sin is just a a “miss.” Take another shot, but not at me, please.