I remember talking with someone once who wanted to officially leave the Catholic Church. He said he wished he could sign a form to officially get himself out. I imagine leaving a church could be very difficult but it is possible to walk away, wash your hand of it, pick the thought-tentacles out of your brain when you find them and get on with your life. I think leaving God is much harder. There's a lot of talk in the Bible about 'I will follow you wherever you go, there is nowhere you can go to escape me, blah blah blah'. Not until Salome died did I hear the menace in those quotes. When you've seen the side of God that is treacherous and malevolent, hearing these quotes about 'nowhere to run or hide' is like being threatened by a dangerous ex partner. Is it even possible to end a relationship with God? I don't know but I'm giving it a good Aussie go. Certainly the relationship I had with God before Salome died is over. Whatever relationship I have with the Divine in the future needs to be nothing like what I had. I don't know if I'll be able to engage with Christian symbolism in a healthy way in the future. From my current perspective, the Christian faith pivots on an incident where a father engineers the suffering and violent death of his own child. That event fills me with disgust. Having watched my own beloved child suffer and die there is nothing to worship there for me. I'm not getting down on my knees before that image.
I've had a few conversations with friends about where I am at with this, and God bless those few people who are of staunch enough heart to discuss spirituality with a recently bereaved parent! It takes guts to talk about these things with someone in my situation and i am grateful to anyone who has touched on these issues with me, no matter what they have said. Some have understandably said 'I don't know what to say". That's is fine with me. I don't know what to say either! Please feel free to say nothing. I certainly don't want anyone to feel they have to defend their own faith to me. May I offer some suggestions on what NOT to say to me?
- Don't tell me to pray my way through it. There are no words for how angry I feel towards God. I don't want any interaction with God, let alone a conciliatory chat with God. There have been other times when I have taken my anger to God and prayed through that anger and it has been helpful. This is not one of those times.
- Don't try to scare me back into a relationship with God with threats of hellfire. The God I am leaving behind is not a God I would want to spend eternity with. If you feel like praying for me, please do.
- Don't tell me God knows what it's like to lose a child or Jesus knows what it's like to suffer. There are some key differences between the crucifixion experience and Salome's death. Firstly, from Garden of Gethsemane to death, Jesus suffered about 14 hours. There are plenty of people alive right now who have been tortured for longer than 14 hours and who have more torture ahead. Our Salome suffered for 2 1/2 days. Secondly, Jesus had at least 30 years of life before his death, with friends, family and the occasional feast. Salome had nothing but suffering and then death. Thirdly and most importantly to me, Jesus had a choice in his own suffering. Salome had no choice at any point. As for God knowing what it's like to lose a child, does this mean God has access to our experiences in such an intimate way as to be like feeling them himself (again, note use of male pronoun indicating my current rage at God)? If this is what it means, then God has even less excuse for repeating the same fuck up time and time again all over the world. Anyway, I don't think God would know what it's like for death to mean a permanent seperation from your child. God's always bragging about God can follow us wherever we go, so I don't think God knows what it is like to be seperated from your own child. Or else God has no power to prevent natural occurrences like the death of children, the Haiti disaster etc, but set the world up like a well-oiled watch and stepped back to observe it all unfold (see below).
- Don't tell me the problem is the last remnants of a child-like belief in God's role on cause and effect. The problem here is not my previous belief in a sort-of interventionist God. The problem here is my baby daughter in a coffin. Also, don't hint to me that my grief will mature my faith to a more abstract watchmaker model of God. I don't agree with Fowler's stuff http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/fowler.htm . Wherever you put yourself on Fowler's neat artificial little stages, I suggest to you that if your child died it would royally mess with your faith.
- Don't tell me the problem is Christianity: See comments above about my baby daughter in a coffin. Moving from Christianity to another spiritual tradition, whether it be Islam, Paganism, Buddhism, or agnosticism will not fix this. The question of how to go on living a spiritual life in the context of an intimate experience of grief and loss transcends traditions and spiritualities. What tradition has really got theodicy completely tidied up and managed? None that I know of. Right now there is probably some Buddhist bereaved mother in Cambodia being urged by a well-meaning friend to outgrow her Buddhism and embrace Christianty, and I don't imagine that would helping her in her grief either. And while we're at it, I don't want to hear from any mindfulness fundamentalists either. Yes, it's a useful technique, but not every psychological, spiritual and emotional ill can be fixed by teaching a person to eat a grape with their eyes closed.
Here is the action I am taking about this stuff.
- I am seeking an appointment with my spiritual director, June. She came to Salome's funeral so I don't think she'll be surprised to hear from me. Maybe she'll know where I can file the divorce papers.
- I'm going to get myself off the roster for taking children's liturgy, because I feel like a fraud when I do it and that bugs me. X and K have their own relationship with God and I really don't want to mess with that either, but I don't want to be taking children's liturgy when I am thinking and feeling like this.
If as a result of Salome's death I end up parting ways with the Christian tradition that will be a huge other loss for me to grieve. But my relationship with God has got me in it, and as a result if I don't speak my mind the relationship is dead in the water anyway. That's what I am like in relationships, and it's not always an admirable thing.
If you are reading this and you really really feel God is telling you to take me to task about some of it, go on then, go ahead, I'm in no position to tell you that's not the case. I will do my best to be civil in my response. Here's a good CS Lewis quote
"Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."
- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
On a totally different note I have been introduced to the first Whitney Houston song I have ever liked. It's called 'I Didn't Know My Own Strength' and I am listening to it a lot. There is a line in it "My faith kept me alive". I don't know what the appropriate line would be for me, "A dissection of my faith was a painful but inevitable consequence"? Too many syllables.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CbEotFOnP0
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