musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Was it about God, or god, we were taught?


Is God dead -or for that matter was He ever alive? Could a god really be gendered, and if so, which one would it pick… and why? What is a ‘god’ anyway? I’ve wondered about these things for years…

To take a step back for a moment, when I was a child, I assumed my parents knew what they were talking about; I had no reason to doubt them. But when I began to mature, I soon realized that we have reasons for the things we believe which may not necessarily be the same for everybody. There is wiggle-room for some things, I suppose -favourite songs, maybe- and virtually none for others -like, say, whether 2+2 ever equals 5. Most things, however, ride somewhere in between and seem to depend more on region than reason. God is a good example. In high school, I don’t remember a teacher ever admitting they were non-believers; in university… well, it was fashionable to question things there wasn’t it?

I wasn’t really surprised then, when I discovered the European idea of the death of God, predated Nietzsche by a couple of centuries -I’ve always had trouble anthropomorphizing the concept, anyway. Although I suspect my parents thought of God as some sort of ethereal person, and my Sunday school teachers seemed to have pictures of Him on hand should the need ever arise, I was never convinced -well, not after a while, at any rate. Capital-G god seemed more aspirational than corporeal, more of a guiding feeling of Hope than a reality. I had no wish to characterize myself as an atheist but rather as that of a skeptical fence-sitter -a small-g god person. Like Vladimir or maybe Estragon, in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, I’m curious about whether Godot will ever arrive, but although increasingly doubtful, wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity should it ever happen. So, I’m not sure whether that hope makes me an agnostic or a theist; it probably doesn’t really matter…

Still, because there can be societal disapproval for openly questioning the prevailing belief system -especially where children and their upbringing are involved- some form of sensible theism seems appropriate to the current Canadian Zeitgeist. By ‘sensible’ I mean adopting a non-proselytizing viewpoint which is sufficiently mosaic that it offends no one -or rather is capable of including everyone. An all-pervading, non-judgemental keeper of Hope will do. It doesn’t require a name, or a mythos that explains it’s genesis, its powers, or if it even has any intentions directed at us, other than, say, being with or within our thoughts. Pretty nebulous, eh? A small-g god who just is.

But try finding someone who is even interested -a man with a clerical collar at the next table, for example.

It was still in the time of Covid, and I was sitting suitably socially-distanced at a Food Court in a downtown mall waiting for the guys that I usually meet there for coffee. I suppose I’d arrived a little earlier than usual, and so perhaps was looking around the room rather wistfully; isolation does that to many of us, I think. A man at the next table must have noticed my ocular peregrinations, and smiled in my direction. I have to admit that I didn’t really notice him until he spoke. His words were articulated so clearly across the space between us, I could tell he’d had training in public speaking, though.

“I’m sure they’ll arrive…” he said, apropos of nothing.

I returned his smile. “Does  Godot ever arrive?” It was meant to be a clever reply, but it came out sounding like a complaint.

He chuckled, and it was then I noticed his clerical collar. “I suspect that Beckett knew there would be many interpretations of his play,” he said. “It was written just after WWII, after all…”

It’s interesting who you might end up talking to in a Food Court. “So what do you think it’s about” I forgot all about the guys who would be arriving soon.

His smile broadened, and he stared at his coffee for a moment. “I’ve not made a study of the play, but I think there are some theological references in it if you look for them…”

“Was Beckett a believer?” I asked, curious now.

He shrugged and studied my face for a moment, no doubt wondering how deeply to consider my question. “Well, he was once asked whether he was Christian, Jewish, or atheist, and replied that he was none of these. So…”

“Did he even believe in a God?” I was getting beyond my scant knowledge of the play; perhaps I should have just smiled.

He merely shrugged in reply and had a sip of his coffee to consider his answer. “I suppose most of us believe in some sort of ‘small-g’ god: a power like luck, or serendipity that explains otherwise mysterious things. But God with a ‘capital-G’ is a different matter, don’t you think? The capital G one is the creator God -the deity usually referenced by Islam, or the Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s the one with whom I allegedly do business,” he added, grinning and pointing to his clerical collar.

He’d snuck the escape-word ‘allegedly’ into his reply. I wondered why. “Do I detect…” I searched for a polite way of interrogating a stranger, a man whose only reason for questioning was proximity in a Food Court -and a cleric for that matter…

Fortunately he finished my thought for me. “… a loophole?” He chuckled at the thought and then sighed. “I suppose that when you live with a…person as long as I have, you are allowed to take a few liberties with…” -he struggled with the gender- “…its manifestations, it’s identity.” He examined my reactions for a second before continuing.

“I don’t quite know how to describe the God that lives with me now. It isn’t amenable to the anthropomorphosis you find in the Bible… I think they struggled with it as well, though…

“How do you name something that is uncategorizable?” he continued, after staring at his coffee briefly, uncertain of how much to disclose to a stranger in the setting in which we found ourselves. “Surely any name is limiting… I mean its best description may well be this,” he said throwing his arms in the air and looking upwards.

Just then, I felt a tap on my shoulder as John joined me at the seat placed three or four feet away from me. “You bothering that man at the next table?” he said, grinning from ear to ear, the other guys trailing after him across the Court.

The man at the next table picked up his empty cup, smiled and stood to leave. “Thank you,” he said, looking appreciatively at me for a moment.

“Thank you?” I said, puzzled.

His whole face wrinkled as his smile grew. “You’ve made me think… again.” He glanced at my friends who were noisily scraping their chairs at the table with me. “Remember the ‘g’s we were discussing and whether or not to capitalize them?”

I nodded.

“It’s strange where you meet them, don’t you think?” he said, staring at me with a knowing smile and walked away.

It was strange; I felt the same way…”

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gozzter

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