A column in which Network members think out loud about SOF and their own quest.
Miles: Some twenty-five years ago, with the welcome help of SOF, I signed up to the 'Religion as a human creation' formula. Problem solved. Theology left safely behind. So what have I been doing since then – apart from attending occasional SOF events to confirm to myself that it was the right decision?
Ought I to have been pretending that my decision made no real difference – the 'as if it were true' formula? I had enough of this at boarding school where one was obliged to go through the standard religious rituals and try to make some sense of them.
And I'm forced to go through all this stuff again when attending so many weddings and funerals. One puts up and shuts up. It would have been immeasurably easier to have joined the vast majority, not caring sufficiently to bother doing anything remotely religious.
Could I have planned to sit in contemplative silence, trying to structure my life in a constructive way? Possibly – but not quite active enough for me.
The dilemma remains. Why bother? How best to underpin one's life? What can inspire us and support altruism? Can one form a circle of other people for mutual support? So one finishes up trying, with a few fellow-travellers, to construct a DIY religion. It's hard work.
Perhaps the rest of the world will eventually catch up, and realise that secular religion is the only way forward. Perhaps those standard religious rituals can then be put back into service but on the strict understanding that they don't contain any unique truth. Then the 'as if' formula would no longer be necessary.
Jane: 'They're always making up stories and that's how they make the world the way they want it.' – Uncle Luther in Louis Owen's The Sharpest Sight. Religious stories have been humanity's way of creating collective starting points. If we no longer wish to live 'as if', what stories can help us to create a collective starting point?
Science can keep on filling in the gaps in the story of creation and evolution but it cannot comment on what these events mean for us.
Are we looking at the wrong stories – the sci-fi or fantasy selection – angels, miraculous heavenly appearances and events? They may give meaning, certainly, but not one we are comfortable with now.
However there is an abundant supply of stories that help us to see why we should together bother to create meaning – stories that can inspire us and support altruism, showing us what matters in life. Think enduring literature, the best children's stories, wise fables from various cultures. These much undervalued human creations are a treasure trove of inspiration and encouragement to us to live the best lives we can.
Are these stories telling us real truths? Yes, in my experience. They explore and comment on human relationships and emphasise their importance. They tell us that, despite the despair we may sometimes feel about events and people, we would be wrong to give up hope. They repeat tales of how, time and again, even in what would seem a hopelessly negative situation, people use their ability to reach out and transform events. Think Mandela and Martin Luther King and Gandhi if you like, but think too of several UK citizens who in recent months, even in grief, have by their forbearance and sensitivity to the needs of the community acted in ways which have undoubtedly calmed tensions and prevented harm to others.
It is the experience of the potential of our own agency, for good or harm, that leads to a faith in the purposefulness of our lives. So let us choose stories that inspire us and form circles with other people to explore the values and realities to which our stories point. How best can we relate together, reassure one another as we share adversity, illness and death, and sustain our values in complex societies? DIY secular religion should be sustaining, life-affirming. Our own approaches and expression, our rites of passage, must be comfortable for us, and culture will shape our gatherings. To be of real value to society as a whole we shall need to understand that there are no unique truths but that we can learn from one another's starting points, those stories which show us what matters in human life.
Jane and Miles Howarth, Braintree, Essex