Because It Makes Me Feel Good
A couple of nights ago, Ray and I hosted a spaghetti dinner in Provincetown for our longtime friend Sr. Jeannine Gramick, the heroic, embattled 66-year-old founder of New Ways Ministry, for Fr. Bob Nugent, her early colleague in the Catholic outreach to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, and for our best friends Tom Roberts and David McChesney. Jeannine and Bob were spending the night between visits with our mutual friend Paul Shanley, the Boston street-priest, who is incarcerated at Bridgewater State Prison, and his fellow priest cellmate.
During dinner, we broke all etique rules, as we are prone to do, and discussed both politics and religion. As we were all in agreement on the urgent need to elect Barack Obama as the next President of the United States, we quickly moved into the minefield of discussing the Catholic Church. When Bob learned that Ray and I were Buddhists and had no expectations of an afterlife, he focused his attention on Tom, the youngest at the table, and the only one not raised Catholic. When Tom didn’t give Bob the answers he wanted about God, nor about heaven, Bob spoke about his own personal fascination with death and his expectations of timeless bliss.
“If you don’t believe in an afterlife,” he said tellingly, “what’s the incentive to be good on earth? Why not just do what you want?”
Those were two great questions. Why be good to other people if there is no fear of punishment or expectation of reward, and what is it that you would want to do that you’re not doing now if you weren’t expecting an afterlife?
A couple of weeks ago, as Ray and I were snuggling in for our afternoon nap, I called his attention to the preparations that had been made for an outside wedding next door on the neighbor’s pier, and to the raging storm. “They can’t have their wedding outdoors in this weather,” I said.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I want to invite them to have their wedding here,” I replied.
“It’s okay with me,” he smiled. “Go tell them.”
The host of the wedding, our wonderful local pie maker who must have jumped right from the pages of an English children’s storybook, lived in just a very small studio apartment, not large enough to accommodate the thirty-plus guests who were arriving. When I crossed the parking lot with an umbrella, I found them all huddling under and small awning and their own umbrellas hoping that the rain and wind would subside.
“Come to our house,” I insisted. “I’ve lit candles and incense on the second floor where you can have the ceremony, and there’s a tablecloth spread for your reception on the first floor.”
Reluctantly but gratefully they accepted. The bride, an eastern European who was marrying the baker’s young male helper, was particularly thrilled not to have her beautiful dress ruined, as were the bridesmaids.
Ray and I told them that the house was theirs and that we would stay on the third floor until they were finished. After an hour or so, they left us with two big pieces of delicious strawberry filled and cream cheese frosted wedding cake that was baked by the proud groom, as well as an immaculately-cleaned house.
Ray and I offered our home not because we hoped to get into heaven or were afraid of going to hell. We don’t believe in either. We did it because it made us feel good to do for someone else what we hoped someone would do for us, were we in the same situation. It made us feel good to see them so happy.
To the second question, what would we do differently if we weren’t afraid of punishment, the answer is obviously “nothing,” as we feel that we create our own “heaven” and our own “hell” in this life.
I said that to Bob and to the others as we sat eating our hot fudge sundaes that sat on Ray’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. “If this isn’t heaven, then nothing is. If we can’t be in this moment in which we are surrounded by love, living in a place in which we feel safe, looking out on one of the most beautiful views in the world, eating dark chocolate, laughing and feeling good about our day, then we will never feel bliss in an afterlife.”
“But this is only a taste of what is to come,” Bob protested.
Perhaps, but my bliss and Ray’s bliss comes from being aware of what makes us happy in the here and now. “The sacrament of the moment,” Jeannine said.
