Is God a Republican? and other musings on a dying faith

My husband likes to say that January 1st is just "a day like any other", and maybe he's right, though I used to think of him as an awful party pooper. Only the numbers change, after all. There are those who might think 2013 is already unlucky because of that ominous 13.

But hey, it's not really 13. It's 6. Add the digits together, and you'll have. . . I don't remember the numerological significance of 6, though I used to know.

I used to know a lot of things.

Years and years ago, I knew about palmistry, astrology (so much so that I cast birth charts for friends), numerology, spiritualism, magic stones, and even (my strangest allegience of all) the United Church. Though all these things might be seen as attempts to understand the unknown, they're also a means to try to bend reality in some way, to shape it in a fashion that suits you. What surprises me most of all is how long I followed that path without really questioning it.

Maybe I needed it so desperately that I couldn't question it.  I think my greatest spiritual addiction was prayer. When you really think about it, the whole concept of prayer is pretty ludicrous. What is it, anyway, but an attempt to change reality? With the exception of praising God or thanking God for being so swell to us when "good" things happen, prayer is a sort of petition. All right, Big Guy, here's what I want.

It implies that there is something wrong with things as they are. This person shouldn't be sick, that person shouldn't be bankrupt or an atheist or whatever-else is unacceptable to us. So we pray that they (or the situation) will change, that it will be different than it is. And we think it will be different than it is because of the intervention of "God", some force that either cheerfully obeys our request or decides to withhold his grace, either on a whim or because for some reason we piss him off.

From the outside, as an ex-pray-er, that's the only way I can see it. Either we "worship" some being who is completely capricious in granting our wishes like some wayward genie, or "thank" this being for being so good to us in giving us things we're largely providing for ourselves, or "ask" this being for help to stop being such a wimp in the face of reality, or seriously "approach" this being to convince him (it's still generally him - calling God "her" still provokes chuckles and "oh yeah, isn't it true" in most circles) to change things so that they will be closer to what we want. There's even an official name for it: prayers of intercession.

But even the most selfless prayers imply that things aren't really good enough they way they are.  Hey, I thought God was omniscient and knew what was best for us! Then why should things have to change?

 

And here's a doozy. Everyone knows the Nazis thought they were Christians, and terrorists sometimes identify as devout Muslims. Surely they pray for certain things that are somewhat at odds with our own desires. The ramifications of this are too horrendous to contemplate. 

But what if it's less clear? What if two different people, or two different faith communities, pray for opposite things? What if, in fact, they are praying against each other? Who does God favor, or do the chips just fall where they may? I've been in a situation where a spiritual community devolved into civil war, and believe me when I say that prayer was being used as a vindictive weapon by both sides.

My years and years of fervent praying that the world situation would somehow get better seem to have backfired. I see only alarming deterioration. So what's the purpose? There's a stubbornness that believers exhibit at this point, a "no, we're not going to give up" that reminds me of my own futile and somewhat ludicrous efforts to accomplish what I thought was my work on earth. It's not gonna happen, so why bang your head?

You keep banging your head because on some level, you believe in fairy dust. You believe in that sparkling magic that will somehow make it all better. If a situation spontaneously gets better, which it sometimes does, you say something like, "Look, God intervened". If it doesn't change or gets worse, you can always blame Satan, or maybe just pray a little bit harder (and louder). In any case, you never, never, never give up. This is called "faith" and I often wonder what it does to change anything at all.

It's been said that practicing prayer as a way of life increases sensitivity and compassion in the person who does the praying. I can't think of a better way to be hacked to pieces when certain events happen in the news, such as 20 sweet blameless school children being blasted to kingdome come. Their parents and siblings will never see them again and will be wounded for the rest of their lives. You can pray for the survivors, but does that help them feel better, feel the loss a bit less, or "heal"? If so, how does that happen? Does some mysterious current of energy leap from your God-charged brain right over into the area of trouble where it magically swirls around like a fairy godmother and takes the pain away?

I started off writing about the new year, a day like any other, and somehow ended up here. Gee, I wouldn't be bitter, would I? I wonder. When did that succulent apple turn so acidic and sour? But bitterness only elicits pity from those who still believe, who still think that prayer is just as effective as UNICEF or an ambulance rushing to provide real help.

One could say, OK, UNICEF is divinely inspired and ambulances, far from being hired and paid for, are God-given vehicles. My concept of God at this point (and I still can't quite call myself an atheist or agnostic because these quasi-religions only promote more of the suffocating "isms" I hate) is something that is indwelling, and sometimes gives us a shove to do something we might not otherwise do, or even something that we used to think was impossible.

Years and years ago I asked my husband, who does not adhere to any particular ism or category of faith, how he defined God. He said, "God is your conscience." I asked him, is that all?  He added, "God is. . . going with the flow." He was describing the sort of innate grace I will never have as I head-bash and flail around, feeling mostly God-forsaken.

Back in 1990 I felt like my life did an almost violent about-face, turning me  (completely unexpectedly) towards organized religion. It was a sort of conversion, or a re-conversion to the faith of my childhood, and I needed it desperately. Whatever I didn't believe, I swallowed anyway, not knowing how toxic that can be. It all came down to a desperate need to belong.

In 2005, my life fell to pieces (no thanks to the church, which only isolated and stigmatized me in my hour of need). I experienced another violent about-face, away from everything that I thought had helped me for 15 years. It wasn't exactly like waking up and saying, "Gee, I think I will renounce everything I once held sacred." In fact, I didn't even WANT to renounce God or anything else that I thought had helped me. But it was like the end of a marriage. It started out great, but one day the lights went out, and frantic efforts to re-light them were utterly futile.

It was over.

I am left with that indwelling model, but I wonder if it isn't just part and parcel of being human. We want more. We reach for more. We want it so badly that we create it. The old philosophical/atheistic argument is that WE created God in OUR image, not the other way around. Certain recent items in the news seem to run counter to the model that we were created to resemble God.

It's not that there's no religion left in the world. While mainstream congregations founder and sink due to boredom, hypocrisy and irrelevance, the fundamentalists are thriving on their own particular brand of smug insularity.  Anything they don't like is Satanic. Sure, they'll feel compassion for you if you toe the line, give up your homosexuality and have that baby even if you were raped.  After all, there's a certain kind of rape where women can prevent getting pregnant, isn't there? And just think of it this way: you'll have an entire political party supporting your every prejudice and prayer.

They didn't win, but they still lie in wait, crouched.

I don't know what happened to Jesus, but I am beginning to seriously doubt he ever existed. This idea would have appalled me a few years ago. He's a beautiful story put together to teach us a lesson, but at this point I'm not sure what that lesson is. The funny thing is, the longer I stayed in the United Church, the more it seemed to espouse that particular model of Jesus as myth. Even United Church moderators began to make proclamations that Christ wasn't actually divine, or even that God doesn't really exist except as a sort of abstract concept.

I think this was done to attract more people, mainly younger people, or to get lapsed members back, mimicking the way the Catholic church is trying to round up the strays with those endless TV ads. It isn't working because a secular church is too much of a puzzle. Painfully pseudo-hip web sites don't help, even if they supposedly "get the discussion going" and provide cute, pat answers delivered by magic squirrels.

 

 

 

 

While I'm still in this bizarre realm, can I pose a serious question: why am I the only person I know who thinks this E-Z Answer Squirrel is a ludicrous joke that makes the United Church look even more shallow and irrelevant than it already is? And why is their web site called WonderCafe, as if any mention of the United Church - or ANY church - is assumed to be anathema to the public? This desperate scramble for the attention of younger people seems to go without criticism or even comment of any kind by church members. It's hard for me to believe that everyone is in favor of it.  Are those who disagree with it afraid to say anything, and if so, why - and of what?  No wonder more serious and committed denominations think the United Church is "squirrely".

 

 

Mainstream religion is a sinking ship. This isn't exactly why I jumped off when I did. I jumped off because of loneliness, despair, and the pity of people I thought respected me. I also jumped off because of stultifying boredom and an appalling abuse of leadership, often designed to suit an agenda which the congregation only reluctantly agreed to (if at all). This involved things like TV cameras in the sanctuary during Sunday service: if anyone objected, they were told, "oh, your face won't be on national television unless you sign an agreement". So the sense of violation and invasion as those cameramen swooped down on the sanctuary like nasty dragonflies didn't count at all. 

Personally, I hated it, but such was the atmosphere in my church at that time that I knew I could not say anything about it without being seen as overly negative or a spoilsport.

In the course of fifteen years with my former church, I saw one minister run out of town after nine years of faithful service, another minister shattering the congregation with vindictive lies (which wasn't our fault: obviously he fell from the sky, meaning we had nothing to do with selecting him as the best of  five candidates), another trying desperately to glue the shattered pieces together, and - finally - someone who really just wanted to be on national television as a shining and very public example of moral courage. Give me a break!

I stayed as long as I did out of incredulity that things could deteriorate this badly, along with personal need and spiritual loneliness. I think by the end I was viewed as pretty much of a crackpot. I once asked a psychologist, "OK, please tell me, what is a FUNCTIONAL family?" She answered, "A functional family is a family where everyone gets to express their thoughts and feelings without fear of being put down or ignored." It had been a long, long time since I had felt comfortable expressing my thoughts and feelings in that place.

 

So where does that leave me with regards to God? I have a conscience, and I do, at times, find myself able to go with the flow, music being the most powerful example of "flow" I have ever found. The finest Christians I know aren't even Christian and don't identify themselves with any sort of spiritual label. They just get on with it. It might take me the rest of my life to even begin to follow that quiet but supremely effective example.

Is forgiveness just a fad? (A Thanksgiving meditation)

for·give

   /fərˈgɪv/ Show Spelled [fer-giv] Show IPA verb, for·gave, for·giv·en, for·giv·ing.

verb (used with object)

1.

to grant pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.); absolve.

2.

to give up all claim on account of; remit (a debt, obligation, etc.).

3.

to grant pardon to (a person).

4.

to cease to feel resentment against: to forgive one's enemies.

5.

to cancel an indebtedness or liability of: to forgive the interest owed on a loan.

 

"So what happened when you went to prison to visit the man who murdered your children?"

 

(choking back tears) "I chose to forgive him. It was the only way I could let go and go on with my life."
 

 

 

Am I the only one who has trouble with this?

 

Am I the only one who is beginning to see this trend, often displayed on reality TV and investigative crime shows like Dateline and 20-20, as a sort of spiritual fad that lifts the victim to the level of sainthood?

 

How long will it be until this "forgive him and let go" will become a kind of social imperative? I'd say it's right here, folks, and not just in Sunday school any more.

 

Lots of things become trends, fads. Medical diagnoses change and shift, particularly in the realm of psychiatry. I can't help but notice how many people (particularly women) who used to be "borderline" (as in borderline personality disorder) are now "bipolar", as if somehow their disorder morphed in response to a kind of medical fashion.

 

At the root of it all, the problem is this. For the most part, human beings are herd animals. Very few break out of the pack, and those who do are seen as daring innovators, geniuses, or totally nuts. (Note that some of these subversive souls, whether they were aware of it or not, founded religious movements that changed the course of history.) The vast majority of people are deeply conventional. While thinking outside the box is superficially praised, how many have enough guts to carry it out?

 

Lots of jokes, most of them pretty mean, are made about the fact that this "forgive" stuff seems to stem from fundamentalist Christianity which grows very thick in the US south (where, perhaps mysteriously, most of these lurid crimes seem to come from). The essence of these remarks seems to be, well, maybe it's inbreeding, which can surely drive down the IQ points over the generations.

 

But there's more going on than that.

 

As a child I was steeped in Christianity, even though it was  kind of middle-of-the-road and never involved snake-handling (which I would've enjoyed) and plaster saints weeping blood. The Lord's Prayer was dusted off and recited at every opportunity, including before school  every morning (and how did the few Jews and Muslims in the school feel about that? I do remember some Jehovah's Witnesses leaving the room for those few moments, and though they seemed like unreasonable cranks then, now they strike me as courageous).

 

 

It's a pretty antiquated sort of prayer with terms like "hallowed be thy name" and "thy kingdom come", which meant absolutely nothing to me back then because no one ever told me what they meant. I just parroted them back because I was supposed to. I didn't have much choice.

 

Then came the meat of it: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." As a kid, I thought of trespassing as breaking down a fence on public property, something my friends and I had done once or twice and would obviously fry in hell for.

 

It was only later, much later, that I figured out the real meaning of "trespass". Though I had seen new and much more hip translations of the Lord's Prayer that performed elaborate flips and porpoise-leaps to avoid using the original archaic terms, I came to see trespassing as a sort of violation of our natural boundaries. Which, apparently, we were always supposed to forgive without question. What a lovely and appropriate thing, what great conditioning to deeply instill in a child, particularly a girl child!

 

 

Now that I think of it, the adjective considered most desirable in a child, the description that seemed most fitting and appropriate for all of us, particularly girls, was "obedient". I can't help but hitch this horrendous term to the passive concept of "forgiveness" which to me came to mean, "It's all right what you did, I don't object to it," or at very least, "I will never hold you accountable for the damage you did to me."

 

I will let that sink in for a moment.

 

 

Every time I hear this "I chose to forgive him" thing on TV, which is practically every day now, it seems to be connected to some horrific act like a mother losing all her children to an axe-murderer, usually her husband or boy friend. Whenever this woman comes on - and yes, she IS usually from the US south, the Bible Belt of North America - the announcer always says something like, "In an incredible and selfless act of spiritual generosity, Betty has forgiven the murderer for this horrific deed." She will then say something like, "It's the only way I can let go and heal my life."

 

Oh?

 

Whatever this mysterious phenomenon is, I can't buy for a minute that it is going to free someone from traumatic memories and anger (fury?) towards someone who has ripped away the essence of their life. It isn't human. My feeling is that the anger will be pushed down and covered up with Bible verses, and the reward - a huge one in fundamentalist Christian circles - will be the status of sainthood. The victim's selflessness and saintly ability to completely do away with all traces of vengefulness and anger will elevate her in a way that must be mighty comforting.

 

 

But hold on a minute.

 

The popular culture, as it always does, is slowly but surely bending the meaning of forgiveness from the traditional "forgive us our trespasses" thing (and I still don' t know what that means exactly) to something more - well, more hip and modern.

 

Let's revisit the definitions I quoted at the beginning of this post.

 

fer-giv] Show IPA verb, for·gave, for·giv·en, for·giv·ing.

verb (used with object)

1.

to grant pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.); absolve.

2.

to give up all claim on account of; remit (a debt, obligation, etc.).

3.

to grant pardon to (a person).

4.

to cease to feel resentment against: to forgive one's enemies.

5.

to cancel an indebtedness or liability of: to forgive the interest owed on a loan.

 

This analysis of the concept of forgiveness begins to alarm me when I note the thread that runs through it: not holding the offender accountable. If this were practiced to the letter, of course, the legal system as it exists today would totally disappear.

 

"To cease to feel resentment against" is even more incredible. Bing, bing, bing - I no longer hate this guy! I love him as one of God's children, even though he strayed from the path of righteousness and hacked my children to pieces with an axe.  No more anger, no more dreadful feelings of having one's guts ripped out. It's all fixed. The indebtedness has been forgiven, the emotional loan written off.

 

 

But at the same time, I found this juicy little tidbit in that ultimate authority on the social imperatives of the 21st century, Wikipedia:

 

In most contexts, forgiveness is granted without any expectation of restorative justice, and without any response on the part of the offender (for example, one may forgive a person who is incommunicado or dead). In practical terms, it may be necessary for the offender to offer some form of acknowledgment, an apology, or even just ask for forgiveness, in order for the wronged person to believe himself able to forgive.^[1]

 

Oh really?

 

That sounds more like a moral contract to me: admit what you did, you slimeball, and feel goddamn sorry about it, and apologize to me for the damage you did, and maybe THEN I'll consider forgiving you. The  wrongdoer must own up, must confess and truly take responsibility (which is not at all the same as confession: "I had a bad childhood and couldn't help myself" being a common dodge). But hey, I watch Dateline, I keep track of these things, and most of the perpetrators have the dead-calm unsweating demeanour of a shark, their  beady eyes expressing not a trace of human emotion. These are sociopaths who wil never admit they did ANYTHING wrong and who are, alarmingly, "gotten off" by fancy lawyers in too many cases. The lawyers often look just as sharklike and devoid of humanity (i.e. Drew Peterson's defense lawyer who eerily resembles him, his cold predatory eyes sunken into his expressionless face).

 

 

 

Remorseful? These guys? Give me a break. They love the attention. They go on national TV and pretend to cry, choking out "sorry" to the interviewer as if on cue. "I loved my wife! I loved her more than anything in the world!", etc.,  etc., etc.

 

Forgive THAT.

 

Maybe this forgiveness stuff is just a way of removing yourself from the whole mess. But doesn't it involve shutting down a huge amount of very human rage at being horribly violated? How does one do it? Can we see some followup, please - some honest interviews with people five years later? Are they at peace with themselves, do they feel OK about the perpetrator and the crime, do they still forgive and feel compassion for him/her?

I can't buy it, even though, ironically, there's a whole industry springing up about healing your various physical and emotional maladies by forgiving. The implication being that NOT forgiving is really at the root of your sickness (yet another lovely way to blame the victim - as if they needed more blame).

 

 

 

I don't know, historically I could not feel compassion for Adolf Hitler, nor could I feel it for someone who destroyed my life and didn't even feel any remorse. Personally, I think it's dangerous. If your father happens to have certain  Drew Peterson tendencies, won't he take that as license to treat you like his own personal property?

If he is sexually violating you, aren't you indoctrinated to forgive him no matter what? ("Honor thy father and thy mother" just adds another layer of helplessness.)

Won't Daddy find a way to twist your religion around so it suits him? "What's the matter with you, why can't you forgive me, aren't you a good little Christian girl? Get over here."

 

If you have "forgiven" him like you are supposed to, how likely is it that you'll press charges against him? I'd say, nil. The two are mutually exclusive. But what if he finds someone else to abuse, destroys another life (which is almost certainly the case with abusers), and you realize you could have stopped him?

How Christian is that?

 

 

  

I want to say to these people who so readily forgive, be afraid. Be very afraid. You are laying yourself open to more sharks in this shark-infested world. There is blood in the water, and that blood may be yours. Protect yourself! Though this "I forgave him" thing is beginning to seem like yet another media-driven fad, it's less and less meaingful when it becomes a knee-jerk response, the "right" thing to say, or, worse, something you do to get Keith Morrison to praise your selflessness (though I have a feeling he'd see right through it). We live in an ever-more-narcissistic world, and because human beings are (indeed!) herd animals, most of us don't consciously know how much we are being affected by social trends.

 

 

The problem with forgiveness as a spiritual issue - and this is a huge one - is that the Bible doesn't tell you HOW to do it. People who attempt to literally practice Biblical precepts are often very, very uncomfortable with righteous anger, or, for that matter, any sort of anger at all. They prefer Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild to the scary cat who hurled over the moneychangers' tables (in public!) and chased away the sacrificial animals with a whip.


If you can find true forgiveness in your heart (and I might just be up for it if the perpetrator took total responsibility for what they did, fell down on their knees and begged me to), then that's great, and I wish you a happy Thanksgiving. But for God's sake, don't do it because "the Bible tells me so". Don't do it because misguided spiritual leaders or so-called friends say you "should" or "you really will feel better" (especially since so many people don't). If it doesn't come out of your own spiritual core (and if you don't know where that is, you are in big trouble), then it is fake - bogus - the kind of spiritual pretense that made Jesus bloody furious. 

The Bible, powerful as it is for many people, is not "God", nor is it "Jesus". In fact, Jesus knew nothing about it in his lifetime because in its present form it didn't exist.  It's a lens to look through, just a veil or shadow of an echo of great power that humans barely understand. Our tendency is to get hold of it and squeeze, or render it clunky and literal, perhaps because we are so afraid of it. But it's not a lucky rabbit's foot, nor can we manipulate its messages - or other people - by what the renegade prophet Bob Dylan once referred to as "strings of guilt".
 

 

If real forgiveness exists, and I'm not sure too many people are really up for it, it must be a much more dynamic process than the shallow, emotionally-dishonest variety I see in the media. Realistically, it would be a process that could take many years, and probably never be complete.  But why must normal human feelings be considered so frightening that grave emotional debt somehow must be cancelled?

 

 

Why must wronged people, already aching and filled with outrage, be made to feel ashamed of themselves because they "should" forgive, and somehow can't manage it?

 

"I can't move on unless I forgive" is the mantra now, and it makes my hair stand on end. I can't move on unless I convince myself this person isn't to blame for destroying my life. The more I look at it, the more bizarre it all becomes.

 

 

To know all is to forgive all, and to be appalled by most of it.
 

Quentin Crisp, 1985

 

The Resurrection of Peter

It wasn’t much of a day. She wasn’t even sure it was a day at all, since they had really cancelled days quite a long time ago and made everything One. Or was it that they had cancelled Night?

 Which means, you walk around in a half-state, sometimes jokingly known as Twilight. Twilight was the stuff of owls and demons and things that didn’t even really exist any more. But, she thought to herself, do any of us really exist any more?

 They all made it seem as if it were “just her”, and that everyone else was normal. This was all part of the scheme, the huge heartwrenching scheme to take her life away. It was illustrated nearly every day now when she ran into the people she knew.

 They looked dissimilar, but all the same, with a strange hazy quality. Yet they laughed and were jolly in a way they never seemed to be before, as if they had discovered an amazing new Secret.

  

“Emma. Hi, Emma! Haven’t seen you in a long time!” Gretel was wearing the strangest outfit, bright paisley like she’d never worn, a sort of muumuu, with a straw tote bag.

“Hi, Gretel. I think.”

“Oh, it’s me all right. This is just my New Look.”

It’s hardly a look at all, thought Emma, wondering whatever happened to the Old Look, and what made her change it.

“You look the same,” Gretel said in a flat tone. Looking the same wasn’t quite “it”, she supposed.

“Haven’t gotten my instructions in the mail yet,” Emma said, trying to be ironic.

“Oh, that’s so funny! You’re such a funny person! Well, goodbye then!”

“Wait, Gretel. I need to ask you something.”

 “What is it now?” She was getting testy already.

“You know, Peter. . . “

“Yes, Peter.” They had both known Peter. His sudden death had been a wrench, for both of them she thought, but now she wasn’t so sure.

 “What about Peter?”

“Ever since he passed, you know. . . “

“Passed?” She began to titter. “Was he in school or something?”

“No! Don’t you remember? When he. . .”

 “What, when he went on vacation?”

The ultimate vacation, Emma thought.

“Look, I mean when he died.”

“Died?”

“Died.”

“Died?”

“For God’s sake, Gretel! You know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, that.” She fumbled around in her straw bag for a minute. “I thought you’d heard about it.”

“Heard what?”

“He’s back alive again.”

Stunned silence. A sick feeling gathered in her stomach.

“Back alive again?”

“Of course. Haven’t you seen him? He’s walking around.”

“How, by remote control?” Her sarcasm seemed to be flying over Greta’s pointed little head.

“Sort of, but it’s better than that. He can go under his own steam by now.”

“But he’s dead!”

“Sort of. But not really. You can get renewed now, sort of like a library book. You must know that by now."

She stood there stunned, things whirling around, as Gretel just walked away without even saying goodbye.

She started to comprehend then why everything was different, why she was sort of seeing through some people, mostly really old people, but some of them children. They had a strange sort of translucent quality, but they were still walking around.

And they always seemed happy. Emma thought about Bible study a million years ago, before the Bible was universally banned, and how Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. She had always wondered if Lazarus really wanted to be raised, his body half-rotted. Would he have a new body, somehow, or walk around  like that forever?

 

But then that meant she could find Peter!

Peter wasn’t her lover, never had been, but he had been there during the blackest, the most despairing time in her life. He would just show up at Starbucks with his baseball cap and his smile, cheerful as Bugs Bunny. He was in worse shape than she was, but they joked about it, guffawed about how awful life was.

“I heard about a woman who committed suicide. But before she committed suicide she got out the vacuum cleaner and cleaned her whole house top to bottom so it was absolutely spotless. Then she hung herself.” They had both howled with laughter.

Then they just lost touch. Like a sick cat, he had crawled under the house somewhere. She had known he was deteriorating; one conversation they had wasn’t a conversation at all, but a monologue on her part. He’d start to say something, then dry up after a couple of words and look at her in bafflement.

What bothered her was the fact that it didn’t bother him.

She kept sending him emails long after she suspected he had passed (and NOT “in school”!). She couldn’t help it. She’d think she saw him in a crowd. But it wasn’t him. Because the emails didn’t bounce back to her, she assumed they were hitting the target and he was just too busy to reply (knowing full well he had kicked the bucket long ago).

Back alive again. Strange things had been happening lately. She had mentioned her grandfather to a friend of hers, how difficult it had been for him to let go.

“Is he still dead?” the friend asked.

 h, maybe they meant in her mind, in her memory! But somehow she didn’t think so. Death was the only thing more sure than birth. Wasn’t it?

Would she see Peter again? A wild stab of hope made her heart beat faster.

She became aware of how the light went right through people, and began to count them. It was an awful lot. She wondered just what had happened to everyone. Back alive again? Is he still dead? Did you will this, wish it, or did someone impose it on you like poor Lazarus wrapped in his rotten gravecloths?

It was too much to hope for, but in her next turn of mind, when she did not pass Go but began in the middle again, she saw him. She saw a ball cap bouncing up and down the street first, then a smile.

Then they were sitting in Starbucks, but she noticed he was sitting two inches above the chair. He didn’t seem to really drink the coffee, but the eyes were the same.

 They could always be blunt and honest with each other, so Emma waded right into it.

“So, Peter. I hear you’re back alive again.”

“It would seem to be so.”

“How does that happen?”

“I don’t know that, any more than cells know how to multiply or the earth knows how to turn.”

“But is it. . . beyond your will or something?”

"This is a place beyond will."

"Her head was whirling. She hated the idea of not being able to die. Death was one of the things she looked forward to the most.

“Peter, I’m sorry, but it sounds as if you’re a fucking zombie or something. The Undead.”

“Hey, I like that! Undead, but not really alive.”

“Look, Peter, there are only TWO states: dead and alive! Which one are you?”

“No. There is the dream state. There is the hypnotic state. There is the hypnogogic state. There is the catatonic state. There is the trance state. There is the transcendent state. There is the resurrected state. I could go on and on.”

“But those are only in your mind, Peter.”

“Tell me this.” He leaned forward and looked at her with his old intensity, and for one moment she really believed this was Peter. “If I were just a body, I mean lying over there with my heart beating but no consciousness, would that be ‘me’?”

“I don’t. . . “

“So what is it that makes me me?”

“I don’t know, your brain?”

“The brain is just half a pound of juice with some wires running through it. Dissect it, and you see some curls and buds and bulges like normal internal organs. There’s nothing there.”

“So where. . . “

“Ah. You’re about to ask me where Consciousness resides.”

“I guess so. Peter, why aren’t you drinking your coffee?”

"I've evolved beyond coffee, I guess." He chuckled to himself.

“You’re not alive. Get away from me! You’re not really Peter. Are you a ghost?”

"Beyond ghost. We've been refined. We don't have to go around haunting old buildings and Civil War battle sites any more."

“But who DOES this? It has to come from somewhere!”

“Haven’t you noticed you don’t have any privacy any more?”

“Oh, Jesus, Peter.”

 “Haven’t you noticed all the electronic jims and jams that everyone seems to carry now?”

“Oh, so you’re saying your Smart Phone turned you into a ghost.”

“Everything is changed, changed utterly.”

“So what if it all just shuts down, the power grid and that?”

“Yes! Smart girl. THAT is what it is all about.”

“What?” 

"Bodies that need no sustenance when the Time comes. That time when the whole ecosystem collapses, gives way in a great Biblical flood and rips apart the rest of the world with an all-consuming fire."

“You’re scaring me.”

 “Haven’t you ever worried about it?"

“Of course. But I never knew that. . . “

“Now we can live under any conditions.”

“BUT YOU AREN’T REALLY ALIVE! You died of AIDS two years ago!”

 “But I’m not really dead.” He grinned, looking as cheerful as when he told me the suicide joke.

“You must be dead, Peter. You MUST be.”

 “No, my good friend.” He lifted his mug and pretended to drink from it. “I’m back alive again.”