Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

[ailbhe]

I don't think I ever really believed in God in the usual way. I have, at various times in my life, tried very hard to, including putting a lot of effort into prayer and ritual at different times and in different ways.

I used to kneel up on my bed at night praying that bad things wouldn't happen to me. It didn't work. Sometimes I would wake on my knees on my upper bunk, stiff and cold.

I made my first communion but didn't believe that transubstantiation stuff. I made my confirmation but couldn't follow the ceremony and was worried afterwards that I'd not done it properly because I had no idea what was going on (my mother assured me that intent was what mattered, in this case).

I read The Colour Purple in my teens and was greatly affected by it; like Celie I feel sure that there is some joy in purple, in clouds and songs and awesome pants. That makes gut-level sense to me.

I read Richard Bach's Illusions and tied it to S'il n'existait pas le Dieu il faut necessaire de l'inventer (forgive spelling, I didn't look it up) and something fervent and enthralling a Hare Krishna man said to me once on O'Connell Street - we were talking about the free book, inner peace, and the nature of God, and he grabbed my arm and his face lit with joy and he explained to me about God being all and everything, everything being God, all matter and all that is not matter; that all lights are the sun and all streams are the ocean, and all thoughts one great Consciousness leading to wholly human and entirely divine Love. I wish I could remember his exact words, but he and I got very excited there on the grey footpath outside the GPO in dreary weather one wintry Dublin evening.

puritybrown introduced me to the word panentheism, which is a word I like.

And all this stewed around for years, curled up with my love of the sung mass in Irish, Fauré's Requiem, and Christmas carols in half a dozen languages (Christmas carols in one language seems very odd to me, as though it's a more insular festival than I feel it needs to be).

And I spent a while taking my baseline from the witches in Pratchett - I didn't see the need to go around believing in Gods; they could exist perfectly well without me and what I did with my life was far more important.

And now?

Now I think that I can answer "do you believe in god?" only if "yes" doesn't mean someone thinks I believe in a personality or an external force. I use it as shorthand for all that is good and wonderful in the world, all the impulses to kindness and examples of wonder or beauty. I make my own God, every day, from what I have to hand; days when I make a lot of God are better than days when I don't. I believe in the intrinsic value of practically everything, especially people, and in the awe-inspiring mystery of the universe, which just gets more awe-inspiring the more we demystify it.

And it might be the fever talking, but I just got a vision of Marie Curie and Brian Cox in angel robes with big beards, so I think I need to stop now.

Comments

[ailbhe]

Oh, right. I don't think the beard works for those of us for whom he doesn't do much anyway, either.