musingsonwomenshealth.com

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

Oh God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.


I suppose I am now at the age where I should think of settling down; where I should consider picking a belief system that will sustain me as I wade through my falling yellow leaves. As an octogenarian I’d like to think I’ve sampled most them -at a distance, at least. Still, unless they can guarantee me some place to live when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I’m not sure I can choose.

I imagine I should search for something with a long and enduring tradition; I am not attracted by a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. So, I’ll attempt to set Shakespeare aside for now, and search more widely in the literature on the hereafter. Search for a Religion -if only I knew what it was.

I mean I think I know one of the several attempts at the etymological derivation of the word: it comes from the Latin ligare meaning to bind, or join, with the re meaning ‘again’. I suppose that suggests a kind of command, or at least an aspiration to attach yourself to something that has rumbled quietly beside you all along. Maybe I learned that years ago when I was in university; it may be one of the versions from the writings of Alan Watts who was particularly influential amongst the younger population in the 60ies. I don’t think he was proselytizing for any particular belief, although I remember he dabbled rather heavily in Eastern mysticism. Anyway, that’s how I have thought of religion all these years, despite my parent’s adherence to the more mainstream United Church of Canada -an amalgam of compromises amongst the various faith groups of the time, I guess.

But no matter, I’m still not sure whether picking one of the many religious choices now available offers me anything I can use. Some are admittedly culturally fraught I think: they draw heavily on a prevailing ethos in a country often with a history different from mine -like, say, Hinduism; or they embody long-standing traditions that I don’t share -like the rituals and ancestor worship of Confucianism. Some -like Confucianism again- may be more like a group of ethical precepts than a get-down-on-your-knees-close-your-eyes-and-pray (hope?) -for-something ritual that became a parental aspiration for me, I suspect. I never had to do much of that in my youth, fortunately, so perhaps I’m merely parroting the more recent televangelist broadcasts to which most North Americans also coming of Age in the 60ies were exposed.

You can maybe see why I am confused; it’s almost like visiting a toy store just before Christmas: there are so many choices each decked out like coquettes, that I am almost dizzy walking along the aisles. I suppose that serves a purpose, though: it makes me realize that I am not looking for bling; I am not attracted to make-up which disguises what really lies beneath. To tell the truth, I don’t know even know what I am looking for. Maybe guidance…?

We all shop for truths, I think; we pick and choose things which we hope might solve current problems only to discard them when they prove inconvenient; prove much the same as things we tried before but just wearing different clothing. Still, Fashion changes, I suppose. I am as capricious as the next person, I guess: constantly searching for … something else… anything else.

But somehow, like a fad that only satisfies for a time, is religion supposed to do that: remain confined within its boundaries like an anchoress who is out of sight, and eventually out of mind -or at least, without much purpose?

Something my English grandmother used to say when she was frustrated surfaces in my mind every now and then: ‘Oh dear’ she’d say to herself, ‘What can I do to be saved?’ I don’t think she meant it as a religious homily, or anything; I’m pretty sure she wasn’t praying the Rosary (she was Anglican and only wore bead necklaces on formal occasions); and given her stalwart agnosticism there’s no way she would be using the phrase as a meditation on the lives of Jesus and Mary.

No, I think she had come to a comfortable relationship with her life; with her mortality. I could almost hear her thinking, ‘Well I’ve had a pretty good life so far’; a Goldilockean realization that life is best lived with neither excess, nor extreme poverty of spirit, but rather with a ‘just right Baby Bear’ attitude. Maybe that was her religion.

She had a big heart: quick to forgive; quick to accept that things would never be perfect. She was a happy soul, and a pleasure to be around. I think she had a religion that I could live with from day to day. I’m not sure it had a God (or gods); I doubt that it condemned non-believers; she would have called them simply those who were happier with some other belief and accepted them as they were.

I don’t think her religion had rules; I like that. I doubt it even had doctrines or tenets to which she needed to subscribe; not everything in life requires regulations to function properly. Or, if hers had a guiding principle, it was more like trying to understand others, not convince them. I don’t think that it would have been as easily summarizable as the ‘Golden Rule’ in her Bible would have it -I’m not even sure she had a Bible.

Empathy might have been a more appropriate description of what she felt towards others: treating them fairly, and above all, with respect. Is that a religion? Does it have a name? Or is it what a rose by any other name would be?

I still can’t answer that after all these years, but I think -I know– my grandmother was content with her belief. All along, I think she really did know what it meant to be ‘saved’.

Come to think of it, maybe I do as well…

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gozzter

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