Is there anyone there?

Model on Myra's mantle.





It was a clay pipe that Myra was putting to such good use: like the ones I have seen in pictures of ‘boat-women’ on the canals of England in the early nineteenth century. I must say it suited her admirably, and I told her so. She offered to loan me one from her collection, but I declined.

I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of religion, so I said ‘What do you think of death?’
‘I’m not too keen.’ She replied, taking the pipe from her mouth and billowing smoke up at the ceiling. (I noticed there was a big brown patch just over where she was sitting, so I deduced this must be her favourite armchair).
I pressed on. ‘No, I mean, what with your religion and that, I thought you would have some definite ideas about it – death, I mean.’
She regarded me quizzically. ‘What do you know about my religion?’
‘Well, nothing really, except Hector told me that you had started your own… religion.’
She puffed away at her pipe for a couple of minutes, reminding me of Harold Wilson: when he was Prime Minister, if anyone asked him a difficult question, he would spend an age getting his pipe going, while he thought of an answer. Myra’s pipe was going, strongly but she seemed to be employing a similar strategy.
Then suddenly removing the pipe from her mouth, she stabbed the stem in my direction. ‘That brother of yours is a fool. I don’t know why you let him speak to you the way he does; anyone would think he was the elder brother. I’m surprised you have anything to do with him.’
I was taken aback. ‘Well, blood’s thicker than water.’
‘Yes, but not as thick as creosote.’ She replied, mysteriously. Then, before I had time to consider the relevance of this observation, she went on ‘Are you sure he’s your brother?’
‘I’m not sure that we had the same father.’ I confessed.
‘Are you sure you had the same mother?’
The conversation was skidding out of control, so I attempted to wrench it back on course.
‘But to come back to religion - don’t you think we could do with a return to basic Christian values?’
‘You mean set up a new Inquisition? Mount a few Crusades? That sort of thing? She asked, innocently.
I was annoyed. ‘They are not the values of Jesus – they are examples of horrors committed in His name by ‘organised religion’. And the Christian Church doesn’t have a monopoly on barbarism and cruelty, you know. What about the antics of so-called ‘Muslim extremists? And I’m not talking about the ‘dark ages’, I am talking about, now: the twentieth, twenty-first century!’
‘Don’t get your hair off. – I do know that – I was just teasing you. So why are you so interested in my religion?
‘Well,’ I responded, ‘doesn’t religion profess to have the answers to all the important questions of life – like “death”’.
She laughed.
‘Okay, not just death – although we all would like to know what happens to us when we shuffle off these mortal coils – but the meaning of life: What’s it all for? How did it begin? How is it going to end? And, on a personal level – how should I live my life? By what moral code? All that stuff.’
‘I see.’ She said, her face hazy behind the smokescreen. I continued.
‘As a seeker after the truth, I am interested to know just what answers your religion provides to the above questions; what are its central tenets? How does it work in practice? And, importantly, does it make you happy?

The smoke cleared and I saw the look of annoyance on Myra’s face. Oh dear, I thought, I have offended her. But then I realised her pipe had gone out.

I did say that I would report verbatim my conversation with Myra. Perhaps so far I have not verbatimised enough, so I shall continue (for the present) in ‘script’ form.

(Myra knocks out her pipe against the heel of her boot – some brown claggy stuff falls into the hearth. She takes no notice but sets about refilling the pipe. She does the ‘Harold Wilson’ bit until it is once more belching smoke and sparks ceiling wards.)

Myra: Okay - fire away.
Me: Richard Dawkins defines a theist as someone who ‘… believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation.’ You know, he intervenes: answers prayers, forgives, punishes… that sort of thing – what some might call a personal God. Are you a theist?
Myra: YES… and again NO.
Me: But you either are or you are not.
Myra: Ah, well that’s where you are wrong, squire. You see my religion is a four-dimensional religion.
Me: I don’t understand.
Myra: Time: the fourth dimension. People make the mistake of thinking that things should be either ‘this’ or ‘that’; ‘good’ or ‘bad; ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. And this may be so at a given point in time. But at another point in time, the opposite may be the case.
Me: I’m lost.
Myra: My religion caters for the ‘lost’.
Me: All religions purport to do that. Are you perhaps a deist?
Myra: You mean, an intelligence etc. etc. but who leaves the creation to get on with it – once he’s set it up? Non-intervention? No miracles? No water into wine?
Me: Yes.
Myra: Again the answer is YES and NO.
Me: You’re not being very helpful. Or making much sense, I have to say.
Myra: Let me ask you a question: is there a difference between ‘God’ and ‘Religion’?
Me: Well, I –
Myra: And here’s a supplementary question: if there was incontrovertible evidence for life after death, would that prove the existence of God? Have a think about it, while I let the cat in.