The Spiritual Life of an Atheist

August 24, 2008

                                                                                                    Amy Craig Griggs

 

Reading: And How Long?  By Pablo Neruda, translated from the Spanish

How much does a man live, after all?

 For a week, or for several centuries?

 How long does a man spend dying?

 What does it mean to say ‘forever’?

 Lost in this preoccupation,

I set myself to clear things up.

 I sought our knowledgeable priests,

I waited for them after their rituals,

I watched them when they went their ways

To visit God and the Devil.

 They wearied of my questions.

They on their part knew very little.

They were no more than administrators.

 Medical men received me

In between consultations,

A scalpel in each hand,

Saturated in aureomycin,

Busier each day.

As far as I could tell from their talk,

The problem was as follows:

It was not so much the death of a microbe—

They went down by the ton,

But the few which survived

Showed signs of perversity.

 They left me so startled

That I sought out the grave-diggers.

I went to the rivers where they burn

Enormous painted corpses,

Tiny bony bodies,

Emperors with an aura

Of terrible curses,

Women snuffed out at a stroke

By a wave of cholera.

There were whole beaches of dead

And ashy specialists.

When I got the chance

I asked them a slew of questions.

They offered to burn me.

It was all they knew.

 In my own country the dead

Answered me, between drinks:

‘Get yourself a good woman

And give up this nonsense.”

 I never saw people so happy.

 Raising their glasses they sang

Toasting health and death

They were huge fornicators.

 I returned home, much older

After crossing the world.

 Now I ask questions of nobody.

 But I know less every day.

 

 

 

Here is something I have never said in front of a large group of people, and not to very many people in private: I am an atheist.  It’s not that I am ashamed of my beliefs; in fact, I’m really quite comfortable with them.  I think it’s more that I don’t like the word: atheist.    Would it be better if I described myself as a humanist?  As a Unitarian Universalist?  As a wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend?  A teacher, a student, a listener, an observer?  A reader, a thinker?    I think all of those tell you more about who I am than atheist.  The word atheist tells you what I don’t believe.  And there are so many wonderful things that I do believe in.

            I believe an act of kindness can change the course of someone’s life forever.  I believe walking in the rain can cleanse the spirit.  I believe the universe holds truths we will never know.  I believe in the Scientific Method, alternative medicine, and thinking outside the box.  I believe I was born with more than most people will ever have.  I believe it is my responsibility to make the world a better place.

            A few years ago, the Denton UUF which I was attending did a series on Personal Spiritual Journeys, where congregants would take turns sharing the paths their lives had taken.  At the time, I declined, worried that I was overextending myself with work, school, and personal responsibilities.  Now seems a good time to return to this charge.   I would like to share with you my journey, thus far. 

      I have been told that the world-view of an atheist must be dim, drab, dark, but nothing could be further from the truth. I make my own meaning as I go, and the sun shines just as brightly for me without a chariot pulling it across the sky.  I try my best to keep my eyes wide open and I am eager to discover new truths that will come my way from philosophy, from science.  From thinkers I will only read about, from neighbors I meet in line at Walmart.  From those whose beliefs are different from mine (I guess that includes just about everybody), from soul mates and strangers, friends and enemies.  I’d like to read to you a brief passage from the introduction of a Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking about the freedom of inquiry that comes from not tying oneself to organized religion.

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.  We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend.  Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.  There are even children, and I have met some of them, who want to know what a black hole looks like; what is the smallest piece of matter; why we remember the past and not the future; now it is, if there was chaos early, that there is, apparently, order today; and why there is a universe.

      In our society it is still customary for parents and teachers to answer most of these questions with a shrug, or with an appeal to vaguely recalled religious precepts.  Some are uncomfortable with issues like these, because they so vividly expose the limitations of human understanding.

      But much of philosophy and science has been driven by such inquiries.  An increasing number of adults are willing to ask questions of this sort, and occasionally they get some astonishing answers.  Equidistant from the atoms and stars, we are expanding our exploratory horizons to embrace both the very small and the very large.

 

            I was raised unchurched, but my earliest memories of religious fanfare were of attending Easter service with my paternal grandparents. I was about 4, I think.   I had been dressed up in a green dress with white gloves, my hair pinned up on top of my head.  I understood I was to be shown off, to be on my best behavior.    My grandparents were members of a Disciples of Christ church.  It wasn’t until much later that I learned that my grandparents, both divorcees before they married each other and produced my father, had both been raised Southern Baptists but were unwelcome in the Church following the failure of their first marriages.

            Going to church, I found out, was like going to a play, only you didn’t clap.  I asked why, and Memaw told me that it was because the music was for God, not for us, but He didn’t mind if we enjoyed it.  Later, stuffed with Easter candy, with chocolate smeared on my new dress, I looked back on the day feeling special, as if something beautiful had been shared with me.    Sitting in the pews with joyful, friendly people is what I remember.  Sacred space.

            Memaw may have been a regular church- goer, but her personal ideas about religion tended towards the unorthodox.  Sitting in her living room, she could talk for hours about her hometown up on top of a mountain in Alabama, about her travels as a military wife, and about her belief that she was an Indian Princess in a former life.  I loved to listen to her talk.  And her stories, though often repeated, taught me as much about life as any church service.

            There were stories about the winning high school girls’ basketball team, about being Rosie the Riveter, about riding a donkey at the Officer’s Club.  About sewing lace on the bottom of my father’s shirt tails so he’d tuck them in.  My favorites, though, were about growing up on a farm with her sisters: Sula, Beuhla, Ula and Brownie.    The best was about the day she wore pants to school.  It was cold, she explained.  The teacher sent her home from school, and her father marched her right back and said that the school was built on his land and if his daughter wanted to wear pants to school she damn well could.  The next day, all the girls on the basketball team and a few daring stragglers  came to school wearing pants and continued to do so for the rest of the winter.          That story told me a lot about who I wanted to be, and now that I’m a parent, it tells me what kind of parent I want to be, too.

            Growing up in South Florida in a happily integrated neighborhood is an experience I try hard not to take for granted.  Though not unique, our neighborhood with black, white, and Hispanic families was not the norm in the 1970’s.  I didn’t know that of course.  I just knew that our house was open to any friend I brought home.  We’d spend hours “playing pretend.”  Mom made us elaborate birthday cakes and funny hats to celebrate our birthdays.  One neighbor had a pool, and that’s where I learned to love the water.  Another neighbor would feed us fresh tortillas with butter while we waited for the school bus.  I knew we were all different.  And all the same.

            Dinner time was always filled with laughter and intellectual debates, as far back as I can remember.  I still feel sorry for people who come to the Craig house for dinner.  I think you have to be raised that way in order to keep up with the conversation.  It was with some forethought that I decided to ask my Dad about religion because I knew the answer was going to be long, and once Dad hit professor mode, you may be sitting there playing with the last of the green beans for quite a while.

            “What religion are we?”  I asked.

            “Who wants to know?” replied my Dad.

            “Well,”  I do. I said.

            “We’re WASPS.”  I considered this.  I had never heard of a WASP.  Further explanation was cut short by my brother announcing that he had learned to drink chocolate milk with a straw through his nose at lunch that day.

            The unexpectedly brief explanation left me wondering…what am I?  It was about this same time, in fourth grade, that we started learning Greek and Roman mythology.  I loved it.  The wonderful stories about Gods and Goddesses with difficult names caught my imagination.  I could imagine living there, in Greece, with a toga and curls in my hair, worshipping the mighty Aphrodite.  I believe the teacher purposefully tried to slip by us one little detail that I caught during my own extracurricular reading:  People who lived at the time these stories were told believed they were true.

            “Well no one alive today believes they are true,” stammered my teacher when I pointed out her omission in front of the class.  “So you mean all those people were just wrong?”  I asked.  “Yes,” she said.

 I couldn’t believe my toga-ed altar-ego could be so easily duped.  “So all those people, the people who believed these stories, they’re all in hell now?”  Wisely, my teacher told me I should ask my parents that question.  I did of course, and that’s when my parents’ reluctant agnosticism became clear.  I found this comforting.  I had been really worried about all those Appolonians rotting in hell.

Still, at one point, I decided I should try being a Christian.  I wasn’t particularly worried about my soul, mind you, but all the other kids were doing it.  So, how is it that you become a Christian?  As far as I could tell, all you have to do is believe just like in Peter Pan.  If you believe you can fly, and you have some pixie dust, you can fly. 

But can you choose what you believe?  Can you will yourself to hear angels?  I closed my eyes and concentrated.  And I waited for God to speak to me.  I got bored after a while and concentrated on trying to get my clothes to pick themselves off of the floor and put themselves in the laundry basket like in Mary Poppins.  That didn’t work either.  Maybe I just didn’t have any pixie dust.  So I went and played Ms. pac-man instead.  And then I got in trouble for not cleaning my room.

            As I got older, I occasionally attended services with my best friend, Katie, at the Methodist Church.  Sometimes, I actually listened.  It was just more stories, really, only these were from the Bible rather than Ovid.  I would like to tell you I went to church in search of spiritual enlightenment, not just because I had to go if I wanted to sleep over at Katie’s on Saturday nights.  Actually, there was one other reason. 

            His name was Shawn Andre.  He had a beautiful name and a beautiful soul and I loved him.  He sang in the choir, and he looked just like George Michael.  I went to youth group meetings to catch a glimpse of his red hair and green eyes, and we even danced once at the Halloween Ball.  He was a pirate.  I was a bunny rabbit.  Sadly, our romance never really made it off the ground.  After my freshman year of high school, we moved. I didn’t keep in touch with Shawn, but I heard that towards the end of high school he announced that he was gay, and he no longer felt comfortable attending that church.

                        High School was a whirlwind of learning to fit in, and I was lucky enough to find places where I did fit in. Church was not one of them.  I had learned to see Church as a place where differences were not welcomed, and my ideas and beliefs were different every day.  High School was too small a place to explore all the possibilities, so when it finally came time for college, I chose one of the largest Universities in the country.

            Here are the most important things I learned in College:

1.      If you need change for laundry, put a dollar bill in the coke machine and hit coin return.

2.      Olive Garden serves lunch until 4:00, and if you eat plenty of salad and bread sticks, you can take the entrée home for dinner.

3.      Anthropology explains everything

 

I loved Anthropology and quickly abandoned journalism, my intended major.   Here was my world view with an entire scientific discipline to back it up.  I now had a framework that explained how millions of people can worship different deities and all think they’re right.  I learned the term “cultural relativism” which I had always believed in but needed a word for. This means that things that are perfectly acceptable in one culture may not be in another culture, and there are no right or wrong values systems, just cultural conflict.  That if you worship Athena, or are divorced, or gay, you are no better or worse than anyone else.  I learned that groups of people are different biologically, but they are more the same.  That taboos can be explained by environmental and socioeconomic factors.  That the story of the resurrection of Jesus is no more or less weird than cargo cults or trance states.

 I quickly found a group of friends who would have felt very comfortable at the family dinner table.  My social life became a series of debates, intellectual challenges, and new ideas.    I was asked, for the first time, to define myself.  What did I believe?

      Thanks for asking.

 I believe the universe is governed by natural laws. 

It’s really that simple. 

      I also met my first UU.  Christy had actually been raised a UU and I was impressed by her knowledge of world religions.  She offered to take me one Sunday, and I really meant to go, but Sunday mornings really didn’t exist for us in college.  It took quite a bit to get me out of bed on a Sunday morning.

      One semester, though, I took a class in Anthropology of Religion.  We spent Sunday mornings all semester attending services at different churches.  By far, my favorite of these was the Methodist AME church.  I had never felt so welcomed.  The service was upbeat and joyous.  Nobody threatened me with hell.  The children wandered happily up and down the aisles singing along to the proud gospels.  The preacher even introduced me at the end of the service.  But at the last second, he couldn’t come up with my last name.  So he introduced me as Amy Carter.  I was mobbed by hugging.  Your father has done so much for our people, they said.  I didn’t have the heart to tell them that my father researched the history of radio, but I was pretty sure he’d voted for Carter.

      Jason and I joined the UU church in 1999.  We went rather nervously to our very first service at DUUF, not sure what to expect.  The sermon that day was called, “More on Trees,” and was followed by a heated debate about the best time for planting.  They told us to come back even if we didn’t really like the topic of the day, so we did, and we kept going.  I was looking for a place that my children could learn about religion—all religions, and a place where I could make friends who were open-minded.  I’ve gotten so much more out of being a UU.  I’ve learned to be much more tolerant of other people’s beliefs, and I’ve learned that my own beliefs are still growing and changing. 

And now, at 37, here in Mississippi, I am facing new spiritual challenges.  I can handle an intellectual debate about the origins of morality.  My grasp of evolutionary theory is pretty good, so if you want to discuss Intelligent Design, bring it on.  But How do I live my life as part of an invisible minority?  When do I stick up for what I believe in?  How do I choose my battles?  How do I exercise my rights?  Is enough that I skip over the Under God part of Pledge of Allegiance?  Or should I be writing angry letters to the paper about how atheists are Americans too?  When the topic for the PTO meeting is on child discipline for Christian parents conducted by a local minister at my children’s public school, do I quit the PTO or complain to the same people I’m going to need on my side the next time one of my kids does something crazy? 

And I’ve had some personal conflicts in the last year or so with people I like and admire.  Cultural relativism is all fine and dandy, but when people I love have spiritual beliefs directly in conflict with my own, can I forgive them?  Can they forgive me?  Can true friendship survive when one believes the other is damned to hell? When one believes the other is misled at best and brainwashed at worst?

And I’m still finding my place in this community, both in Jackson and the world at large.  I believe deeply that this year’s election affects all of us and every voice must be heard.  I want to make sure that my children and their friends are free to ask questions about subjects some people may find uncomfortable and free to have unpopular opinions.  I’m thinking about my global footprint and my lust for long hot showers and transportation on demand.  I’m exploring vegetarianism, knowing the world will be a better place if I choose to consume fewer animal products in a society where meat is optional for good health.  

There are 2.1 billion Christians  today.  1.3 billion Muslims.  900 million Hindus, 276 million Buddhists, 23 million Siks and 14 million Jews.  There is at least one guy who worships Thor.  I met him at a really great party in college.  I had trouble coming up with a number for atheists, but we rank somewhere below Muslims and above Roman Catholics as far as I can tell.  It would be so terribly conceited of me to stand here and tell you that we’re the ones who’ve got it right.  I can only tell you what I believe in my heart, what I’ve discovered on my own spiritual journey.  I know I still have a long way to go.  Thank God for that.

 

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? ---Douglas Adams