Dervish Piety And Religion

Piety, as I practice it, is nothing more than an acknowledgment that every human life occupies a place in the food chain.

Religion, as I practice it, is nothing more than an insistence that every human life be regarded as possessing greater significance than the place it occupies in the food chain.

Piety has to do with submitting one's intellect to the sheer contingency of human life.

Religion involves worth-ship of the possible: it is ek-static, the product of the passional self oriented towards love and justice.

As the Roman Stoics understood, piety is the product of the rational self.

Why, what else can I, a lame old man, do but sing hymns to God? If, indeed, I were a nightingale, I should be singing as a nightingale; if a swan, as a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being, therefore I must be singing hymns of praise to God. This is my task; I do it, and will not desert this post, as long as it may be given me to fill it; and I exhort you to join me in this same song.

~ Epictetus, Discourses, I:16. Tr. W. A. Oldfather.