Stefanie Preissner
Why I’m relig-ish
Is it just me, or has anyone else wondered where we go when we die? I know that I am absolutely not alone in this, but I have taken to starting my articles with that question, and I’m not about to stop now.
It doesn’t take a visionary to see that there has been a mass exodus from the Catholic Church in recent years, and, without being dangerously cavalier about serious matters, the whys and wherefores are not for this article. People are turning away from organised religion and putting their faith into TV streaming sites and slimming teas.
I’m in this cohort, too. I’d describe myself as relig-ish. Not religious but not a fully secular atheist, either. I know I’m not the most powerful thing in the universe, but what is, I don’t know. My faith held on by a St Anthony-shaped thread for years. I wasn’t attending Mass or going to confession, but I’d say a prayer when I needed a parking space or to find my keys.
But then St Anthony and I had a falling out. We had been on the rocks for a while, when I lost my third passport on a night out and he failed to find it for me, causing the passport office to genuinely ask me if I was engaged in criminal activity. I was done with the patron saint of lost things, and therefore with all organised religion. My finality and fury were exacerbated by the intentionally unhelpful woman I was dealing with about my lost ID.
People just let the slightest amount of power go to their heads, don’t they?
“We’re not issuing you another passport, Miss. We need to investigate the situation further. You could be selling them.”
“Selling them? How much could you possibly get for a passport, anyway?” She looked at me with that ‘you’re wasting my time’ stare.
I stormed out of the office. Of course the lift wasn’t open and waiting for me like it would have been if my life were a film, so I had to wait. Beware the clampers I arrived on Molesworth Street just in time to see the clampers pulling up next to my car on which my parking was expired. I quickly made up with St Anthony and all the other saints, and asked them to help me get to my car before the clamp was locked. It worked!
If I was reading this and someone else had written it, I’d probably be rolling my eyes and cursing people who think the sole purpose of religion and the universe is to manifest their vision boards or get them out of traffic-violation punishments.
What will people without faith do when we’re lying on our deathbed? I have recently experienced a debilitating existential terror brought on by the death of a loved-one. I find myself fast adopting a belief system heavily based in the Catholic faith, to help me cope and to make me feel I have value and that my life has meaning.
You can say what you want about the Catholic Church, but they know what to do with a dead body. There’s such comfort and reassurance in the ritual around death and burial. I’d much rather believe that I’m going to a benevolent father figure in the clouds when I die, rather than my soul being uploaded to the Cloud.
Is it just me, or would anyone else love a simple explanation about death? Does anyone else want a clear and comforting narrative that makes sense of the great mystery? People chase mediums, psychics, astronomy, astrology and religion for that very reason.
I personally believe that scepticism has no place near grief. Death is a problem for the living, and whatever gives you comfort is OK. If you want to visit a grave, or get a tattoo, see a medium, or read tea leaves to dampen the pain of having lost someone and not knowing where they are, or not knowing where you, too, are going to go when you die — then do whatever it takes.
But without faith, how do we pass? If we’re on a deathbed, who do we ask for? Sometimes people ask for a priest, who are we going to ask for? A personal trainer? A Kardashian? A therapist? A Facebook friend? Who are the gods of today? Who makes us feel like our life has meaning?
When I am here, death is not, and when death is here, I am not. So I don’t have to worry about death, because I won’t be here when it comes for me. This is my new mantra.