Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Book report

It was Victor's turn to go to the hockey game last night (the way it's going, we'll be arguing over who has to go, not who gets to go), and since the game wasn't on tv I actually sat down and read a book.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom. It came in the mail yesterday, and I'd forgotten ordering it. I was intrigued by the premise when I read a review...in heaven, five people who crossed your path before they died meet you to explain, or help you learn, the meaning of your life.

In a management class I took recently the facilitator kept asking "Does this resonate with you?" That term was bugging me, but now I find myself considering using it...this book is about the huge consequences of the inconsequential acts of everyday life and how everyone is intertwined. I guess it resonated.

It was a quick read, and a thoughtful book. I won't say much because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might want to read it...the rest of this is not about the book but about me.

For a good chunk of my life I recited the Nicene Creed without thinking very carefully about what it meant. As I got older and did examine it, I started having my doubts...first over issues that struck me as more political than spiritual...and I quit saying "I believe."

For years not having any real belief didn't bother me at all. I also enjoyed sleeping in on Sundays.

For the last couple of years, though, I have started pondering questions that are philosophical. I wasn't (am not, I should say; this hasn't ended) engaging in an intellectual exercise, and for awhile I was embarrassed that these matters were occupying so much of my time and brain. I mean, I have important things to worry about. I have a training program to develop for work. I have to figure out how to allocate my 401(k) distribution. I have to find dental insurance.

At some point I came around to the idea...is there anything more fundamental than this? Doesn't the rest of it pretty much hinge on "What the hell am I supposed to be doing here?"

I've come up with some ideas I like...my version of heaven, say, or why there are so many different religions. But obviously liking an idea doesn't make it valid.

I took the Belief-o-matic quiz and came up a Liberal Quaker. I looked 'em up, and I agreed with a lot of what I read...but in the end, why decide to "believe" George Fox's ideas? I could just list my ideas, call it Nicism, and whamo, now I'm a believer.

I have a friend who was a very smart, scientifically-inclined atheist who became a Christian. (She is still very smart and scientific, incidentally.) C.S. Lewis convinced her, and she gave me a copy of Mere Christianity a couple years ago on Good Friday.

(Good Friday, I'd told her, was the one day I acutely felt my lapsed Catholicism, because it is the one day of the year you can't get back in...any other you can go to confession, go to Mass, receive the Eucharist. There is no Eucharist on Good Friday. God is dead...)

I understand the logic of her faith but I don't feel it. In a way I kind of envy the people who do...the people I know who have a strong faith, whether it is in a specific religion or that they are just satisfied with their own ideas of why they are here and what they do, seem so much...healthier...that I am.

I'm really rambling, more than I intended to. When I started typing I was going to say that I have been thinking about this interconnectedness (is that a word?), and wondering if that is some sort of first step to finding a belief...

Instead I just got off track. Ah, well. Maybe the five people I'll meet will explain it all.

Posted by Nic at October 30, 2003 05:39 PM | TrackBack