User:WaitingforGodot/Atheism

Funerals are a strange place for a 6 year old. Other people's emotions - somethign so newly discovered- are more extreme and exposed than even adults are comfortable with. Whispers, sacred silence, diverted gaze and the far too frequent looks of pity that pulsate with warnings to avoid that person. Friends and family talking about you as if they had been a close part of your life all this time. Discussing your future as if they had any clue. You may only be 6 -- but you sense that you are an akward center of attention. And that your life is really about to change.

And while all this consumed my 8 year old brother, it wasn't the single most disturbing thing about the funeral. What disturbed me was the lies. The constant, silly, strange lies that everyone told as if I were stupid enough to buy into it. "I know you are sad", they said, "but your mother isn't gone, she's in heaven". "God only takes those he loves". "She's looking down on you; protecting you". "You will be safe cause God loves you."

Now don't jump to conclusions and assume that I was mad that "god took her". It was never anger that I felt, at least not some god. It was confusion and anger that people I trusted would lie to me. Things die. I got that. I watched a cat die. I'd watched bugs die. Things rot. It's what they do. And Heaven and God? They had all the truth value to me of Santa or the Easter Bunny. They were tales that were cute enough, but did little to comfort a grieving 6 year old who wanted a mother, not an imaginary friend.

Little tiny newely-formed rational brain had no room for illusions. I don't know why. My father the minister had no idea why; and that deeply concerned him. But it was there right from the first exploration into abstractions. God, the dude I'd heard about every Suday; the dude on the cross in the Chappel; the white haired dude tossing around thunder and lightening in my Illustrated Bible for Children (only much much later would I ask why a child's book confused YHWH with Thor), was nothing but hollow stores told to comfort and control.

The same troubles most children have with Santa and the Easter Bunny, I had with these stories about all powerful beings and men who died and rose.

And yet there remained for me something unbelievably compelling about religion, sSacrality, and spirituality. I sought out religious music, was (and am) moved to tears each Christmas Eve, when the full choir renders Oh HOly Night to its most powerful, and Silent Night to the complete oppsite most gentel and quite.