So I might possibly-sort-of-maybe be thinking about redoing my resume. If you know me, you realize I’ve said this for, like, years. So today I put on my figurative hard hat and went digging through my old documents. It turns out my most recent resume was from May 2008—which is right around the time I was a budding atheist but not yet courageous enough to call a spade a spade.
The objective I chose to describe my goal is especially fun:
OBJECTIVE: To obtain a position within
Company Namethat will further God’s Kingdom andCompany’sministry…
Yeah, I still work at this job. Must. Edit.
"Angel of Grief" Glenwood Cemetery, Houston, TX (photo by teejayfaust)
A former coworker of mine just lost his sister to cancer after years of riding the rollercoaster of hope and fear. His love for her inspired me, and it reminded me acutely of what it was like to watch a family member die from the disease.
I have only experienced fresh grief as a Christian. My father died in 2003, and I sought comfort and peace in the hope that he was “in a better place” and free from pain, experiencing the joy and bliss he always desired in life. He was a very passionate believer, and he would always tell me we’d “be together again” when my time was up. I found this to be very soothing and helpful, because I didn’t want to let him go. I wanted more time with him, and I desperately wanted him to be healthy again. I was so fearful of being separated forever. Magical solution? Heaven. Duh.
I’ve never lost a loved one as an atheist, so I honestly can’t speak to what it feels like to say goodbye to someone knowing we will never be together again. I imagine this could be a healthy, helpful way of letting someone go, processing the loss, and moving forward. Is that so?
What matters most to me now is understanding someone’s role in my life and how that helps me be a better person. That way, they live on in me, through me. My father is part of me down to my very DNA. He’s gone, but he has a legacy that affects me and every single person I encounter. I am very fortunate to have had such a great life with him while it lasted. Isn’t that what grief should be about?
What about you?
We can all can talk a good game about how great it is not to be oppressed by the burden of hell, yada yada… but only someone who has actually experienced a loss can talk about what grief is like.
Has anyone out there experienced intense grief as both a faithful religious person and as an atheist? How did your experiences differ on a personal level? Could you share with as much transparency as possible (as you feel comfortable)? Were both healthy experiences? Was one more comforting than another? When someone says “It doesn’t matter if so-and-so has faith in Heaven if it comforts them,” do you agree or disagree?
Randall Munroe, the creator of the well-known webcomic, xkcd, is on a relaxed publishing schedule due to a very sick family member right now. And out of that trying experience, he draws these three awesome panels:
Hell yeah, Randall.
Something Personal
When my father was fighting cancer, he (even while being a man of faith and prayer) relied on the advances of medicine and scientific research to fight the disease and keep it at bay as much as possible. Even though he wanted God to heal him, he still knew that medical care and advanced technology would be the most important weapons in the fight.
Now I look back and think, Why did we hope for miracles when we knew medicine would do all the real work? I’m honestly not sure if there are any practical reasons for prayers. When someone you love is dying, you want them to be instantly free of illness and suffering. Who wouldn’t? A miracle is a get-out-of-cancer-free card that no believer would turn down. To faithful Christians like us, we prayed for that easy-out, but we truly trusted in the doctors, the chemotherapy, and all of the other treatments used that were backed by tested science.
When praying for healing, you never know if you’ll be heard or if it will ever happen. There can be no reasonable expectation or time table; healing either happened or it didn’t, and sometimes a “miraculous healing” looked just like something explained just fine by science anyway. So when a loved one is ill or dying, you can feel free to hope for an immediate improvement, but trust in those who have tested treatments and medicines that you know can help. Even if your loved one does die, you can at least be thankful that it wasn’t your fault, your lack of faith, or anyone’s relationship with a deity that was at fault.
Science works, bitches!
comic by Ken Fager
After my family stopped attending Catholic mass regularly and started frequenting a Presbyterian church, I discovered the absolute delight of “Communion Sundays,” which were only once a month. I loved the tiny little plastic cups passed around in fitted brass plates. After sipping up the grape juice, I would do the classy and mature thing by sticking my tongue into the cup to get every last drop from the bottom. I’d suction it onto my tongue, waggle it around, and make silly faces at my friends until an adult noticed and I had to busy myself with the bulletin or something.
My favorite part of Communion Sunday was the bread. I loved that bread. I sometimes called it “3-D Jesus” because it was in a small cubed form instead of the flat, bland wafers we used to dissolve on our tongues at mass. No crackers or matzo here, just soft cubes of a dead guy.
The best thing about this bread was its taste: it was sweet like buttered honey and it fairly melted into your teeth like a soft candy. Jesus tasted damn good. I once tried to take more bread from the passing plate, but I felt ashamed that someone might see, so I contented myself with just one tiny square of Jesus.
Now that it’s not even symbolically holy and I still remember the scrumptious taste of that bread on my tongue, I very much want to eat it again—but in mach larger quantities. Did they buy it or bake it? Is this a common communion food among protestant churches? I’ve googled “sweet communion bread recipe” and not come up with anything particularly enticing.
If you’re out there, Jesusbread baker, can you give me your recipe? I want some with a little honey on top. Like, now. I’m starving.
Olin Thang on 
Cortez Frisch on 
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