My husband says he is a pagan. He really likes to say this when he wants to irk his mother, a devout Catholic lady. When he isn't being really naughty, he will say he is a humanist.
Recently, I asked him again what he believes in. He said he believes in the earth. "I came from the earth, and that is where I will return."
"But what of life after death?" I asked.
"Well, maybe I'll become food for the worms, and then move on to become a flower or tree."
"But what about your consciousness? What happens to that?" I asked.
"I don't know," he replied. "Maybe I'll leave behind some music compositions, and someone will remember me that way."
My husband recently took a new job as a church musician. He plays for a Lutheran community called Hosanna! He does not believe in the Christian Father-God, but he loves to play the music of Christian worship. His favorite composer is Johannes Brahms, who wrote fantastical choral music based on scripture. When we were dating, he would play Brahms' German Requium in honor of Franz Schubert. It is based in the scripture, "now is the hour for us to rise from sleep", "denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras", "for all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of men as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away."
My lover likes to remind me that Brahms was a self-avowed atheist who made a living playing the piano in a brothel while writing such sublime meditations on scriptures about the hope of resurrection.
Who knows the mind of God or the mystery of grace?
When I lay in bed at night, I listen my husband practising the piano. When I wake up in the morning, I am also likely to hear him playing. This is a romantic existence, I think. Does it matter that he makes so little money playing the piano for a bunch of Christian Krauts who like to sing? I think not.