Friday 23 June 2006

Pic of the day: Not entirely quiet reflections.

True colors?

I've mentioned this in various ways before, but it is rather close to me today. Despite the reassurances of my doctor, I keep having periods of frantic coughing a couple times a day, lasting about a quarter of an hour perhaps now... it seems to grow shorter at least. After this I cough up thick goo, which cannot possibly be a good thing to have in my bronchies. Which I assume is where it is, since it makes a big difference when it passes my larynx. Also in the night I am shorter of breath and some sleeping positions will cause me to wake up after a while gasping for breath. I know this is not exactly a world record, probably some of my readers are worse off on a daily basis. Still, it does bring home the shortness of life and all that.

And that, dear congregation, brings us to today's topic. As I sometimes say, I am not just a Christian: I am two different Christians. I liken this unto the Japanese custom of having two religions: Buddhism for death and Shinto for life. Actually it is more complex than that, but that gives a starting point to begin understanding. I can certainly sympathize. Also when I was a kid and read my grandmother's missionary literature, I learned that some heathens came to the faith and lived out their lives as good believing Christians; but on their deathbed, they reverted to the tribal religion. That struck me as noteworthy, as one would expect the opposite to be true: That Christians would become exceedingly Christian when the actual exam time came up. But today I understand it. Oh yes.

My parents did not try to impose any religion on me; in fact, I did not even know their religions when I was a child. I think I assumed they were Christians of some sort, which also turned out to be true. But for reasons I still don't know clearly, they must have gone out of their way to not impart any religion on me, and possibly not on my brothers (I am not sure about that, it was before my time). My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, had no scruples about raising us in the Lutheran faith. My brothers didn't take much interest in it, I think, but then again they were not the ones waking up gasping for breath due to childhood asthma. In any case, I went with her to church and generally considered myself an extraordinarily Christian Christian, and my oldest brother a henchman of Satan. Well, it made sense at the time.

The Lutheran doctrine is what I've elsewhere described as "a faith worse than death", the firm belief that God regrettably has to roast people alive for all eternity... a word is a word, after all. But luckily if one believes in Jesus, this fate can be avoided. Exactly what and how much to believe is hotly contested among the various factions, each of which harbors a nagging suspicion that those who disagree too strongly with their understanding may go down to the great barbecue party down below and never return. It is not something one talks about too much in public, but it pervades the whole culture and is easy for even a kid to piece together.

***

My current day to day faith is also Christianity, but a rather different version. I am a mystic, that is to say I believe God is an all-pervading spirit rather than some guy in an ornate chair. I believe that Jesus lives within my "heart", even though I don't deserve it. My faith is a happy, life-affirming one, in which God as a good father only forbids that which hurts his children. The various commandments of the Bible are just instances or examples of such things. This God doesn't need anything from humans, least of all our worship in fear and groveling. All he asks is that we shares his goodness with each other, and of course he appreciates if we consciously choose to spend time in his company ... which is everywhere, not in particular houses or doing particular rituals, but just reaching out with our mind to acknowledge his divine Presence.

So far, so good. But when I get sick enough, I tend (like those poor heathens) to revert to a more childish state of mind, from a time when there was no need to doubt since the truth was given to you by authorities you trusted implicitly. Unfortunately this is the faith in a jealous God who can not get enough of his subjects abasing themselves before his threatening majesty, and who might quite possibly suddenly decide to torture people in Hell forever unless they are really sincere. Obviously I'm not sincere since I hold a different faith almost every day, so this is a problematic situation.

In terms of Spiral Dynamics, I plunge all the way from Yellow spirituality ("God is in everything and everything is in God") to Purple ("my God is the God of my ancestors, and must be appeased by ritual magic"). Those are both valid religious views for different people, but it is kind of harrowing to move from one to the other. It certainly does not make the illness easier to bear, the nagging suspicion that "God is angry with me and wants to kill me".

***

As the years have gone by, the free and life-affirming faith has gradually taken over more and more of my time, a process I have referred to as "loosening my religion" (a pun on one of the most catchy songs of the last century, by R.E.M). While this is more relaxing, it has the negative side effect that I gradually begin to accept that I am going to die. Well, of course I am going to die: We are all going to die at some point, though it is hard to know when. But as a child death is not quite really real: Surely my parent will protect me so bad things don't happen to me, right? And so far, my divine Parent has indeed kept me alive despite some amazingly tight spots. I'd like for that to continue. I'm really creeped out by death. But ironically, this is in no small amount because I'm afraid that if I die, it will turn out that God hates me after all and will give me what I deserve for having had so much fun in life.

I have wondered: If I get diagnosed with a terminal illness, which one of my faiths will prevail in the end? Will I be able to accept my fate and continue to live while I am still alive, or will I revert to fundamentalism and spend the rest of my time obsessed with death? I wonder.

As of writing this, I'm obviously in the Yellow mindset, and as such I am not even sure whether it makes a difference in the end. Isn't God really the same, regardless of how we perceive "him"? Whether I die screaming for mercy or thanking God for the wonderful life I was allowed to experience, my real content is actually the same. I am really the same person. As such, there is no reason to believe that God will judge the one differently from the other. Even if I run and hide under the bed, I am still the same person. Even if I close my eyes, I am still the same. Limiting myself will not change who I am, only my perspective. To think that my perspective changes God somehow is to think that I am creating God, rather than the other way around. I am sure some of you silently thinks that's exactly the case. But I know from experience that it is not quite that simple.

Yes, we create God, but God also creates us. We give God form, but God existed before Form, and before we gave a Name. Like God is present beside every sparrow that falls to earth, he was present with our ancestors before they gave all things names and tried to control them with their minds. And after I give up trying to control God, he will still be the same.

But whether I will live long enough to reach that quiet, is a very big uncertainty. Most people either dismiss God entirely, or try to make him accept them. To accept God is rare indeed. And even now, I just can't do it...or at least not hold onto it.