Nothing's sure but death and taxes

I think most people are familiar with the old saying, "Nothing's sure but death and taxes." While it is the "tax" part that makes it humorous, it is the universal assent to the first part that makes it insightful. There is no way to think about spirituality, God, religion, faith, et cetera, without having death a central player in the discussion.

Most of us do not think about death very much, but our biological life is really mostly about doing things to avoid it. Eating, drinking, breathing, moving - those verbs that are essential to the very nature of biological life's continuance have as their converse death. If we do not eat, we die. If we do not drink, we die. If we do not breathe, we die. If we do not move or act to avoid physical threats, then we die. The more disturbing reality is, however, that no matter how much eating, drinking, breathing and moving we do, we still die.

We owe to Dr. Kubler-Ross a debt of gratitude for helping many of us better to understand the process of grief. Although we may grieve many losses, death and dying were the subject of her now universally famous work. It has been debated, however, that the "final stage" of the grieving process "acceptance," really happens very much. There are many who contend, and I worry that they are right, that the final stage of acceptance is simply a deeper retreat into denial. We may internalize the person whom we knew externally, perhaps, and come to be "at peace" therefore with the loss, but the reality of the loss may not be fully and completely accepted as it is just too painful, ultimately, to bear.

One of my "hobbies" that I pursue as my time allows is family genealogy. With patience and persistence, I have slowly been putting together a family tree that now includes literally thousands of individuals and extends back over centuries. Along with the "inevitable facts" of date and place of birth, date and place of death, date and place of burial, I try as much as possible to accumulate other facts and "relics" as it were of these people. In the loft room of my home, I and my partner have framed photos of many persons in our family trees who are dead. At times, I have the feeling that, as I look at their silent faces, usually in the more abstract black and white photos of past times, they are somehow still there, sitting, regarding, existing in "silence." But as I think about this more, I shake myself and remind myself that they are not "really" there with me. It does not take much experience with real death to make any pleasant/calm abstraction seem like the most transparent fiction. As a physician, I have seen people die on any number of occasions. It is almost never the "stage" death of the dying individual speaking those last loving words, closing their eyes and slipping into a peaceful and permanent slumber. It is often slow. The individual is rarely conscious to the end. The dead person does not look as if s/he has fallen asleep. The person looks and is dead. There is no waking up from that biological fact. Not to put a gratuitously gruesome face on it, the decomposition of the body after death, at least of human bodies, is something most of us have not seen. We all have seen skeletons, yes, but it is hard to imagine the skeleton as a once-living person. They all look relatively the same, don't they? It is quite another thing to see the flesh melting, putrifying, being consumed by insects, etc. As a medical student taking a rotation in forensic pathology, I had ample opportunity to see bodies burned alive, drowned and decomposed to various levels. It is far from a peaceful sleep.

Paul Tillich has written (forgive the non-inclusive language-his, not mine), "God is the answer to the question implied in man's finitude; he is the name for that which concerns man ultimately." If this is true, and propositionally let's accept it for the moment, then any discussion of faith, belief, philosophy, religion, God, enlightenment, et cetera, must have death pretty close to the center. If the answer to this question is bounded by a question about our finitude (meaning that we were born, live and will some day, sooner or later, die), then having a clear and realistic picture of death is absolutely essential to understanding any "answer" that we may find. In, certainly, overly-simplistic terms, the theist God is an answer to the question of death: There is a God. He existed before me from all eternity. He created the universe and everything in it, including me. As an infinite being, he is infinitely compassionate. Although I may not understand "Why" we must die, I must accept it as part of the plan of this infinite being. If he is truly infinitely compassionate and death is painful, and he has ordained it, then surely it is not a complete end to my being. He even proved it to us conclusively in the person of Jesus who embodied his essence in a fully human being. Jesus died and rose again "on the third day." We are promised that, we too, at the last day, will be raised with all those who have died at any time/place and will live again in perfect happiness for eternity with the direct vision and experience of this loving God whom we may call "Father."

If one can accept the parts and premises, then the conclusions are reasonable and comforting. When, however, I put the "real" world against the theist, all-powerful and "all-loving" God, it just becomes too much to bear. What gets left out is the massive suffering that humans, animals, all sentient beings experience. There is cruelty, hatred, pain, disease, despair....and we can go on and on. People pray every day for mercy, help, relief of suffering from the all-powerful theistic God and get no relief. The apologetic answers are many. Faith was not strong enough. God answers every prayer, but sometimes the answer is "no." God has a higher plan and purpose and is all-wise. He does not give us the relief we ask for because he knows that that it would not be good for us. His "special plan" for each of us will be revealed in time. Just bear it for now and all will be made well after we die and see him face to face. I can find a parallel to this picture in the human world. There are many persons who cannot, for psychological/emotional/situational reasons, leave the relationship of another cruel/abusive individual. Those who have had the opportunity to deal with the victims of spousal abuse are often astounded at how many times the abused spouse will "go back" to the abusing partner. If God is truly a theistic God and is truly all-powerful, then he has a lot to answer for. It will take a lot of explaining to justify as part of the "loving divine plan" the horrors of genocide, of cold-blooded murder, of torture, of natural disasters that snuff out the lives of thousands in horrible agony....I could go on, literally, forever.

It was this theistic God who, for me, had himself to die. The only answer for me to the problem "death" and the God of theism is an ultimate death - the death of that God. To my mind now, however, it was not the death of a "real" God, but only a "false God" after all, so although it was incredibly painful for me, it was a necessary death. The "aching and gaping hole" where this "God" once existed in my life is one that is clearly not fully healed and, like some severe wounds, may never really be made whole. But if I am to be true to myself and others, I could not refuse to accept this death.....

So, "God" is dead...but can there be a "Long live God" echo that comes out of the end of the old, false God? I think, ultimately, that this is possible. Once again, "God is the answer to the question implied in man's finitude." The question, however, is far from simple, and the "answer" will of necessity be far from simple. In the recent movie version of the novels of "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the inhabitants of a long ago and far away planet built an ultimate computer and asked it to compute the ultimate answer. As the story went, they returned millenia later to get the answer. Unfortunately, the answer that they got was incomprehensible. When they asked for an explanation, it was apparent that they had really not understood the question in the first place. The question of our finitude is really the question that is the entirety of our lives. The answer will also be one that is/encompasses/perfects the entirety of human and cosmological existence. It is the process of exploring that answer that is the substance, I think, of Faith. "God" perhaps then, is not an entity, but a process of understanding, becoming and evolving. God may not, therefore, even be fully perceivable by any one person, species or planet but may be the "understanding of finitude" of the entire cosmos. Unlike the small God of theism, that may be an "answer" worth all the seeking.

Jeffrey Shy,
"I'm not dead yet."
Mesa, Arizona

Bells and Smells

As I have been trying to work out how a non-theistic Christianity might take form, it has been hard to resist simply going back to how I believed things to have been before I gave up theism. One of the persistent attractions has been to return to the music and ritual. Like most people, I was not born with prayer beads in one hand and a BCP (Book of Common Prayer) in the other, but from my first encounters with complex religious ritual, I was captivated. As a child and through high school, I was a member of a Presbyterian Church in a small midwestern town. This church was far from liberal as a whole and had a very sparse liturgical life. The minister of the church, while a wonderful man, was somewhat painfully placed in this congregation. He had a doctorate in theology from a non-Presbyterian school and introduced the somewhat heinous notion that the bible was not to be understood literally, but needed to be interpreted. He also had some slight fondness for religious ritual and made small strides to try to improve the liturgical life of this church. It was from him that I "learned" that the Presbyterian prayerbook of the time, The Book of Common Worship, was a relative of the English and American BCPs via the prayerbook of the Church of Scotland. Unfortunately, this book was very hard to find and was largely ignored by almost every Presbyterian congregation that I knew, so it had little relevance. It was, however, during this time that I found a copy of the Book of Common Prayer (the latest revision) shortly after it was first released. From the first, the complex novelty was fascinating. There were liturgies for all sorts of times and circumstances, a complex calendar, a version of the Psalms unlike any in the bible versions that I knew, not KJV, NEV, RSV or any other V (the pastor of the Presbyterian church had introduced the use of the RSV-"horrors"- and had even purchased and made available many copies of the "Oxford Annotated" version of the same) and other liturgical novelties.

Like any "play" that is read, however, it became quickly clear that liturgy needs to be acted out, and thus started my fascination with and love for religious ritual. During college at a small midwestern Lutheran school, I finally left the Presbyterians and adopted a "When in Rome" conversion to Lutheranism. (In honesty, my reasons were much more complex than that, but it would be too great a digression) At this school, there were a number of students involved in and around the college Chapel. One of them was decidedly fundamentalist and liturgically of the sit in a circle with a guitar, read the Bible, "lift up" in prayer sort of entity. The other group was more traditional but was split between those of us that were liturgically inclined and those that were more for social action and rather indifferent to liturgy. It was in services there that I first experienced some of the "something" that I came to associate with complex religious ritual. It was this "something" feeling that kept me coming back, even though I was socially far away from traditional religous conservatism. In the light of candles, the smoke of incense, the sounds of polyphonic music and the precision of movement, I could often achieve what I suppose I could call a "religious high." I would seek this "high" out many times again in the future. It would become a frustration for me when I could not achieve it. An ineptly or indifferently conducted liturgical event which "broke the rules" became a source of irritation. An extended, complex and well-executed liturgy could send me into a nearly "ecstatic" experience. Eventually, I would go to rather great lengths to get really good liturgy. I took several "pilgrimages" around the time of religious holidays to (by this time Anglican/Epsiscopalian) churches known for their "high church" liturgical practices to get a bigger "fix" of this liturgical high.

After my great collapse (another later blog), I stopped attending church altogether. Initially, I did not miss any of the liturgics, but little things kept calling me back, and that "siren call" continues to this moment. The comfort of saying a piece of the office, an "inspiring" piece of music, the rhythmicity of repeated prayer with a rosary, all of these things keep beckoning me back to a world of religious practice that I left rather abruptly. What I found, however, was that with the collapse of theism for me, the words were all wrong. I would get along OK for a bit, taking some refuge in the "symbolic" nature of religious language (I could redefine terms fluidly by now), but then I would hit on some "ugly" bit. The Nicene or Apostles creeds were particularly bad. Petitionary prayers asking God for help, good weather, peace, mercy, candy, a new Barbie doll, whatever, were also particularly bad and would demand a sort of liturgical "nose holding" until the moment passed. But I still hear the call....I just cannot get the "fix" any more.

You can guess that, from the terms I used to describe the subjective and emotional nature of these experiences, I have considered that the "religious high" was no more than some sort of "endorphin rush" brought on by just the right combination of sensory stimuli (bear with me, I am a neurologist after all). If that is so, then it will be a great task to stay away from it and to avoid "falling off the wagon." If it is merely an addiction, then it can only cloud my reason and perception and make it harder to see things in new ways. At the same time, however, I have to consider that there are other possibilities. Some of my greatest moments of new insight, "Ah ha!" moments, have occured in liturgical experiences. Could this suggest that, in these liturgical experiences, I had achieved some sort of "higher" mental state? In a more religious sense, could I have had contact with "the numinous" or perhaps have been "moved by the Spirit?"

Obviously, the answer to this question has some relevance. Liturgical practice has been an integral part of Christianity and other religions from the very beginnings. To a degree, it is some of the most obvious and visible manifestation of any religion. If there is to be a Christian non-theism, is this to be a purely intellectual exercise that is "works" alone (consider, for example, the present fervor of the "Millenium Development Goals" and the emphasis on "Mission" in the Episcopal Church today), or will there be a liturgical/experiential side as well?

Clearly, I do not know the answer to this question at this point. As I am "trying out" non-theistic Christianity, it is certain that I do not have a "non-theist" prayerbook to pick up. Any liturgies that express the intellectual assumptions and questions of non-theism have yet to be written. Like many of these questions, it is likely that I will not live to see a "final solution," and I suppose that it is naive to think that there will ever be one. I think, however, that I will be careful for the moment. There may still be some sense in preserving a liturgical/ritual life, and I, for one, do not wish to be guilty of "throwing out the baby with the bath water."

Jeffrey Shy
"Was that an 'Ave' I heard?"
Mesa, Arizona

Making new words and re-using old ones - problems with religious language

I had a bit of time today to continue reading Bishop Spong's book, "The Sins of Scripture." In the chapter on "Reading Scripture as Epic History," he reminds us that spoken language is a fairly recent development on the cosmological scale- about 50 thousand years for us. Written language is even more recent - no more than five to ten thousand years. In a blog, written language is essentially what it's all about. Our ability to write about religious ideas, however, is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it allows us to depend a bit less on our fallible day-to-day recall and to "acumulate" and "build" ideas and knowledge. It is a curse, to a degree, because of the problem of religious language. Not only does religious language not "follow the rules" always of logic and discourse, but the very most central terms are ones that are so hard to define. Whether we are talking about God, the Buddha, Enlightenment, Brahman, etc (you can extend the list), we are in essence using words/terms that are not clearly definable by any great concensus.

Last night, I participated in some back-and-forth discussion on the 11th hour decision of the Episcopal General Convention to pass a resolution that in substance would seem to be at least a temporary moratorium on the consecration of more gay/lesbian bishops. It is, however, a document that is outstanding in its vagueness. It specifically avoids talking about sexual orientation and rather foolishly talks about persons who might be viewed as inappropriate (see, I'm paraphrasing) in other parts of the Anglican communion. One wonders if their intent is to hold on consecrating any more female bishops? As there are only three provinces to date that have women bishops and, for many in the world, the issue of female priests and deacons is far from a done deed, a woman primate is clearly going to be offensive to some--reference the petition of the Diocese of Ft. Worth to have alternative primatial oversite. Having just elected Katharine as the new PB, this seems extremely ironic. It was also rather choice that another candidate who was twice divorced and thrice married was consented to just before this "gem" of a resolution was agreed to as the "best we can do for now."

I am, however, digressing a bit. What I meant to come to was that I realized in my postings in the discussion how much I had redefined religious language in ways that I knew were far off the mainstream. As a theoretical non-theist (all belief is conditional and I am "trying out" non-theistic Christianity as it were), I feel that words like "God" and "Faith" and "The Spirit" and others seem to demand to be "in quotes" somehow. I rather feel that, until I have new and unique words to convey what I am coming to believe about these things, I have to use quote enclosures to at least remind me and any other reader to pause and consider that we all may mean very different things when we use these words. As I try to explore what a new non-theistic (and perhaps non-religious as the Rt. Rev. Spong has conditionally proposed) Christianity might be like, I know that I will have to be careful at every step to consider the meaning of the words that I use and, when necessary, to define them as best I can, or if I cannot define them in positive terms, to at least do so in negative ones (e.g. God is not a personal entity watching over us from heaven above.)

As a final note, I have read on other blogs some fairly harsh criticism of PB-elect Katharine, and I would suggest that we moderate our criticism to allow her to grow into this awesome responsibility. I suspect that, just like all of us, she has had and will have more and less inspired moments. Fortunately, being an Episcopalian does not require that I view what she says as infallible. It does, however, require that I am charitable. For someone who has been dumped into the fire, as it were, we need to consider how we might do in such a position. I, for one, wish her well and hope that she will become the inspiration to all of us that I know she has the potential to be.

In the meantime, and a bit contrary, how about a quote from Benjamin Franklin? "Well done is better than well said."

Jeffrey Shy
Struggling in Mesa, Arizona

Jeffrey Shy's Non-theistic Episcopalian Blog

In the light of recent events at the general convention (both positive and negative) and my growing sense that the "whole darn thing" meaning the entire Christian Theistic Religion is on the verge of a collapse, I have started this blog to at least help me to put my ideas and feelings into words. I will strongly admit that I am influenced by the writings of Bishop Spong regarding the need for Christianity to "change or die." I also believe that, as a non-theistic Christian, the Spirit that will allow us to create a new and livable Christianity for the 21st Century and beyond will be found nowhere but in ourselves. I invite all comments should anyone have the great kindness to read any of my posts as I work towards trying to understand Christian Religion, particularly as a post-modern Episcopalian in new ways.

Jeffrey L. Shy
Mesa, Arizona