Writing Prompt: 2. How have your belief systems changed through your lifetime? How do they compare to when you were a child? What new beliefs have you discovered? What old ones have you let go of, and why? For the Sleep is for the Weak Writing Workshop.
I’m 7 and reciting Old Testament, New Testament – daily – with my classmates. We learn snippets of scripture and bits of Bible to say aloud, voices communing in words of law, like church only with the power of the law coming from our mouths and the power taken away by our droned and cloned unity. Like church, the words spoken normally by authority from our young and lisping lips, lack of understanding unimportant, diction and memorization everything. I’m not sure that was the point, but perhaps I missed it. Recitation, rote learning. Designed to give us something to reflect on. I just heard the words.
My junior school was very religious, very Christian; it didn’t occur to me at the time but we were being taught by extremely devout women, women living their faith and keen to impart it. I’m not sure why that aspect of the school drifted past me. I don’t recall icons or religious pictures around the school, unlike the more conventionally C of E school Fran attended, but I do know we were read books such as The Pilgrim’s Progress and that assembly each day was called ‘prayers’ and consisted of hymn, moral and thoughtful presentation, then a proper prayer and a recited Lords Prayer by all of us. When I moved on to ‘big school’ I naturally expected religion to become more important and was surprised to discover it became perfunctory, though still a nominal part of assembly each day.
At home, religion was perfunctory. Mum believed, Dad didn’t. We only went to church if we stayed with my Grandparents. Father Christmas reigned at home but Jesus reigned at school in the Nativity play, at Easter. We were not allowed to say “God” and I had a Bible, given by my neighbour, which was my favourite fiction reading for a long time. But God wasn’t in my house, wherever else he was in my life. And the confusions continued; my unbelieving Dad nonetheless insisted, even when I was in my 20’s, that I would not be allowed to sleep in the same room as my boyfriend unless I was married. And then, married equalled church, by and large.
I was truly confused. I ached for the camaraderie and confidence that church seemed to give my friends, their blind faith, their rituals and routines, the child-like belief in something fantastical. I didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it and it made me feel a failure. Like I was missing something, some great truth, some understanding. In schools where faith, Christian faith, was the norm, it made me feel outside normal.
Aged 8, we read the story of Job and the supposed truths of that story refused to settle with my brain. God was good and God was allowed to do terrible things to people; he was allowed to test, to take away, to punish and break people and they, to prove their love, were supposed to take it, love more, care more, trust more, believe more. The reward would come later, afterwards, when all that was wonderful and meaningful about this life had been sucked away.
To me, being relentlessly bullied at school, all this seemed terribly unfair. It made me wonder if I was supposed to take all this and be better for it later? It made me wonder if somehow she was ALLOWED to do this and was better, greater, because she could? It makes me think now that it is no bloody wonder that children allow adults to do terrible things to them and manage to believe it is all their own fault and that in order to fix it they have to believe and trust more, not less. In fact, looking back, it is a bloody twisted and rotten view of faith, if you want my opinion.
I’ve rattled and crashed through religion ever since. Not faith; I’ve never struggled to believe in a greater good. What I took from my junior school, if nothing else, was that to be kind, honest, open, truthful, thoughtful of others needs and to have a moral code that puts the needs of others as equal to your own, is the right thing to do. That was certainly the thread of theory to my PNEU school, even if they couldn’t always make it so in practice. It’s probably why the Chalet School books appealed to me so much as a teen; I liked harking back to a more genuine time, because I don’t think my senior school cared much about our souls, more about our exam results.
Five years ago, I broke my moral code. I went against everything I believed in, everything I thought was right, everything I believed to be the good and honest and right thing to do. I did it because I balanced needs and saw that more people would benefit from one choice than the other, but it sat so badly with me that I broke. I had no idea till then that it could be so crushing to abandon your core values, your truths. I broke them all. And when I broke them, I abandoned any final belief in God. That God. If there was a greater being who would put me in that position to test me, I didn’t want it.
Time passed. I wanted another baby and it didn’t happen. I turned my thoughts away from wondering if it was punishment. And then, suddenly, I was pregnant. Another baby, scaring me to death with bleeding and uncertainty. I lay in my garden with a new set of beliefs, ones I had turned to and begun to trust in that time between. I lay on the lawn in the sun, all at one with nature, with a peach coloured hollyhock bouncing before me and decided that I was at peace. I believed in something, some greater good, but it was not that God from my childhood. I was going to trust something else.
Twice in my life, I have wondered whether I should be looking harder at the signs. Once, I jokingly told a devout and evangelical friend who had invited me for tea under false pretences, intending to ‘convert’ me to his church, that I would believe in God if I won the lottery that week. I swear by everything that is true, I woke up three nights later with 4 numbers in my head and I put them on to a ticket. They came up. They really did. Max remembers it too. In those days, 4 numbers normally got £70. Max and I went out for a slap up dinner; next day we claimed the ticket. Bizarrely, that week there had been masses of winners and I only got £17. It was as if someone said “Fine, I’ll play your game, but not so much that you profit.”
And then Freddie. I did a terrible, bad thing and I gave up on Christianity forever. And I got my baby and I had him taken away again. Punishment? Warning? Retribution? And eye for an eye?
I have no idea. I don’t know what I believe any more. I believe in the grass under my feet and the trees and the sun and that people who are kind and good and think of others deserve good things to happen to them. Only they don’t. Sometimes it feels like the bad things happen to the good people. And I don’t want to believe in anything that makes us live the life of Job.
Other times of course, I know that in truth when people know they are good and bad things happen, they look for answers. And answers come in parables and pretends like “if I am good and bad things happen, it must be because I am due for joy in eternity.” How comforting. I can see the hand of a great and powerful being in my life if I look hard enough, the threads of my life that pulled into a picture at the right moment, to give me the strength to live with losing my son. If I choose to see that. I’m not sure if I want to believe in anything any more. How can I possibly even believe in the universe, in mother nature, in the ebb and flow of life force, when it took a baby away and made me live without him?
In a comforting life I could look forward to being reunited in heaven. I didn’t have him christened, so some of those fine and comforting and upstanding religions will say he won’t be there anyway. No, I think I’ll just look forward to being stardust. I’m not a scientist, but I can believe in one day being atoms again.
What do I believe? That life is amazing and life truly sucks. That I’m more comfortable with people I can love and things I can touch than a deity I have to believe in no matter how improbable and fantastical it is. I was brought up to believe that God was real and fairies and witches were not. Made no sense then and it makes no sense now. But the sun is real and the trees are real and the past is real and the nature of people, from time immemorial to want to feel and touch a spirit inside themselves is real. That the truth that most people are good, not because God is watching but because good and kind is what comes naturally.. that is real.
And that flower, on that day, when fear and joy lived in equal measure. That was real.
And then I hear myself think that and I sigh.
Jesus, I think. For God’s sake.
I don’t think there is any saving me.
Thanks for writing something so thoughtful. My faith has ebbed and flowed over the years but it is still there but tbh. I’m not always sure why. I don’t know if I could manage such a thoughtful post as this. As a Christian one of the things I hate most is Christians who get people anywhere under false pretences in an effort to convert – if I have invited people to hear the choir I was in sing I would always warned them if there would be a talk that might be a bit heavy so they could go in full knowledge.
That seems very respectful. I think for me, what I struggled with (perhaps because I am just badly behaved) is believing in something just because I was told I had to, to be good.
Powerful piece of writing…You had me glued to the page. I relate a lot of what you write x
Thank you – I shall be going round the links today to read yours, now I’ve got a home day!
This is wonderful – I love how well written it is along with the obvious thought that went into it.
Thank you and thanks for stopping by.
I really love the clarity in your thoughts when you write posts like this. It is good to see how your thoughts about your beliefs have developed over time from something you were expected to believe, to something you choose to believe or not. Sometimes reality is the only thing we know we can believe in.
Faith has ebbed and flowed as I have gone through different things and has resulted in a choice to follow this path further, it could easily have been different. I dont sit well with organised beliefs though. Time and experience has taught me that religion is about people – in my experience hypocritical and unrelyable ones, whereas faith is about myself and my hopes.
Carol, that last sentence has it in a nutshell 🙂
I can relate to quite a lot of what you say here, I think though that maybe these days I’m so much more sure of what I don’t believe. x
I can’t think of anything more likely to douse faith in a person than watching their child die really 🙁
Thank you for sharing your pain. I am praying for you right now:
“Dear Jesus! There is a child of yours down here on the earth who is hurting and looking for you. There is her little son with you, and you know why he had only few days to live. Oh, dear Jesus, please wrap your arm around this family and the mother, and send them help, touchable help from you. Your heart was broken when your friend Lazarus died, and you cried. Death is an enemy, and we wish that when you rose, you would have deleted death all together. But we still suffer form it and hurt. I do ask Jesus, that you will love Merry in her pain, in her anguish, in her loneliness, in her sorrow and please do comfort her, heal her soul and heart. Please Lord Jesus, may your love be on each and every one of them. May she know you who you are for her now, not who you were long ago. Please Lord Jesus, touch her and comfort her. ”
Merry, I wrap my arm around you across the ocean, and I cry with you and I grieve with you! May Christian people come to you to show the way. I love you from here, from Canada. Love and hugs,
your sister
I have a number of very devout friends. Two have also lost sons, one has nothing like the number of babies she would wish for, one has a quiet and total faith I envy. I know they have all prayed for me this year, quietly, without fuss and without pressing it into my face. I have friends who are Muslim and friends who are Pagan and I know they’ve all asked their gods to be kind to me this year. They’ve mostly walked along side me as my remaining faith in a Christian God has ebbed away and breathed its last and accepted that; I’m grateful for their prayers, their thoughts, their wishes. I hope I don’t offend them in my frustrations and lack of believe. I don’t hide it, but I would never bully them or try to convert them to my lack of belief. I hope I manage to accept their faith as gracefully as they accept my lack of it.
I would certainly never come into their space and deride them or force my views on them.
I dare say you mean well Sara and I am grateful for your good wishes, but your comment illustrates almost perfectly why I have turned away from Christianity. The total lack of regard for my beliefs, to come into my space and write a prayer to your god, acknowledging he took my son away, in your eyes, and hoping I will come to know him when I have clearly stated that I do not wish to, have made a choice not to, is astonishing. It is an almost perfect example of why I turned away from a Christian Church, it is exactly the reason I don’t even fiddle around the edge of it for forms sake and it is because of this type of response, exactly this type, that I actively chose not to have my son christened when he was dying.
I am not grateful to have my space thoughtlessly invaded by someone who uses my loss to push a faith on me and I certainly do not want Christian people to alight on me and make me feel any worse, thanks very much. If wrap me in prayer you must, please have the grace to do it in your own space and at a distance, as my friends do, and respect my beliefs. Nothing makes me less likely to turn to Jesus than people who would force my eyes in that direction, as my post pointed out.
Any further similar responses would be deleted, so please don’t feel the need to rally the troops.
I’m sorry this is blunt, I am sure you meant well, but it is simply not okay to push a faith on someone in their own written space, especially when they are vulnerable.
hugs Merry. bah, hugs is such an empty word. Will deliver in person at the weekend!!! I can’t speak for all of us who have any shreds of faith left but no, your frustrations and ebbing beleifs are not something that offends me or makes me love you any less. We are who we are. The world would be a desperately boring place if we were all the same.
Wish I could write half as eloquently as you.
A very honest post, Merry. I’ve struggled with a lot of similar feelings – feeling the outsider, wanting the sense of community that it seems to give, the comfort. But I couldn’t stomach so much of it. And comments like the one above remind me why.
I’m so very sorry over the death of your beloved Freddie. I have seen your name on Sweet Salty’s blog and also on After Iris’ but only just found you.
Deer baby, you once left me another comment which I appreciated very much. And it is funny how much I appreciate the people who read the blogs of the babylost from a slightly different perspective. Especially people who have an insight, even from a different perspective. The more survivors who speak to me, the more I believe I will survive.
Dear Merry,
I thank you for your reply.
I am sorry you feel offended and hurt by the prayer I offered.
It was not my intention.
It was an intention of love and care, and I am sorry did not come across as such.
Maybe I was not able to listen well… I am sorry.
I do know that I do not need to advocate Jesus in order that he can come close to you.
BUT: This is the way I find hope and courage — in prayer — , and I wanted just to let you in and share with you that sacred space of my private life where I can bear things otherwise unbearable.
Love and hugs,
Sara
Merry,
I do hate it when Christians gloss over gut-wrenching pain and agony and try and paper over the cracks with well-worn phrases and bible verses – it is so insensitive and they are very prone to doing it. It actually shows a lack of faith, really, as they are afraid that if everything doesn’t fit into neat little boxes then it will all fall apart so they try and make things fit. Those of us whose lives have fallen apart have to look at our former beliefs straight in the eye and see if they still hold up. I have not come to the same conclusions as you but I still respect where you are and how you see things. It’s a struggle, whichever way you come at it. We all have questions, struggles and doubts and none of the answers are written in luminous paint in the sky!
Some Christians believe that “God did it” (‘it’ being anything in life, really) and some (including me) believe that the world is not the way that God intended it to be and things go wrong which He wouldn’t have wanted to happen if everything had remained perfect. We are free agents, not puppets on a string or actors in a play. That is how I make sense of it all.
Hugs for all the questions and the sadness anyway – yours and mine – because no amount of faith takes away the fact that a mother having to live without her child is foul and awful.
Oh, and ROFLing at being described as ‘devout’ – that is so far from what I feel I am so you must just have been talking about the others!
Joanna, for some reason your reply made me think of this quote “The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true. “. Like in a time of stress, it could go either way; you went one way, I went another. Or determinedly walked another in case I could outwalk the other path if it was real and I didn’t want it to catch me!
Devout. Hm. I think that equal ‘still believes’ in my book. Your support over the last few years, even in my truly strayed and broken time, has meant much.
Thank you for sharing that, Merry, so well written and challenging – I love to read stuff that makes me think through what I believe and why. I can really understand why some of your experiences have put you off religion and perhaps they would have had the same effect on me. I have often reflected on the fact that I wandered into my current belief system (Christianity) somewhat naively at around age 14, probably precisely because no-one in my life was trying to push me towards it, and I hadn’t come across any of the more unpleasant facets of religious extremism at that stage. I mean now I’m in it, I’m glad, and being a Christian is a really positive part of my life, but really, some Christians do not make it seem appealing at all, which I find rather sad (to say the least.)
I agree wholeheartedly with Susan’s comment – “As a Christian one of the things I hate most is Christians who get people anywhere under false pretences in an effort to convert” – it seems an ironically dishonest way to try and sell a belief system that values honesty highly; and it is so inconsiderate of people’s feelings, just basically rude. I feel some kind of need to apologise on behalf of other Christians for their inappropriate behaviour. Maybe it’s none of my business, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for all the times Christian people have made you feel bad in some way. And I’m sorry if anything in this comment (or previous ones) is unhelpful. All I can say, is I do my best. I’ve been thinking all day about what to write here, and somehow I’m still failing to be succinct. I don’t know. I don’t feel very wise, and maybe I have nothing much to offer. But I just want you to know I care. I am one of the ones who tries to pray for you quietly, and without fuss, not for you to be converted against your will, but just for some peace for you and for good things to happen to you and your lovely family. I will try never to push my faith on you. Please tell me if I get it wrong. I am so sorry for your pain and I have no easy answers about Freddie. I don’t think there are any, whatever some religious people might say.
Hannah, I think you have always been deeply respectful of my choice to not believe. Actually, I think I put that too strongly to say that. I think I do believe in some form of something, I just choose not to access something I believe in via Christianity.
I think (goodness, I can relate everything to cake) of all faiths as simply slices of of one cake. I do have a faith, but not a religion. I respect all faith as being different access points to the same thing I believe in. I think that is easier to trust from outside an organised religion than from inside, perhaps? And so I am always grateful for care in the form of thoughtful care. I just don’t want a religion forced on me, which in general people don’t. Does that makes sense?
In case it isn’t obvious, I think you’ve been very good at that 🙂
Oh no! YOu mean non-christians are doomed?! why didnt anyone tell me?!
For me God is the power that sustains the universe, ergo is God by definition. When you look at the vast expanse of the universe, and consider what piddling ants we are by comparison it’s hard to see any meaning to anything. I got to a point when I thought ‘where is God when there is so much suffering and pain in the world?!’ and the answer that I got was, God is real when good people do good things – if *I* care about the suffering in the world and if *I* try to make a difference then life has meaning because I have allowed it to be so. And with suffering and pain which is a shitty sucky deal all I can say is not one of us on this planet is untouched by it. I suppose it is that which makes us more human, more caring, more able to reach out to others and love.
*shrugs*
Debbie, I don’t know what to tell you. If you ARE doomed, you be a) in the company of a multitude and b) you might be able to knit a ladder outta there.
“What do I believe? That life is amazing and life truly sucks.”
Me too. x
I suspect that life through the lens of loss is one that has a particular clarity. It is a comfort to me that you are who you are, you know, because I trust my girls will also be strong and altered for Freddie’s life.
Gosh Merry. Your writing is very powerful in it’s clarity and insight. I really relate to much of what you say and only wish I could put it so well.
Thank you. Writing this was the best I have done on this topic I think, one that I have thrashed inside of for years.
Yes, Merry, the cake analogy works for me! Someone (an older, wiser Christian man whom I respect very much) once said to me, and a group preparing to work in predominantly Muslim countries, “I think a lot of Christians will be surprised when they get to heaven and see who else is there!” I love that – as far as I’m concerned, heaven is not an exclusive club for evangelical Christians. And as for babies being turned away for not being Christened, well who’d want to go to a heaven like that? I actually quite like the stardust idea – who knows, maybe we’re talking about the same thing. It’s that cake again…