I woke up on this Memorial Day 2007 to thoughts in which I pondered the mystery of why some people believe vociferously in God, some aver equally adamantly that there is no God ... and some seem to have little interest in the question.
That's when it hit me, once again: the reason why, about twenty years ago, I moved abruptly from the third column to the first.
It was in 1985 that my mother died, soon followed by my father in 1988. After my first loss, I began to be beset with mysterious symptoms of psychosomatic illness. Just before the second, I found I suddenly believed in God.
Today, I recognize that underneath all my rational arguments for such a belief in God lies a usually only barely conscious, yet ever-so-desperate need to see my mother and father again. If there is no God, then there is no heaven. If no heaven, there are no souls that survive earthly death ... and Mom and Dad would be forever lost to me. No reunion would be possible. I need to believe that isn't so.
In fact, this concern of mine to be reunited with my loved ones is so strong, it dwarfs any concern I have for my own salvation ... except, of course, for the logic which says that my own soul would have to survive, if I am to meet theirs again. I don't think my parents' souls went to hell, either of them, but I am conscious today of the thought that if by some chance they went down rather than up, I'd gladly follow them into the brimstone, rather than spend the rest of eternity separate from them.
This is a day in which countless bereaved mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children, and loved ones mourn the fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan, or of other wars such as Vietnam and WWII, and realize how desperately they miss them, and will always miss them. This is a day when a lot of people will know they believe in God.
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