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Epilogue
In 2005, I toured the country tracking down my theological college contemporaries. We had all been ordained for life in 1991. Fourteen years later, only half were still on the church payroll.
As well as asking about their experience of church, I asked what they still believed. As good liberals, we shared the habit of answering a question with a question. Do you believe in God? It depends what you mean by God. It depends what you mean by believe. It depends what you mean by ‘you’: my public self, my private self, myself today, myself in general, my intellectual self, my emotional self, my intuitive self.
One question seemed to break reliably through the facade: is there anything there when we die? Faces would drop, and my former colleagues would talk earnestly about the deaths of their own relatives, and the most challenging funerals they had been called upon to lead.
We were told never to cry at funerals. We had to hold it together so that the family didn’t have to. Before I reached thirty I had twice buried people exactly my own age: those were as tough as the infant funerals, of which I lost count. I also did two funerals for well-loved members of my own congregation. For one, we gathered for a vigil mass, late in the night, the evening before the cremation. The other we buried in a persistent rainstorm, heavier than we had seen in years. At the wake – in fresh clothes – we recalled his repetition of the bizarre and otherwise untraceable proverb that God smiles on those who are buried in the rain.
My college contemporaries, on and off the church payroll, spoke about all the infant funerals (‘There must be something’, as though justice demanded it, and demanding it, made it so), and of their own bereavements, of too many strange coincidences, of a conviction that the best must live on.
Of course the best lives on in those who have learned from it, in the practical good that has been done, and in the countless small ways that the world has been made a better place.
There is nothing to fear if that is all there is.
They say your whole life flashes before you in that final moment. Some have experienced it and survived. Perhaps this is the final self-judgement, as we see it all laid out in a moment, without the time either to build our excuses or to distract ourselves from the simple joys. That final moment becomes our eternity. Others speak of an out-of-body experience, of walking towards the light and into a place of contentment. Science speculates that this common experience may be somehow hard-wired in the brain. Whatever its origin, it sounds like a fine way to go.
It does not matter whether there is anything beyond these experiences; indeed the concept of beyond becomes meaningless if this is the end. Paradise may be nothing more and nothing less than peace at the last, and that is fine.
The end is a mystery, but so was the beginning. To the mystery of the beginning we first ascribed the name Existence or Being, and then, with due caution, God. The end is the same mystery. We return to that mystery. We return to God, whatever we have imagined that to be: the dust of the ground, or the atmosphere, or the mystery at the heart of existence itself.
From now until then, for today, for every day that we have breath, the western tradition calls us to integrity: to our highest potential, to fullness of life.
A new generation calls itself spiritual but not religious. People choose yoga, reiki and taekwando. Candles, crystals and gems take on new meanings, selling alongside dream catchers and tarot cards. Ancient and distant traditions are scoured for insight, advice and ritual. Feng shui redesigns our homes. Advice columns promote self-affirmation to realise our dreams. Mainstream medicine goes holistic, examining lifestyle issues amongst the causes and cures of stress.
Absent from this vibrant spiritual marketplace is our own western spiritual tradition. I offer it here as a tradition that is not only profoundly spiritual but also reasonable, sensible and coherent for the mind, touching every emotion of the human soul, and tangible in sacrament and incarnation for the human body and for all of life.
The western tradition names love as its God. It chooses to believe that there is a spark of divinity – of holy spirit – in everyone and everything. It names Jesus of Nazareth as its leading inspiration, its icon and its god. It calls us to gather as a diverse human community of mutual enrichment and care, to hear those stories again, and to share the meal of bread and wine. It recognises eros as the origin and ideal of all loves. None of this is for the sake of any notional life beyond death: it is for the sake of the best possible life for today.
When nothing else in the creed or the tradition makes sense, there is love, and to this I cling, indeed I name it my God. I choose to believe in the ultimate abba pater nature of all else that exists. I look to the cross, to Christ crucified, as the icon of human life perfected and fulfilled: life lived to the full in a world where power corrupts, and corrupted power crucifies life. Compassion, community and eros lift us to a higher place. The sacraments sanctify the ordinary. There is no need for the supernatural: the natural world is wonder and beauty enough.
God without God is about having looked right into the unknown, into the void, without fear. It is about having come to terms with – indeed accepted and affirmed – the entire atheist analysis, and started again. It is about rationally choosing this model for the mystery at the heart of our existence, and rationally choosing this way to live. It celebrates love and Yahweh Elohim, trinity and sacrament.
It is tediously simple to list the faults of the catholic church, but in a building not far from you it has staff and a congregation celebrating the authentic western spiritual tradition with a weekly and daily mass, with the reading of the scriptures, the breaking of bread, and the generous and gracious wisdom of the centuries. Going to mass is a good thing to do. It is a profoundly spiritual experience for over a million in Britain, more than twenty million across the US and over a billion worldwide. It is a good thing to do because it is life-enhancing for this life: there is no condemning god to make an external judgement either way. It is good even to join in those ancient poems that others have called creeds, whether or not there is anything out there, beyond the mystery.
How much of the complexity is easy to believe will vary by the day: some days the full image of a personal complex triune God, other days only the brute facts of our existence and the existence of compassion. Belief is not knowledge, but the model to which we adhere.
We reject the god the atheist rightly rejects, then the mystery of our existence leads us on.