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What
You Don’t Know
Religion
gets talked about a lot in my house. Not, however, generally
by me.
It may be more sacrilegious than having or not having any
particular religious beliefs to admit that I can rarely get
myself worked up enough to care about the existence and/or
specific nature of deity. Basically, I have trouble believing
in the kind of God who would prefer me to focus on obedience
and belief rather than trying to live a good, kind, helpful
life, which is hard enough as it is. So, I tend to leave theology
to those who find it interesting and whose brains seem better
suited to it. Call it division of labor.
The thing is, I’m still attached to religious ritual. Since
I grew up Unitarian Universalist, the rituals I’m familiar
with and fond of span a rather wide gamut: lighting the menorah,
hymn singing, maypole dancing. My mother brought us to different
a Christian church every year on Christmas Eve, and come this
time of year, I find myself itching for a traditional Christmas
Eve church service, with scripture readings and carols and
candles in flimsy white paper circles to be lit during “Silent
Night.”
Partly, this is about tradition. The winter holidays are replete
with things that have meaning just because we do them every
year. We did many of them as children with our families and
know that others are doing their own versions. In this way,
the religious parts of December are pretty similar to the
secular parts—decorating the tree, wassailing, drinking eggnog.
But that’s not all of it. I was challenged a while back (in
one of these discussions I didn’t manage to escape soon enough)
to say what use and meaning I saw in religious ritual and
that loosey-goosey term “spirituality.” I didn’t know what
I was going to say until I said it, but it felt right coming
out: Despite being a happy agnostic with little attachment
to any particular theistic system, I’m reluctant to let go
of religious rituals because of the space they provide to
remember and pay attention to the all the stuff I don’t know.
Choosing not to pursue one particular mystery or category
of mysteries is one thing. But forgetting that there are
mysteries, settling into the feeling that everything is known
or knowable (or at least everything that matters), is scary.
Especially as someone who makes a living either sounding off
on stuff or correcting the language of other people sounding
off on stuff; taking some time to pay attention to the simple
fact of really big unknowns feels important to me. It is,
to use an out-of-fashion word, humbling.
Last winter, Wired magazine had a cover feature called
“What We Don’t Know,” in which various people reported on
the current state of thinking about questions such as “How
does life arise from nonlife?” and “Why do hot dogs come in
packs of 10 while buns come in packs of 8 or 12?” The introduction,
written by John Hodgman, who plays The Daily Show’s
resident expert, is a clarion call to curiosity in “an incurious
age when action and certainty (what we in scientific circles
call ‘jockism’) seem to outvalue nerdish doubt and curiosity.”
Those who are convinced they know everything, he wrote, become
“self-satisfied, flabby, and prone to wearing tunics and lounging
on grassy lawns. . . . it is questing after big answers that
defines and propels us as a species.”
Words to stir any proud nerd’s heart. But to be curious, we
first have to be comfortable not knowing, comfortable with
ambiguity and paradox, comfortable with changing our minds
in the face of new evidence. This goes for making policy,
for how to be a good spouse, and for “spirituality” too, not
just for scientific riddles.
When I do seek out a “spiritual experience,” from lighting
a candle to a full-blown group ritual, I’m not usually looking
for enlightenment (which is why the intellectual replacements
for dogma don’t do it for me, even when I would, in another
setting, be interested in their points). I’m not generally
looking to receive a message or have a prayer answered, be
strengthened in my moral resolve, or even feel deeply connected
to the oneness of all things.
Those things can be important, but what is most precious to
me about these kinds of spaces is stepping back from needing
to know what things mean and what I’m supposed to do about
them, and remembering to be humble in the face of the big
questions, the big world, the complexity of the human animal.
As the New Year approaches and the 12 days of Christmas (yes,
it starts on the 25th, not ends) slip by largely unnoticed,
I’ll be on the lookout for times to sit with the mysteries,
both the ones I want to pursue and the ones I expect to stay
mysterious.
—Miriam
Axel-Lute
www.mjoy.org
www.albanyplanningblog.org
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