At the dinner after the Lee Braver "Author Meets Critics" APA thingy all of us got around to talking about our various religious upbringings and current practices and for those of us with kids, how we should raise them. I told people how my parents are kind of steamed at me for refusing to tell my kids that Santa Claus exists and that I didn't intend to tell them that God does either (though honestly I don't know whether or when to tell them that the outcomes of professional wrestling matches are predetermined; I hate the thought of being dishonest but I also hate the thought of removing the magic). Anyhow, the God thing prompted surprise by my dining interlocutors, since I'm a church going Presbyterian and both of my children have been baptized.
I mean, we've all seen youtube videos of dogs who show up at the same place every day where they used to meet their dead owner, e.g.
Why is this sad and moving? Would it be more or less moving if the dog knew its owner were dead? From this news story there's no way to tell what beliefs it may or may not be rational to attribute to Spot. But if the evidence suggested that it is more rational to think that Spot does not have any confidence that her owner is coming back, then I think the story would be even more moving. Here's a much more horrifying video that never caught on as an internet meme:
I don't think this poor dog thinks its owner is going to come back. Yet what could be more faithful than his vigil? [Note: the dog has been taken in by the murdered man's cousin.] I'm not saying that this dog is somehow analogous to churchgoers. . . just that the poor thing is a personification of the kind of faithfulness worth instantiating, religious or not.
At the Lee Braver dinner, Ted George said that it disturbed him the way so many people in the United States go around bragging about being spiritual but not religious, as if that were tranparently a praiseworthy thing. But maybe a stronger case can be made for those who are religious and not spiritual.
I don't know if I'd put it that way. In my heart of hearts I feel like all this emphasis on belief is actually an impediment to faith (this is a religious belief; I hope that it is philosophically defensible), and moreover that encouraging people to believe things on little or no evidence is just as morally damaging as someone like Christopher Hitchens alleges.
In any case, Phillip Larkin is, or should be, the patron saint of every non-spiritual yet religious person. Here's one of his finest:
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Here's another dog video to close this out. In this one the dog is dying and the owner is the one left. Through his tears at the end of the video he says, "God was that dog I held today."
O.K. This is a God that I hope to teach Thomas and Audrey about.
- [Punkrockmonday #1] The White Stripes - Jack the Ripper (orig. Screaming Lord Sutch), Black Math, and the Big Three Killed My Baby]
- [Punkrockmonday #2] Roy Cook - Saint Paul Cathedral, Minneapolis Capitol Building, Aayla Secura Mosaic, and Firefly Class Spaceship
- [Punkrockmonday #3] El Général- Rais Le Bled (President, Your Country)
- [Punkrockmonday #4] Charlie Patton -High Water Everywhere, Part 2
- [Punkrockmonday #5] Henry Rollins- What Am I Doing Here; Willie Nelson- Me and Paul; Rainbow Connection (orig. Kermit the Frog)
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