"A robin came to visit us every day when we had breakfast. The kids would greet it saying ‘hello grand pops.”
“I bet he’s playing cricket in the sky.”
“He’s reunited with his wife again.”
“I asked him for sunshine at his funeral, I don’t know know what he thinks he’s playing at giving me rain - he always did wind me up about my hair going curly in the rain.”
We live our lives today giving next to no thought or real attention to invisible realities. People generally live such mundane and functional lives, thinking only about the physical space in front of them. Yet, upon a loved one dying they pull out statements like the ones above that suggest an apprehension of a layer to reality they hitherto care or seem to believe in not at all.
What is this about? I find myself feeling genuinely bemused by such asinine and inane comments made by otherwise secular minded people. It would be easy to dismiss them as mere sentimentalities, comments made to fill the silence or push away the looming presence of death. Except that in my observation the statements are made by some people with such regularity that they must offer both comfort and explanation. Is it genuinely the case that my sister believes the spirit of her father is animating the body of a Robin whenever it suits her to acknowledge them? If that was the case why would she not do more to entertain the bird? Why not invite it into her home or set up a nest for it in the garden.
Likewise, do my cousins genuinely believe that the afterlife consists of games of cricket? If so who is my grandad playing with? Does he ever take a break? Does he win more than he loses? Does he get tired? More to the point, are there things that we can do in this life that might increase our standing in the next with regards the hobbies and interests we might be able to pursue? Even more to the point, how do they know?
As soon as one starts asking question of the statements people make it becomes clear that no they don’t believe they’re describing a literal existence, or a belief in an ongoing realm of reality. The robin is a mere token and talisman for the memory of her father, something in the physical world that helps her accept the unacceptable, or push away the unthinkable - that her dad has in fact died, and that she will one day die as will her children and all the people she loves.
The persistence of such comments made by otherwise irreligious people fascinate me. Something else that’s interesting to me is the question: in a society like us with its legacy of Christianity why do we still instinctively resort toward pagan cosmology and animism? That seems to be our most basic religion; a religion without a personal Being at the heart of it, and that corresponds with the Scriptures definition of the human races rebellion from said Being…
In a world with something so shocking and awful as eternal separation from our loved ones, and ever-looming presence of our own end, and in a society that assures us there’s really not anything after death, we fear that we’re not strong enough to stare long into the abyss without needing some balm of sentimentality to comfort us. We make statements about reality that we patently don’t believe in and this enables us to carry on unchanged on our present course through life.
A related observation and question is that in my experience it’s women who tend to make these statements more than men. The men do often nod reassuringly along and affirm the statements but it’s the women who initiate the fables. Why that might be is intriguing to me. Maybe it’s a manifestation of the maternal instinct to make things better, rub a wound down and restore harmony.
The sentimentality doesn’t end there however. We have, in our metaphysically impoverished age, added to our sentimentality a healthy does of syncretism. The recent funeral I attended for a non-Christian man ended like this:
“As we commit his body to the grave, we return him to the elements. Peter we hope that you feel the warmth of the sun and the refreshment of the rain; may you know the gentle embrace of the wind and not mind the cold too much… and now we’ll end by reading the Lord’s prayer together…”
Here we have elemental religion, animism, conscious spiritual and personal existence beyond death and a Christian prayer that invokes the rule of Yahweh God and the eternal kingdom to come.
I scratched my head. Does this stuff actually help people? Are we too cowardly to just say: “well folks that’s it. We appreciated him while he lived but now he’s gone and doesn’t exist any more, he’ll feel nothing, do nothing, say nothing and care nothing since he is now no-thing. The uniqueness of his personhood was a mere aberration since he was simply a happy accident of molecules. He’s simply returned to the dust from whence he came.” Obviously we wouldn’t say that any more; some do, but most wouldn’t. We settle for a more dishonest, but mildly comforting syncretism and we refuse to look long into these things. Convinced that there’s no True hope for the problem of death we make a collage of patches to try to strengthen our quivering souls.
I’m sad about the state of things, and sad that it all seems to go unnoticed. Sad that all the work of previous generations of evangelists and pastors has not carried over. Sad that the glorious gospel isn’t doing its work in hearts. After all this we’re back to paganism, and are becoming the playthings of chaos once more; albeit with a confusing number of randomly chosen Bible words and phrases thrown in for good measure.
But that’s just it isn’t it? Things like this don’t get ‘passed down the generations’ by mere symbol or ritual alone. Spiritual Truth like this is like a flare in the midst of a battlefield. Without the deliberate moving toward and looking for and claiming sanctuary in the relief zone by every household and member of the household, we simply can’t be saved. Without men and women who courageously and determinedly ‘fire a flare’ into the sky we have no true north to offer us meaningful hope, nothing to clear away the fog of confusion and save souls.
God help us.