On the drive home from rural Arizona, I had a strange experience. Thinking about my papa, as we affectionately called him, about how I would never see him again, I imagined how his presence would feel as though he were sitting in the passenger side chair of my car and my brain did one of its tricks. I could actually feel him sitting there, not in any tactile sense but in the way I felt when I knew I was in presence of my papa.

I recounted this experience to my tbm mother some time later, saying “it felt like he was really there,” and was about to go on about how it’s funny how our minds do that to us when she replied, “he probably was.” Call me callous, but I regretted even sharing the experience with her.

My mother needs to believe that God is trying to get through to me. I think she realizes I’ve been in a lot of pain trying to keep her religion the way she taught it to me, and she empathizes to a degree. She will never empathize so much that she takes my side about the church being a mire full of mosquitos which instead of spreading malaria spread exacerbated mental illness, but she is my mother and she loves me in her way.

There was a time it felt like my secular awakening was inevitable for others too. I hoped for it, so we could be of one heart and one mind again. I cannot go back to way things were even if I wanted to. In what feels like a previous life, if I had experienced that sense of presence, it would have been a sign to me that the world beyond the veil was real. I have a brain primed for religious experience. I know this now. I have never hallucinated visually or audibly, but I have these kinds of exquisite emotional experiences sometimes. It used to make the religious mythos of my parents the realest thing in the universe to me, even though I couldn’t square it with the universe I learned about through my science enthusiasm, but nowadays I am skeptical of anything I experience which could suggest the supernatural, not skeptical of the experiences themselves or their emotional import but skeptical that they represent any reality except the inner workings of my own human brain.

I miss my papa. He was a good, kind, sweet old man. I don’t think I’ll ever see him again. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to. I just don’t think I will. That’s a simple statement of what I think reality is.

This is a beautiful post and beautifully written.

An article you might find interesting, Cold-Dodger:

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/phenomena-relating-danger-death-bereavement

>>I recounted this experience to my tbm mother some time later, saying “it felt like he was really there,” and was about to go on about how it’s funny how our minds do that to us when she replied, “he probably was.” Call me callous, but I regretted even sharing the experience with her.

I realize that's one small example, but to me it sounds like you were both simply sharing your different perspectives about the same event. I know that TBMs can be overbearing, but even mainstream/moderate religious people tend to speak in their own vernacular, which does take some accommodation.

As my brother and I fell away from Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general, we had to negotiate certain ways of talking with our mother. For instance it was important for my mom to have grace said at large family meals, so my brother and I learned how to do it in a way that did not involve religion, i.e. "We are thankful for good health, good food, and the company of our loved ones." Or at other times, we would just let her share her perspective on things. Of course this requires accommodation on the part of the religious person as well, which a TBM may or may not be able to manage. All this to say that even in the best of circumstances, it can be a process.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2020 09:49AM by summer.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Dodger. They are appreciated.