Reminiscenses of a third generation agnostic

My grandmother went to a girls' college during the early years of the 20th century. At that time, they had mandatory Bible study classes which were taught by the local minister. In Granny's home town, the minister was famous for his liking for young girls and good food. At the same time, he tried to give the impression of a very pious and spiritual man ... and never succeeded. The girls were playng practical jokes on him all the time. I remember Gran told me that knowing him, it was not possible to take anything he said seriously. And anyway, to her, Christianity had never been a viable theory.

When Gran was already an old woman my aunt had once gone to a funeral, a Christian one. Afterwards, she had asked my grandmother if, perhaps, she would want a Christian funeral too, as it had been so solemn and comforting. My Granny answered that she understood that indeed, it may be so to the mourners but she, never having anything to do with the church, did not consider it to be appropriate ... nor would she want it.

My great-grandmother was a deeply religious woman and when my mother was growing up, she had told her not to behave badly because God was watching and would be disappointed in her. And that's all the religious indoctrination my mother ever got. But curiously enough, it seemed to work because she said that every time she considered misbehaving, she could just see God looking at her in a mildly disaprroving manner.

Now when I myself was a child, my mother modified this teaching a bit and it became a thing called: Punished by Fate. Every time I had been bad (which I was more often than not!) and stubbed my toe or tripped and fell, my Mom would cry out with some considerable glee: Aha! Punished by Fate! That made me mad as hell ... I remember fuming at this person Fate because I was not sure who it was! But I hated him!

My first memories of Christianity are from my first year in school. There was a boy in our class whose parents were Christians, very strict Pentecostalists. We were discussing it among ourselves asking, what does it mean? Nobody knew, exactly, until one of the kids said: My daddy said that when somebody dies, religious people are not sad but happy! At which point we decided that Christianity was indeed a very creepy thing. After that, everybody just felt sorry for our classmate and were always very mindful of what we said around him.

My own dad had a better explanation about religion which went something like this: you know how you are told not to lie or be mean because it is an ugly thing to do? Well, Christians can do all those things because afterwards they can always go to church, confess, be forgiven and start all over again! Well, I certainly didn't want to be like that!

When I was about 12, one of my Mother's friends, Auntie Hilja, fell ill with cancer. Those days, the patient was never told that he had a terminal disease and cancer was not mentioned. My mother often went to visit her friend in the hospital. One day she came back totally beside herself. What had happened was that one of her friends' former students (they both were music teachers) had come to visit her bearing a bible and a white flower. She had then proceeded to explain that as Hilja was dying, now would be her last chance to convert and repent her sins. My mother's friend had a total shock: she had believed that she was getting treatment and was going to be well soon. My mother had found her totally gutted and sobbing incontrollably ... I remember my mother sitting at the kitchen table and saying over and over again: I just don't get it, how can someone be so thoughtless and cruel!

Mother and Father both were self-declared atheists, and I guess the term is not incorrect as they both scoffed at the idea of a God, as Father, meting out punishment and sending people, like little children, to heaven or hell.

At the same time, my mother was one of the strongest psychics I have met ... her diagnosticians' skills were widely known and people often called our place to ask for her help. She was rarely wrong and we joked that if we, between ourselves, could not diagnose a disease then neither could a doctor. Actually, it was the other way round: people called her when doctors could not find the cause. My mother would mull it over and then in a flash, it would come to her. She would check some medical books and call back. However, she never passed it for more than an opinion and stressed that the person should ask for more tests.

Father, on the other hand, had a strange knack of sensing larger currents in science. Something would catch his interest, he would immerse himself in it and make it his new profession, and suddenly it would become the latest trend. He changed careers like that for three times in his life: from electrical engineer to computer scientist to information technology. I often wonder what he would be interested in these days ...

I was an odd child. Living in a fantasy world nobody but myself could see. Invisible friends, the whole lot. Empathic to the point of sillyness. Mostly happy because I was left alone for the most of the time to do as I pleased.

I was 12 when I decided to become a Christian. My parents were beside themselves with worry: the child has definitely a screw loose! But I marched into a church, wearing ragged jeans and a flower behind my ear, and demanded to be baptised. Well, Christianity

lasted for about a month for me. I started to read the Bible (which, of course, I had not thought of doing before my conversion and baptism!) and found it to be, well, not such a good idea.

I think I was 14 when I read Dao de jing. Didn't understand it but still somehow, it made perfect sense to me.

Later, in school: flirting with Buddhism but could not (still can't) get past the Life is Suffering part.

Then in my twenties, Transcendental Meditation, I really went INTO the system (oh the disappointment! found out a spititual organisation is but another organisation!) and came out with a plop after three years! Still, the meditation was great. Bliss, ya know.

After that, read and translated the Seth material and introduced myself to channelling (occasionally still do it, basically its just letting yourself go and sometimes some good text may come).

The next big thing was Chinese Traditional Medicine (another group! Woe me! Thought I could take the medicine part and ignore the cult ... but no, not possible). Got a good education in acupuncture though. After that I patched myself up with Shamanic practices, studied in England and carefully dodged another group.

I find that the older I get, the more agnostic I become ... acknowledging that indeed, bleep, what do we really know? And that's fine by me. After all, I believe in the ultimate kindness of the Universe!

As for scifi, my father was the greatest fan and introduced me to it. And still, I cannot say that there has been anything that has influenced my thinking as much as it has.

We are the Universe, getting to know itself - that basically sums it up, doesn't it?

I remember India

On a day like this, I'm imagining I'm back in India.

It's 30 degrees outside, the air is not moving. The sun was relentless the whole day, now it has disappeared some place but it's not getting any easier.

On a day like this in India, I would wake up around 7 and go out on the roof, listen to the sounds: the yells and the bells of the little town. Cocks crowing, dogs barking, people shouting.

Then I would go out to the little Ayurvedic clinic and have a massage. Two pretty little women are giving it. They are smart in their freshly laundered saris, yasmine blossoms in their hair, still wet from the morning bath. Eyes shining with laughter, joking around in their native Malayalami. 

Later, a bit woozy after the massage, I would climb a couple of stairs that would take me to a roof-top restaurant where I can have some sweet tea and a smoke, and spy on the passers-by.

From there, I would move on to meet my friend who has been to a darshan and we would go to our favourite Tibetan restaurant to have lunch. Lunch, in that climate, would be a very little meal. For me, an omelet with or without tomato, and a big frothy glass of freshly made pineapple juice. They use a kitchen appliance to make that, so it has all the best bits and pieces of fruit inside: cold, delicious ... the best thing I have ever tasted in my life, honest! The owner of this place is a philosopher, like all the Tibetans tend to be. He sits in his booth andis usually busy stringing a mala. We chat, but in India, that means that the conversation turns to religious subjects within the first 5 minutes. I have to say, I feel at home with that!

Around 1 o'clock its getting too hot to do anything and we return home, slowly climbing the stairs to our room. Until 3 or so it's down-time, as for everybody else. People just sleep, the shop-keepers crash on the floor of their shop, everything gets very quiet. 

Then, as the mid-day sun sinks lower, people and animals start moving about again. I would take my swimming suit, grab a moto-riksha and go swimming. My friend goes to darshan again, but not me: my darshan is this. The warm air, the nature, the smells and above all, the people. After an hour at the pool I usually go to visit one or several friends - shopkeepers that I have befriended along the years. They order some tea. Everyone has a little shop-boy, so he'll have to get it. 

What is a girl to do?

Autumn is here, the days are growing shorter. The sunlight is sharp and the shadows long. At night, the stars cast their cold light from the crystal dome of the sky. There's a definite nip in the air ... and as always in autumn, also the fruits of the land and sea are coming in. 

It must be some gene, a cellular memory so strongly embedded in a woman's consciousness that it simply cannot be resisted - to cook, to make jams and jellies, to salt meat and fish, to tuck away in larders and cellars all those riches so that in the cold months of the winter, the family would not have to go hungry. 

Sa far, so good.
The only problem is, that the family, in my case, is very small. And yet I cannot stop: I have been baking apple cakes of every sort and order, have salted salmon, pickled mushrooms, made jam, cooked venison ... and, as if it was not enough, I have started making pizzas again. Yes, pizzas! 

The result? I cook and enjoy. Everybody (myself included) eats and enjoys. And puts on weight. Even the dog is ballooning up. 

In the words of Susan Ivanova: All my life I spent fighting imperialism... Now, *I'm* the expanding Russian frontier! Dr. Stephen Franklin: But with very nice borders ...

I hope it's going to be a COLD winter. At least in that case, we'll be able to make use of some of the fat we are so happily accumulating now!

Apples

It's like this: due to some idiocy, there are no locally grown apples on sale here in any shops. There are some at the farmer's market but not a lot and those are expensive as hell. People generally just let their apples rot under the trees. It doesn't pay to pick them up and sell them to supermarkets. The result: we have Polish apples, Chinese apples (the Chinamen are more industrious, so it seems! but to transport apples from the other side of the globe ... that, in my book, is idiocy!) and apples from Holland (everything produced in Holland -tomatoes, cucumbers, apples - is pretty to look at and equally tasteless). 

A few days ago when walking with Kuru, the dog, we came by an apple tree in the middle of our neighbourhood of aparment buidlings. The reason for it being there must have been that there were farmhouses here in the olden days. The tree was laden with small red apples. I picked and ate some ... they were just heaven: sweet but not excessively so with a tart and tangy taste.
Now, I've never been an apple person myself. I remember how my mother used to force-feed me apples, saying: "An apple a day keeps the doctor away!" Well, that's enough to have a child detest apples in no time at all. But that was before. Before our own local apples became a rarity. And now ... oh, I could kill for a decent apple. You just don't know how to appreciate things until they are gone. 

So today, I took a plastic bag and Kuru and I took a trip to pick some more apples. We met a neighbour on the way with her small dog and she too decided to come along. When there, we filled my plastic bag and her pockets with apples ... the dogs didn't like the apple picking nor the walk though. They would have went in some other direction. So in the end, there were two happy humans with their loot and two disappointed dogs, tails down, dragging their feet. The smaller dog, Jackie, got so "tired" that she had to be carried home by her doting mistress. The look of triumph on her face when she got what she wanted, namely, picked up! And the pure envy on Kuru's face because he, poor lad, is too big to be carried. 

The apples are all washed now and they look so nice on the kitchen table. There are considerable less of them on the tray than there was a few hours ago ... if they continue to disappear at that rate, I'll have to make another trip tomorrow! And in case you wonder, the yellow things are aubergines (not sure about the name) that my friend grows. 

I'm basically writing this to remind us all, including myself, that this is not the kind of advancement we need. People should be eating stuff grown where they live, unpolluted, natural stuff and not things from the other side of the world. 

Seriously ... I wonder if the Chinamen are eating Estonian apples now ???