The tag at the head of all my posts reads “A sceptic’s take on being human”. Maybe that’s a little too firm. The title of this post dropped into my mind without warning and then, 12 hours later I realized that it sounds exactly like a reading from the I Ching – which are always ambiguous, no more than a suggestion as to where an answer might be sought. My scepticism is mainly about the kind of idea that’s fed to us like the predigested food that seagulls vomit into their chicks’ eager gape, and which may never be examined or questioned. The BBC have been re-running a series of brief 15 min talks by Neil Macgregor in which he quoted an intriguing thought. “Religion” he said, “is always political, and politics is always religious”. In the light of a new and even more deranged government dominated by an obviously religious fervour for neoliberal economics. I’m inclined to agree. These people remind me more of evangelical theologians (an oxymoron) than rational beings.
So scepticism is a tricky term to use because it depends on who’s being sceptical and what they’re being sceptical about.
And so, down to business
My scepticism is of the kind that functions as an adjunct to curiosity – the don’t knock it until you’ve tried it kind of scepticism. Oscar Wilde once wrote that you should try everything once except incest and morris dancing. I’d be happy to keep morris dancing on my bucket list. And so today we walked down to the well at St Nons and because I have been suffering from a painful ankle for ages I took my boots and socks off and dangled my feet into the cold water. Several coast path walkers passed in stony silence, too fixed on their destination to wonder whether I might do a little dance and declare myself healed. It wasn’t expecting much to happen – that would have been very challenging – but it was incredibly comforting to join with the countless other pilgrims who have visited this place over the past 1500 years looking for exactly the same kind of comfort. To steal a line from TS Eliot:
You are not here to verify,
TS Eliot – Little Gidding.
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.
I’ve been in that place before – well yes, in this place but also in this headspace. Full of doubt; hoping but not daring to hope; clinging to the possibility that there are mysteries that can’t be explained – the possibility of surprise without explanation. I’ve been on many pilgrimages, and rationally they’re pointless but emotionally; spiritually; the sheer plod of putting one foot in front of the other can speak to a realm beyond words. I love St Davids and I’ve pondered whether to walk here from Bath on a number of occasions, but if I ever do – if my ankle and my knackered knees will allow it – I’ll walk to St Non’s Well not to the cathedral which I can never bring myself to enter because in the end religion is all too inclined to be political; acting as a chaplaincy to the status quo; a monument to the wealthy and powerful; a message in stone to the peasantry that the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate (a line from ‘All things bright and beautiful’) is the way that God ordained it to be.
I intend to write more on this next time I post.
