Thanksgiving marks the opening of Saying Grace Season, and our custom is to play by Major League Baseball rules as regards the designated hitter during interleague play and the World Series. In other words, when we eat at your home park and grace is in the batting order, we just keep our mouths shut and go along. When we’re the home team, there’s no designated prayer, and we expect everyone to honor that and do their praying as the Bible prescribes —silently and inconspiculously. Some years ago, guests arrived at our house for Thanksgiving and delivered a message from a mutual (sort of) friend, who--with the charity Christians are renown for--sought to piss long distance on our holiday by saying, “Since he doesn’t believe in God, I don’t know who you’re going to thank.”
Aside from the snarky tone, there were problems on both sides of the comma in that message. On the one side, it is not true that I do not believe in God…or at least the idea of God and surely the metaphor of God. The idea of God can hardly be denied. It guides the life of my mother and other people near and dear to me; it animates our politics; it seeks to undermine the power of math and science. I just finished a trip to Italy where I was reminded yet again of how the idea of God has inspired art and architecture that measures up to any materialistic, secular concept of beauty. As for the metaphor of God, it drives both believers and nonbelievers crazy. Believers don’t like to see their personal God reduced to mere symbol, literary device, or myth. Hardcore nonbelievers don’t like to see the slightest nod--or bow as it were—in the direction of transcendent reality—even if it’s make believe—or what if…or at all revealing of how humans feel and fantasize about their existence.
As a true believer in my youth, I am well aware of how one can live a life according to the presence of a totally unseen entity. In looking back from my current enlightened state, I see myself more as a teenage Elwood P. Dowd navigating adolescence with Jesus as my large, white, invisible rabbit Harvey. But even though I do not believe in the God of my youth, who could get me through algebra tests, help me find money for Christmas gifts, and land me dates with desirable cheerleaders, I still cannot quite describe myself as an atheist because every day when I see another demonstration of human folly or tragedy, I ask, “What were you thinking, God?” And, really, as long as you continue to argue with God or about God or over God, I don’t think you can legitimately call yourself an atheist.
Now, as to the other side of that comma—the who you gonna thank part. That may illustrate the most annoying trait of believers—their smug, righteous, blinkered view that without God a being is devoid of humanity’s finer qualities--gratitude, charity, humility, love, purpose. Get this from a woman who claims to be a former atheist who converted to Catholicism.
"Later that night, around midnight, I stepped out on the back porch. When I was younger I used to avoid going outside at night when it was quiet and still, because it would trigger memories of all those ominous thoughts about meaningless(sic) that I was trying to forget. The darkness outside was too familiar, as if it had all spilled out from somewhere within me. But as I stood there that night after my first confession, I realized that all that was gone. The darkness within me was simply not there anymore. In its place was peace, and an unmistakable feeling of love. For the first time, I felt the presence of God."
Seriously, if Ms. Fulwiler really was an atheist, she wasn’t a very good one, or a very bright one. How completely full of shit do you have to be to suggest that an atheist can’t walk out into the darkness without being overcome by the meaninglessness (sic) of life? (or, contrary, that every believer is without fear of the dark or anything else). I have atheist friends who fill their mountaintop full of fellow atheists every August to be awed by the Perseid meteor shower, which, incidently, some Catholics believe are the tears of St. Lawrence, since they’ve linked its occurrence to the date of his martyrdom.
My atheist friends, by dint of their intelligence, know that the shower is the debris of a comet, which ejects the particles as it travels on its orbit, and most of the dust in the cloud today is around a thousand years old. Now it seems to me that the higher act of transcendence is to look at that meteor shower for what it really is—without fanciful embellishment--and still find awe in it..still find cause for celebration in the presence of it…still find human connection to it.
So, who do I thank on Thanksgiving? I thank the cooks who turn meat and vegetables and pies into sumptuous feasts. I thank the winemakers from thousands of miles away who keep alive the ancient tradition of turning humble grapes into majestic reds and whites. I thank the guests who travel the many inconvenient miles just so we can all share rare and precious hours together. I thank my employer for running the business responsibly to keep the paychecks coming to pay for the food and drink and travel. I thank the musicians for filling up my Pandora station with a full day’s worth of glorious music. I thank Antonia for cleaning the house. I thank Martine for cutting the grass and trimming the shrubs. I thank the kid at Jiffy Lube for getting the car in safe working order for travel.
The question, then, is not if you don’t believe in God, who you gonna thank? The question is if there are so many people in front of your very eyes to thank, why do you have to create a God to thank…and more importantly why a God who puts food on your table, but neglects the tables of so many others?