Religion for the non-religious

Spiritual amphibians, unite

I’ve been getting into Nick Cave recently. I don’t know why I’ve never thought to listen to him before, given that he’s my friend Ellen’s favourite musician of all time and she and I have pretty much the exact same taste in all things, but better late than never, I suppose.

My Nick Cave gateway drug was his interview on The Louis Theroux Podcast, during which he talks extremely thoughtfully about many things, but most memorably (for me) about his complex feelings towards religion. He approaches religion, he says, ‘with both a sense of belief and unbelief’, embracing the conflict between these two impulses because it provides fertile ground for creativity. Despite having a well-developed sense of scepticism, he finds that ‘being open to the intimations and yearnings that we have for something larger than what may empirically exist is extraordinarily creative and worth, at the very least, investigating.’

I relate pretty hard to this. I find myself similarly caught between a rejection of religion (because there’s a lot not to like), a curiosity about it (because it’s been so important to so many people for so many years) and a desire for it (because it provides something for which there’s no secular equivalent). Certainly I have ‘intimations and yearnings for something larger’, and I’m open to investigating them. But I didn’t grow up with religion, so I don’t have a go-to framework to give them shape. And selecting any one set of beliefs or guidelines, hanging up my hat and settling in for the journey with my badge on, just… doesn’t feel quite right.

I think of religion as a vast pool I like to walk around and look at. Occasionally, when I’m feeling bold, I dip in a toe; perhaps even a whole foot. On a couple of occasions I’ve gone in further, but I’ve always had to get out rapidly because I feel in my bones that I’m a land creature. The older I get, the more I think: doesn’t that water look lovely! And yet here I still am, sitting on the bank.

To take this metaphor and run with it: it’s scientifically proven that being near water makes us feel better. You don’t have to be a swimmer to feel its calming effects. And I think the same is true of my religious dabblings. It nourished my soul to go on a Buddhist meditation retreat even though I can’t foresee a time when I might call myself a Buddhist, just like it nourishes my soul to go to choral Evensong or Quaker meetings or to sit in a church on my lunch break, even though I’m about as sure as it’s possible to be that I won’t ever be calling myself a Christian. And the magic mushroom trip I wrote about a few weeks ago, where I felt like I’d touched something that could only be called divine — that definitely nourished my soul, even though it hasn’t resulted in a belief in God (or any lessening of my discomfort about using words like ‘divine’ in everyday conversation).

Actually, I’m still feeling the ‘spiritual ripples’ of that trip, several weeks later. Its legacy is my lasting sense that it is possible to move beyond and outside yourself, to transcend your usual preoccupations and patterns of thought and feel yourself in the presence of something mystical. It doesn’t really matter whether you call that elusive mystical something God, or enlightenment, or the universe, or nature, or an infrequently-accessed part of your own mind. The way I (currently) see it, these are all just different ways of conceptualising what is ultimately the same thing, and none are any more or less valid than the others.

For those of us who can’t seem to make any one religion ‘fit’, and who are also not planning to spend inordinate amounts of time tripping on psychedelics, our best hope of getting near the Elusive Mystical Thing might well be through art. The other day I listened to something else my friend Ellen put me onto: the psychotherapist Esther Perel talking about her love of Fauré’s Requiem on the Open Ears Project. Music, Perel says, is her way of experiencing something ‘akin to a religious feeling. I don’t usually experience God-driven religious feelings,’ she explains, ‘but music has that level of transport for me.’

Amen to that. I’ve already written (probably far too much) about my love of Eric Whitacre’s choral piece The Sacred Veil, and about the time I lay on my back in the park listening to it, feeling transported — listening not just with my ears but, as Perel puts it, ‘with [my] entire skin’. I was thinking about this recently, and then I had an idea. What if listening to music while lying on one’s back was a spiritual practice, an alternative to praying or meditating?

Lying on the ground is an easy way quite literally to change your perspective on the world, and listening to music can be a way of transcending your normal modes of thinking. So here’s my fantasy religious service. People gather in a beautiful purpose-built space. The floor is carpeted and there are lots of mats and cushions. Everyone who’s able to lies down on the floor and looks up at the ceiling. Maybe there are paintings up there, or interesting architectural features; maybe there are some enormous plants growing skywards; maybe there’s afternoon light coming through the windows, or maybe it’s dark, and there are candles. People lie there without speaking, listening to the quiet. They lie there long enough for their thoughts to settle, and then, unannounced, the person leading the service puts on a well-chosen piece of music. There is no restriction as to genre; it just has to be expansive or intricate or beautiful or wise or all of the above. After five minutes or so, the piece of music ends, and the silence continues.

Doesn’t that sound great? If it was a real religion I would be a devotee, but since it isn’t, I’m just going to have to do it on my own. I’ve made a playlist for the purpose.¹ Feel free to use it, or you could make your own. Just lie there quietly for a while, then pick a track at random or let the shuffle feature do it for you. Try and listen to it ‘with your entire skin’.

I think what I like about this idea is that it’s neither submerged in the religion-pool nor marooned on the bank. There would definitely be room for God in it, if that’s your jam, or you could treat it as a form of meditation, if that is, but you could equally well bring your stone-cold rationalism and just lie there feeling relaxed and reflecting on human ingenuity. So it’s sort of spiritually amphibious, if you like, and please forgive me, O readers, but I am going to call it Amphibianity.

‘Til next time,

Kx

1. Sadly there is no Joni Mitchell on my playlist because her music is no longer on Spotify. If I could I would have included ‘Amelia’ and ‘Song for Sharon’.