Sans Fig Leaf
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"The Epoch of Belief"
7 September, 2006
I don't normally drive to work, but recently I had a doctor's appointment in the middle of the day, so there I sat waiting for a traffic light to turn green when I was overwhelmed by memories of my late husband. Ray has been gone for nearly nine years, but for a few moments I had that strange certainty that if I turned my head I'd see him sitting in the passenger seat.
Before the light changed, I did turn my head. The seat was empty. But that didn't diminish the strong sense of his presence that I felt. It was spooky, but not in the frightening sense.
Some people would say that he was present, in spirit, and ascribe various important meanings to the situation. I don't believe that there was any special spiritual thing happening. I think there is a simple non-spiritual explanation for what I experienced, and I even know what it is.
Before his death, Ray and I probably sat at that very stoplight over a thousand times. That's true of a lot of places around Seattle, and I don't routinely have such strong and almost disturbing evocations of memory at those places. However, for various reasons, I almost never drive that direction on that road at that time of day any longer. In the years since Ray's death I've probably sat at that intersection, facing that direction when the sun was at that general angle, less than a dozen times.
Without a lot of intervening memories of seeing those sights lit in that way, seeing it again a few days ago called to mind the thousand or more times I had been there with Ray.
Having a rational explanation doesn't detract, in the slightest, from the feelings I was experiencing. The memories were real. The emotions were genuine. Having a rational explanation doesn't mean that the other explanation is invalid. Accepting the rational explanation is a matter of choice. I choose to put my faith in reason. Which sounds like a contradiction to some people, but it's not.
Everything we do is based on some form of faith. We have to believe our own senses. Or we have to believe in our own reasoning ability. More than one atheist scientist has admitted that scientific inquiry is based on the unproveable assumption that the universe and it's laws have some kind of consistency (with a corollary assumption that they are understandable by human reasoning). In a more general sense we all believe from one day to the next that the world will behave, more or less, the way it has before.
Knowing how much of my own life is dependent upon some form of faith, I try not to be judgemental about some of the things other people put faith in. But sometimes it's a little hard to keep a straight face. For example, I can't count the number of people I have known in relationships with users, abusers, or plain old losers who were absolutely convinced, because they were in love, that the undesirable personality traits would miraculously go away someday.
I could list several examples but they all come down to the same thing: the person is clinging tenaciously to a belief in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That's worse than blind faith--it's blindfolded faith. It is neither healthy nor wise, but a lot of people seem to think that that's the only true faith. They claim that anything less than blind, unwavering, unflinching, and unquestioning obedience to the cause (whatever it is) means you are unworthy.
Faith should be able to stand a little scrutiny. Faith should be able to answer a few questions. Faith should be able to adapt to changing situations. If someone is telling you to ignore facts, to avoid any differing viewpoints, or that asking questions is wrong, they don't deserve your respect, let alone your faith or trust.
--Leo Rosten
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