Sontag’s Atheism

Recently I heard an interview on Fresh Air with David Rieff, son of Susan Sontag, that explored his memoir about her death from cancer. Susan Sontag was an atheist, and this was a point of some discussion during the interview. Mr. Rieff was asked if his mother had considered, as she was dying, embracing some sort of faith. At the end of life, so many people are comforted by their faith, the interviewer, Terry Gross, noted.

Mr. Rieff replied that his mother was not agnostic, she was an atheist. She truly didn’t believe in any continuation. She took religion way too seriously, he said, to think that she could embrace it at the last minute to get a sense of relief. When she was told that the experimental procedure she’d had to treat her cancer hadn’t worked, she screamed inconsolably until her doctor thought of something else to try. For her, death was truly the end, and she loved living.

I was extremely touched. I’m neither an atheist nor a converter of atheists, but my reaction was not about agreeing or disagreeing with Sontag’s beliefs. It was a sense of appreciation for the depth of her feeling and the authenticity with which she faced what must have been a psychologically (and physically) torturous end. In this sense, ironically, Sontag’s atheism seemed to me as incredibly spiritual a thing as I have ever encountered.

The Same Sky

Every morning, I wake up, burn a little sage, look out the window and say a prayer, which always begins, “Great Mystery, thank you for another day.”

This morning, I wasn’t exactly feeling it. Yesterday was rough, and the rest of the week promises more of the same. More than anything, I wanted to crawl back under the covers and go back to sleep. But I looked at the sky and started my prayer anyway. After that first statement, no other words really volunteered themselves, so I spent some time watching the sky. It was the same sky that had stretched over me in New Mexico a year and a half ago, as I spent four long days alone in a canyon. Those days I had a different view of the world, a more immediate sense of relationship to it, a heightened awareness of its vibrancy and consciousness.

Looking at the sky this morning, I managed to find that awareness again, if only for a few moments. It’s not the kind of thing I can hold to all the time, but this morning, it did get me out of bed. 

A New Year

Just before New Year’s Eve, a friend asked me what my plans were and said she was likely doing nothing. New Year’s, she said, was always a lot of hype followed by a big disappointment. I knew exactly what she meant.

The Photographer was returning from South Dakota the evening of the 31st, and though we would spend the holiday together, we had no specific plans. I thought about what we could do to mark the occasion, what might be fun. I came up with nothing. The evening arrived. His plane was late. We went to a local restaurant for a late dinner, stayed to ring in the New Year with free champagne in little plastic cups, then walked home in a blistering windy cold. It was not a raucous, earth-shattering or epiphanic evening. But it was lovely.

On December 31st, we all collectively stop to feel time going by. We turn our attention to it fully for at least ten seconds and then some, counting down until the clock ticks over and another year arrives. We want to feel that in this moment, something changes. We want to feel some magic, some sense of renewal, or clarity, or understanding. It isn’t there. Time is our invention, and that one moment we choose to pay such attention to and invest with such importance is no different than the millions of other moments that make up our lives. That moment that we peak behind the curtain, of course there is disappointment, maybe sadness and emptiness, perhaps even fear.

One choice is not to observe that moment, go to sleep early or choose to be otherwise occupied. Another is to drink, dance and celebrate, willing the emptiness to dispel. This year, my experience was somewhere in between; I enjoyed the moment, as I have enjoyed so many other moments this year, with the Photographer, watching the world unfold around us. All choices are equally valid. I don’t know what my choice will be next year. But this year, it was nice to hold the fear and disappointment of existing in time and space in one hand, and the joy of it in the other.