Obiter Dicta

Wednesday, February 8^th.

Today would have been my paternal grandmother’s 112^th birthday. She was a woman I revered as a child, the absolute epitome of a grandmother: loving – O, more than that, doting; smiling, cheery and a tubby wee bundle of fun. That she was tubby was almost entirely due to her having borne ten children, the second of whom was my father. She had nine sons, one of whom she lost as an eleven-year-old, and one daughter, my aunt Evelyn.

            I have alwaye been ludicrously blessed in my female relatives. Both Nana and Evelyn lavished love and time on me, the eldest of – I think – twenty-three grandchildren. I was a bright kid at school. (I wonder often where that brightness went, these days.) And both women encouraged my reading, my scholasticism and my attempts to devour as much as I could of any branch of knowledge that came my way. They provided me with an extra layer of love and support, in addition to the insulating one I received from my parents. I mourned them both deeply when they died, my grandmother at the age of 86, and my aunt at the far too early age of 68. I miss them still. I’m happy to record my unabated love and gratitude to them both.

            Both women were devout Catholics, two of the few genuinely ‘good’ people I’ve met in my life. And that brings me on to a different topic.

            In other news, I have been upbraided of late in the pub about my atheism. A man who has read The Locked Ward took me to task for my comments about religion in that book. It has been many years since I believed in the faith I was brought up in. Or any faith, for that matter. It struck me as a child about to enter my teens that absolute certainty about religious faith was a stance with very little foundation. Some of the more fundamentalist of the parish – including many of my teachers - believed and taught that Catholicism was the one and only way to heaven. Believers in other creeds were damned to hell. It came as a revelation to me that some fundamental Protestants felt exactly the same way about their religion, and that we, as adherents of the Roman persuasion, were idolaters and doomed to everlasting damnation. In later years, I learned about Judaism and Islam. Hinduism and Buddhism. Jainism. All these people, believing all these things, and all of them certain that everyone else was wrong. I was logical enough in my thought, even then, to realise that, if most of them were wrong, then the extreme likelihood was that all of them were wrong. I’ve never believed since. Like Machevil in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta:

I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

And yet I can still amaze punters in the pub, or anywhere else for that matter, with my knowledge of the Bible, the Catholic liturgy and all matters religious. I consider these things among the eseential requisites of a well stocked mind. Like a knowledge of classical mythology; some basic competence with at least one foreign language; some knowledge of art, music and the drama; the ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide in one’s head; acquaintance with at least basic scientific truths, a working knowledge of Scottish, British, European and world history, world geography and so on. Nowadays I have learned a little about religions such as Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism and others. As I say in The Locked Ward, I don’t believe them, but many people do, and it’s as well to have some knowledge of what motivates people to act as they do.

            And much of the religion of my childhood still has the power to move me. I realise that a major part of this is nostalgia for an era when I had certainty about most things, as well as the unswerving love of my aunt and grandmother, but nonetheless I still love plainsong, for example. I have several examples of it on the PC and often play it as I write (I’m not doing so now). It soothes me. Many old hymns do likewise. I’ve written of my childhood religiosity in an essay called A Saintly Life, as yet unpublished. I no longer believe it, but I look back on those times fondly.

And, finally, the star of the show. That Jesus existed, I have no doubt at all. I just don’t believe that he was the son of a God I cannot believe in any more. I believe he was a powerful and charismatic rabbi with an extraordinary message for his time, and one that still has significance for ours. ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is such a revolutionary concept that we still have trouble putting it into practice two thousand years later. ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ even more so. It is right up there, in this old hippy’s canon, with Shakespeare’s ‘Use every man after his deserts and who shall ‘scape whipping?’. Or even one of the few Burns dicta I think worth bearing in mind and quoting:

Then gently scan your brother man,

Still gentler sister woman;

Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang,

To step aside is human.

Finally, on this subject, at least for the time being, one episode in the New Testament always moved me, and still does, when I think about it (which is, admittedly, not that often). And it’s not one that most people would consider particularly moving, I don’t think. It’s the story of the two thieves crucified along with Jesus – Dismas and Gestas, according to the Gospel of St. Nicodemus. (Amazing how it sticks.) Dismas, the ‘good’ thief, chides Gestas for upbraiding Jesus as no more than a common criminal like them. Dismas says to Jesus, ‘Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom’. And Jesus answers, ‘Verily, I say unto thee: this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.’

            I don’t know why I find that moving after all these years. Maybe it’s simply an embodiment of love, gratitude and compassion. Like those all too mortal women who cherished me all those years ago.