I’ve been thinking about how I can classify myself, to other people. I know what I think, but it doesn’t fit in with the general consensus, although maybe I’m overlooking a term I could use?
I was brought up in a Catholic household, with a very, very small ‘c’. My mother’s quite devout; she goes to church every Sunday, helps out on Wednesday, actually visits people who are going to have their child baptised (I didn’t know that, until it came up in conversation last year). My dad was Church of England but converted to Catholic before he married my mother. He goes with her to church, wears a cross, is quite ‘religious’, but doesn’t go out of his way.
It was early when I began to have doubts about all that kind of thing. I think I was about 6 or 7 when I realised saying ‘Goodnight, good bless’ was actually ‘Goodnight’, God bless’. As soon as I understood the words I stopped saying them. I had no pressure, at least that which I perceived, to believe, practice or in any way accept my saviour etc. Early reading, to me and then to my mother, was Aesop’s Fables, which we’d regularly read every night for a long time, maybe ages 5 to 8.
I’ve been, pretty much, ‘out of the loop’, where religions are concerned so I don’t know if those stories are from religious texts. I work in the Middle East, now, and sometimes reference movies I wish I hadn’t (Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments - not sure which), because of the religious content. I’ve stopped referring to films I enjoyed as a kid, unless I definitely know they definitely aren’t anything to do with religion. Apart from Monty Python’s, and then only with other westerners.
I do believe, in all seriousness, that there is life after our death. I’ve ‘experienced’ the paranormal, for want of a better word, on one occasion. My brother has several times, my sister had on numerous occasions. My parents haven’t. My brother and sister are both older (9/10 years) than me, and so I heard of their experiences when I was young, and didn’t really believe them, to be honest. My sister has had plenty of experiences, seeing ghosts, being freaked out, fainting, until our mother said she should tell them to ‘Go away, I don’t want you near me’ and they stopped. I think it was around 20+ years until she stopped talking about it. She’s married, two lovely boys, and seems pretty happy. It started when she was 3, cycling around the living room at night (mum and dad had gone to bed) with ‘the nice lady’, in the pitch black. When they decided to move out ‘the nice lady’ pushed a wardrobe onto her cot, the day before they moved ‘the nice lady’ removed all of the kitchen cupboards from the walls. That was the start of her meetings, which continued until she was in her mid twenties.
I ‘met’ a ‘ghost’ one time, and it really freaked me out. I was 22, cleaning an office in an old mansion. It’s the administration of a children’s hospital but there’s no link there. To cut a long story short, she didn’t want me there. I had the whole hairs raised, cold feeling (on a hot day) down my back, empty office in an old mansion, nasty voice (not heard, seen, but felt) telling me to “Get out… Get Out… GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!!”
I ran, found my brother, who saw me and immediately asked “Want a coffee? How you doing?” It turned out he’d also ‘met’ her a few times, as had a lot of the other workers in the building. Apparently she’d lived there over a hundred year before and was killed, thrown from a balcony. I’d just graduated and his contract cleaning business was in its early days, I was helping him out until he got reliable staff. I worked there for a while, not on that floor again, before getting a job more in line with my degree. I was just there part-time and had no long-term interest - i.e. it just happened to me. I’d not had anything like that happen before, or since, but they (my brother’s and sister’s ‘tales’) took on a whole, new meaning.
So, my question is this - I now believe there is a life after death, another reality, a thing we don’t understand and the Bible, Scriptures, Koran etc don’t accurately portray just what it is. I cannot, either, but I’m pretty sure they cause more problems than my view does. I think ‘atheist’ is too strong a word, ‘agnostic’ does me no credit. If people ask I say I’m Catholic. Is there a better term to say ‘I believe in life after death, just none of the established religions make any sense to me’?