We find ourselves at a funeral.

Happening is a human moment, one of mourning, where people feel and express the emotions that come to them while they focus mostly on what the person who has died meant to them, and somewhat on the other people who are attending. They’re thinking they haven’t seen this or that person for quite a while, they’re catching up, talking about the guy that has passed. The building and the mumbo jumbo from the book, normally read out by a guy in a dress, the music, the majesty of the glass and lead windows, the height and ornate nature of the roof, the writings on the walls in Latin or Hebrew or Old English, the uncomfortable chairs, are all unimportant. We have become confused, the human moment is what gives the setting meaning and not the other way around. Human moments are indifferent to the circumstances they are felt in unless they are created by, or contingent to, the feelings felt.

You may be at a Christian funeral, surrounded by friends and family of the deceased. At the same time in a different land, people of a different culture are gathering to feel the very same emotions concerning their lost person at a mosque, a synagogue, in a yurt, by a riverbank, or at a humanist funeral in a nondescript building. The human moment is not unique to the religious ceremonies that capture it in a tradition, they do not arise because of religiosity. I lost my brother in 2022, I am not a religious man and neither was he as far as I could tell. I couldn’t put into words the anger I imagine I might feel if someone downgraded, or intended to diminish, the emotions I have experienced since Peter’s death because they were not linked to a tradition or a cultural religious affect. We go to places to focus on what we need from those places, they are a tool of our emotions. We go to the library because it is quiet to read, we go to the church because it provides us with the circumstance where we could enact our religious needs (if we have them). The church does not make the mourning, it is merely the location where there is an expression of it by us, in a place that we have become accustomed to thinking befits it.

If you wish to claim that the building causes some focus then I think I might want to argue with that as well (if you’ve read any of my posts you’ll already know I like to argue). It’s you that recognises that effect because it’s you that imagines it, you that creates the reality of it so that you can then measure that those feelings are released in that setting. The barrier broken down is a barrier of your making. Just like you imagine the hysteria of an atmosphere at a football match, or the elation of a concert, you imagine the peaceful and humble effect of a church building, and by imagining it you make it that way. Your psychology has been affected from a young age by tales of events beyond physics and the idea that there is a higher power behind all things in the world, and to get closer to that higher power you are told you can go into a building that was made by man for the imagined purpose of pleasing said deity by singing songs to it and hearing dubious stories concerning the doings of the followers of it.

I love my fiance Em, I love her as much in every minute of every day as every other minute, but I do not concentrate on loving or appreciating her in every minute of every day. There are moments when it is more apparent to me, like when on a beach at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland circa 2020 for example. I think my mind is quieter when there are no immediate inputs to my senses and no work or responsibilities to occupy it, quiet enough to focus on the fact that I am happy and that she is a big part of that happiness. What I am saying is, that when you are at a funeral you are in that head space where little else is occupying your thoughts, so the reason you are there is amplified and it may seem created by that circumstance. I’ll grant you that it may feel more enabled, but this particular monument, this church, unlike others that draw you into a realisation you may not have already had like reading the plaque on a statue you happened upon and learning of who that was erected to and why, is not the root of your suspicion on the apparent wonders of the universe. It is not the root of your desire not to die one day before you have learned and experienced everything and are ready. The root of wonder is simply your curiosity, the church and its dubious books are the bad explanation.

Paul S Wilson