Well it’s been nearly a year since I last blogged anything here. So as the end of that year approaches, it seemed an appropriate time to review how things have changed, and where I am.
In hindsight, looking back at my last post, it get the impression I was trying to reach a conclusion that wasn’t there to be had. It feels like I wanted to tie up a whole load of loose ends, put them behind me, and move on. In hindsight that was probably wishful thinking, probably a little naïve, and maybe even self-deceiving.
In many senses I don’t think that the last 12 months have moved me on very much at all. I haven’t felt like things have fallen into place. I haven’t experienced wide vistas opening out before me. If anything it’s been a cloudy and fuzzy year, one where I’ve been somewhat numb and distant from any idea of faith, and one in which I haven’t been that strongly engaged in any kind of searching or understanding.
And yet as I sit here now, thinking back over those twelve months, some things do appear clearer to me.
For one, I think that the conviction of my agnosticism has grown much stronger. As I said at the beginning of the year, that isn’t an “I can’t decide / can’t be bothered” position. It is one of genuinely not knowing. And more to the point, one of not knowing how one could know. When I look around me, and I try to make sense of what we are and where we have come from, the “God” answer no longer seems a viable one. By which I mean I don’t see how it is concretely more viable than many other explanations.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been re-watching the TV series Cosmos, by Carl Sagan. It is really an attempt, from a scientific standpoint, to understand and explain the nature of the cosmos, who we are, and our place within it. To a certain extent it is a product of it’s time (late 1970s), but it still remains relevant. I remember watching the series at the age of 16, and being very moved and impressed by. Whilst it was deeply rooted in the scientific approach and world-view, it still allowed room for awe and wonder and – to a certain extent – mystery. I don’t think the fact that I made a Christian commitment a few months after watching this was a coincidence. In many ways I think that commitment was an attempt to make sense of what I felt, and find a home for it.
Watching it back now, those same feelings re-emerged. But this time I was in a different place. Somewhat older, probably somewhat more jaded, less certain of things, and more wary of any certainty when it came to the biggest of questions. And as I engaged with that, I think it has helped me to confirm where I stand. That when it comes down to it I don’t see that there is any way that we, as finite human beings, can ever have definitive answers to those kind of questions, can ever really truly know the reality of the universe, the nature of all things. How there is something rather than nothing, the nature of out consciousness, and whether there is really any ultimate purpose or meaning to this existence? In the past God has been used to provide answers to these dilemmas. And I had brought into that approach. But that no longer seems to work for me – both intellectually and emotionally it feels dishonest, and I can’t stay with it.
So I feel that I now stand somewhat naked in all of this existentialism[1]. And I feel that I should move beyond it – put it behind me and get on with my life. But I struggle to know how to do that. Sometimes I feel I want to cry at the loss of certainties and explanations. That grief that I mentioned last time is still there, still haunts me. This was such a huge part of my life, or at least of the way I understood my life. And as a result it’s absence feels significant and debilitating. I know I need to move on, I know I need to put this behind me and get on. Perhaps the dawning acknowledgement of where I am will act as a spur to do that. Who knows? What I do know is that there isn’t a rewind button, there’s no putting this particular genie back in the bottle. And so I have to move on. This isn’t a place I care to be paused in indefinitely.
[1] And yes I know, all this navel gazing may seem pretentious and unnecessary. But for good or bad these things matter to be, this is who I am, this is where I am.
