The Eyes Have It...

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Something in a piece in today's i by Ian Dunt got me thinking. A friend of ours once said - many years ago over dinner - that despite having no particular religious beliefs or faith, he still felt intrinsically part of the Christian tradition that we all, as boomers, were brought up in. Britain was, in our youth, still largely a church-going Christian country and the influence of the Church was still a pervasive influence on society that only started to slip as we entered our teenage years as the 1960's turned into the 1970's and beyond.

Dunt's piece mentioned a moment of revelation in a conversation he was having with a recently-made friend about religion and the concept of grace. He is a self-professed atheist, like so many of us these days, and his understanding of such concepts merely abstract rather than personally felt. His friend, whilst no longer practising, was brought up in the Methodist tradition, as was I, and still felt 'part' of that continuum, with some personal connection still with its concepts, if no longer with its precepts.

At some point in this particular conversation, a particular expression in his friend's eyes signalled something innate: understanding rather than intellectual. This made me reflect that I've looked into the eyes of dying people who were afraid, despite a lifelong and deep religious faith that no longer seemed solid, at the point when it was most needed. My father was a lifelong atheist and his eyes rarely betrayed anything other than equanimity, even to the end: simply curiosity. I hope to be the same, despite my programming.

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner30 December 2021 at 13:45

    Who's eyes are they Kel?
    Great respect to your dad mate, always had a LOT of time for him. The last time I looked into my dying father's eyes, who was not a church-goer(like my mum) I saw confusion and fear of what was going to happen when he wasn't there. He was asking me NO instructing me to "look after" my mother & sister. We, dad & I, never had a conversation about religion, I think that he respected my mother's attitude of immersing Joy & I in the CoE bollocks; despite her not being able to take the sacrement because she was divorced, she had a work-around by joining the Young Wives "club" (she couldn't join the Mother's Union cos that needed "full" membership of the CoE) whenever we moved and "manouvering" herself back into the "Christian" church.
    No wonder I dropped the CoE like a hot brick after "gentle" Jesus had robbed me of the last two Stoners, my grandmother and father, who I rather thought that WE needed more than "gentle" Jesus!!

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