Faith in the dark: Lenten meditations on the creed

I believe
Not I know. Not I think. Not I feel. Not I understand. But I believe. When I am in darkness, when I do not know the way, when every step is uncertain, I walk. I live not by what I know or feel but by a trust that proves itself only after each new step is safely taken.

In God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth
Not in magic or manipulation. Not in divine powers that I can wield for my own purposes. Not in heavenly voodoo. But in God, source of a light that is still hidden to me, source of a life towards which I grope with death hard at my heels, source of a joy that lies in waiting somewhere beneath or beyond or within this darkness.

And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord
Not in an idea. Not in a philosophy. Not in a system of knowledge. Not in a doctrine (not even a true doctrine). But in one terrific Someone. In a person who inhabits not the world of books and ideas but the world of raw body and raw fact. Whom human eyes have seen and human hands have handled. Whose human face is living icon of a Life whose face is hidden and whose mind is oceans deep.

Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary
Who did not come wielding power. Who did not come to dominate or control. Who did not come in service to any agenda. But who was conceived. A human foetus in a human womb. Whose hands and feet and thumping heart took shape slowly in the watery dark, tiny fingers moving in the abyss. And was born. And came shrieking into the world of flesh, the naked crying joy of all the earth.

Suffered under Pontius Pilate
Who was not exactly the picture of health and wholeness, serenity and good luck. Who was not an example to be followed by all who seek a better life. But who suffered. Whose body was circumcised the eighth day, who saw the bloodied knife and screamed out across the centuries to his great father Abraham (who had seen this day, and was glad). Who grew up in the howling darkness, his spirit a naked unprotected flame.

Was crucified, died, and was buried
Who did not flee the darkness. Who sought no protection, no place of refuge. Who was led defenceless to a naked death. Who was hurt. Whose body became a horror to himself. Whose last hour was a deepening descent into the dark, followed by a deeper darkness that brought no relief.

He descended into hell
He did not go gentle into that good night. He did not rest in peace. He did not partake of any pie in the sky. But descended. Since the world's great darkness was not dark enough for him, down he went into the world of shadow. Down he went to where the human spirit is a horror to itself. Down he went to the place where death wraps its roots around the hidden heart of things. Down he went, the silenced Word, the dead and buried Life, the world's true Light shrouded in darkness. Down he went, a dead one seeking out the horrors of the dead. Down he went until he found them. Adam. Eve. And took their hands.

The third day he rose again from the dead
His life and death were not an inspiring illustration. He was not a symbol of a higher truth (that spring follows winter, that every cloud has a silver lining, that things will generally work out in the end if only you believe in yourself). Was not resuscitated. Was not hallucinated back to life by his grief-stricken companions. Deep in the world of flesh, the tectonic plates were shifting and Big Things happened. He had clutched death by the roots and dragged it up. When the grieving woman saw him at the tomb, she thought he was a gardener. She thought he had been weeding. So well she knew him.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father
He does not belong to the past, was not the founder of a religion, was not a great leader who needs to be memorialised. But he is present tense. He has leapt like lightning in reverse, straight up, higher than he had fallen. The gates have burst open and all the chains of those who died have turned to ash. The world of darkness has became a world of light. He has emptied hell of all its emptiness. And is the fullness that fills heaven. In heaven and earth and under the earth his name is revered. At his ascent, the morning stars sing together and all the sons of God shout for joy.

And he will come again to judge the living and the dead
He will not come in wrath and retaliation. Will not come to crush the living or the dead. He will not come as the sinister twin brother of the teacher from Galilee. The same one who was crucified will come again. He comes to speak the word of truth to every human heart. He comes to burn all falsehood into ash. He comes to weed out the works of death from history and every human life. He comes dividing being from non-being, light from shadow, life from death. His judgment is purgation and the world's salvation.

I believe in the Holy Spirit
Not in the progress of the human spirit. Not in élan vital. Not in the Force. But in one who broods over every abyss, gathers whatever has been scattered, unfolds her wings and rests healingly upon the damaged world of flesh. Whose comfort in my life's abyss comes from beyond myself, from another abyss, older and deeper, the place where all the springs start and where the world is always young.

The holy catholic church
Not a religion, a collective principle, a theory of social organisation. Not character-forming practices. Not an alternative to the nation state (not an alternative to anything). But an assembly whose boundaries are as wide as the human race. Which is holy not because of the achievements of any of its members but because of the one who raises it into being out of nothing and who descends upon it in tongues of fire, translating human voices into tongues of angels and earthly gifts into heavenly mysteries.

The communion of saints
Not sympathy for the dead. Not a cult of memory. Not the bitter-sweet nostalgia for what is gone. But one human community, the dead among the living and the living with the dead, the ancestor and the little child, light-dwellers and worshippers of light, all assembled to partake of holy mysteries, unbound in their communion by anything that binds.

The forgiveness of sins
Not therapy, self-help, or positive thinking. Not the ability to make this vale of tears a little more bearable. But a forgiveness that reaches to the roots of my being, since that is where the problem lies. There will come a day when I will hear an absolution so final and so comprehensive that there is nothing left to do except to hear its verdict and be glad. On that day I will learn to love as I am loved. On that day even the great mistakes that have ruled my life will seem more precious to me than any perfection. On that day I will recognise my enemy as my brother. And those who have wronged me most I will love the most.

The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting
Not in the immortality of the soul. Not in an other-worldly heaven. Not in some insufferable quality of spiritual repose. But in bodily life. The body: site of so much joy, humiliation, weakness, passion, and pain. The body: meeting-place of love and hate, hope and despair. The body: so much like an animal, so much like a god. The body: the place where death meets me and reminds me of its dominion and my servitude. The body: the place where death and all its darkness have been confronted, absorbed, and overcome.

Amen
Not hopefully. Not perhaps or if all goes well. But Amen! Amen into the darkness! In fear and doubt I dare to take another step. Not because I understand, not because I am sure, not because faith makes it any easier. But because within the darkness I have heard deep call lovingly to deep, and my heart cries out in answer to the mystery of faith: Amen!

Favourite novels of 50 contemporary theologians

by Kim Fabricius

James Alison: Rivals
Rob Bell: In the First Circle
Wendell Berry: The Good Earth
Nadia Bolz-Weber: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Greg Boyd: God Knows
Douglas Campbell: Deliverance
George Carey: Persecution
William Cavanaugh: Eat, Pray, Love
Shane Claiborne: Revolutionary Road
James Cone: The White Tiger
Charles Coulson: Escape from Alcatraz
William Lane Craig: Persuasion
Kevin DeYoung: No Country for Old Men
Mark Driscoll: Little Women
Peter Enns: East of Eden
Rachel Held Evans: The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year
Austin Fischer: We Need to Talk about Kevin
Billy Graham: The Godfather
Wayne Grudem: Excellent Women
Gustavo Gutierrez: Praxis
John Hagee: Catching Fire
Ken Ham: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
David Bentley Hart: The Line of Beauty
Stanley Hauerwas: A Farewell to Arms
Carter Heyward: Women in Love
George Hunsinger: Alias Grace
Bill Hybels: The Big Chapel
Werner Jeanrond: The History of Love
Robert Jenson: The Long Song
Hans Küng: Pope Joan
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins: A Confederacy of Dunces
Andrew Linzey: Animal Farm
Diarmaid MacCulloch: The History Man
Alasdair MacIntyre: Waiting for the Barbarians
John Milbank: Talk Talk
Al Mohler: The Poisonwood Bible
Jürgen Moltmann: Great Expectations
Ben Myers: The Wizard of Oz
Alexei Osipov: From Russia, with Love
Joel Osteen: Money
J. I. Packer: The Big Sleep
Ian Paisley: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Eugene Peterson: American Pastoral
John Piper: The Power and the Glory
Peter Rollins: The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub
John Spong: Vernon God Little
Thomas Talbott: Enduring Love
Iain and Alan Torrance: Fathers and Sons
Delores Williams: Black Beauty
Rowan Williams: The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil

In which an intruder is murdered, and everyone lives happily ever after

In our back yard there lives a pair of guinea pigs. They live in a wooden hutch, small but comfy, and we love them. The chestnut-coloured guinea pig is named Chestnut and the ginger-coloured guinea pig is named Ginger. A couple of weeks ago we noticed that the guinea pigs were eating quite a lot yet always still seemed to be hungry. Each night we topped up their food, yet in the morning there they were, peering hungrily out from behind the bars of the hutch. We did not understand why the guinea pigs were so hungry. Not until, late one night, we noticed the adorable little brown bush rat creeping in through the bars of the hutch. There he was, whiskers twitching in the moonlight, shamelessly standing right on top of the guinea pigs' food bowl and gobbling up their food without a care in the world. The guinea pigs seemed very understanding. They ambled about unobtrusively, polite spinsters that they are, while from time to time their visitor looked up from the bowl to smile courteously, as if to reassure his hosts that the meal was excellent, quite excellent, and that everything was perfectly in order.

Now your Australian bush rat is a fine little animal. He is not at all like his European cousin, the black rat, that intolerable propagator of iniquity whose nature is nothing but a laboratory of diseases drawn about by two sharp teeth and a stomach as insatiable as the grave. The bush rat is a good-natured fellow. His ears are the shape of buttercup petals, not at all like the satanically pointed auricles of the black rat. His tail is short and sweet as a lullaby, bearing no resemblance to the sinister tapered whip of the black rat. Our Australian rat has created no plagues, provoked no policies of national flooding. He has, as far as anybody knows, never devastated a civilisation. He does not invade houses. He is a rather shy, well-mannered little creature who would rather scavenge discreetly at a respectable distance from human habitations before retiring at dawn to the domestic comforts of his cosy burrow. The black rat is a problem for philosophers and experts in theodicy; he is the trump card of Manichaean heretics and all cosmic pessimists. But I bless the Australian bush rat. I have no hesitation in regarding him as one of God's creatures. If I would not, perhaps, offer him my seat on the bus, I would certainly tip my hat to him and wish him good-morning.

And yet, reader, the dear little critter is dead, for I have killed him. I would not want you to get the wrong idea: I am not habitually a murderer. Killing of any kind is prohibited in my household. I once issued my young son with a stern rebuke when he confessed that he had, with malice aforethought, deliberately taken the life of a single ant. I have on other occasions – disregarding all extenuating circumstances – prevented the children from killing each other. In order not to appear hypocritical, my wife and I have also made a conscious effort to refrain from killing one another. That's how strongly we feel about this matter.

So it was no small thing when I resolved that the bush rat had to die. I did not kill him until all other avenues had been exhausted. When we learned of his existence the children created a trap for him, and for three whole days we dreamed of capturing him and making him our pet. We would place him in a cage; we would feed him; we would take his photograph; we would give him a name. No longer would he need to steal from the helpless guinea pigs, for now he would have food and every other modern luxury, all to his heart's content.

But the trap was not as good as we thought. It consisted of a clothes basket, a food bowl, a stick, and a piece of string. It was not, apparently, constructed according to sound engineering principles. The smallest breeze could trigger it; a rat could stroll in and eat all the food without setting it off. Not only was the trap a failure, but it also led the rat to discover a secret that would, in the end, prove to be his undoing. We had placed the trap – don't ask me why – near the entrance to the laundry. That is how the rat learned that we have been stockpiling foods in the laundry. Huge bags of dog food, bird seed, fish food in plastic containers, sweet-smelling bags of hay, together with an entire plastic bin brim-full of the most succulent guinea pig food you have ever tasted. 

It was riches beyond compare. 

It was like discovering America. 

Poor little rat; how quickly power and riches can go to one's head.

Two nights later, our rat had chewed through the side of the plastic bin and was draining guinea pig food right from the source. The following night he chewed through the bird seed bag for an hors d'oeuvre. He cleansed his palate with a few liver-flavoured dog treats. He munched thoughtfully on his guinea pig food. Then finally he belched like a king, cleaned his whiskers, and staggered back home, where I imagine it must have taken quite some effort to squeeze his corpulent frame through the strangely shrunken doorway, before he curled up in the deepest corner of the burrow and sank into an even deeper sleep.

For ten minutes we stood in the laundry, my children and I, and contemplated the crime scene. Step by step we followed the trail of wanton culinary destruction. We inspected the torn bird seed bag and the nibbled liver-flavoured dog treats and the scattered guinea pig food. We took measurements. We examined evidence under UV lights. We made sketches in yellow notebooks. We interviewed witnesses. (The guinea pigs weren't saying a word. Typical.) We observed that the gap under the laundry door is unnaturally wide, easily wide enough for a small Australian bush rat. He had discovered the laundry and from now until the end of the world there would be no way to keep him out.

 

I kissed my children goodbye. I left the laundry and drove straight to the store and purchased a mousetrap. Three dollars seemed too small a price for such a lethal apparatus. I followed all the directions on the packet. I spread the trap with peanut butter. I placed it in a suitable location. I said a prayer for the death of the rat. "Thank you, O God, for this fine small creature that you have made. Thank you for his cunning ways and his indomitable spirit. Help me now, I pray, to kill him."

But the mousetrap did not kill him. Two nights later he had still not eaten the peanut butter, the trap had not been triggered, and I had not woken up to find him lying in a pool of blood with a broken neck and a look of disappointment on his face. Poor rat. The mousetrap would have been so swift and painless. Even for a human being, a mousetrap would not be a bad way to go – especially if you got a taste of peanut butter just before the bitter end.

I drove back to the store. I spent five dollars on six smooth pellets of rat poison. Gingerly I unwrapped two of the deceitful little parcels and placed them in a tray. I sprinkled guinea pig food over the tray. I placed the tray near the door to the laundry. The children locked the dog inside for fear that he would eat the poison. They set up a station at one of the bedroom windows where they could maintain round-the-clock observation of the poison tray. (We have problems with another native marsupial pest, the bandicoot, who comes out at night and digs holes all over the lawn in search of insects; it would be humiliating, not to say immoral, if we poisoned the wrong pest by mistake.)

8.29 p.m. 

Out comes the bush rat, sauntering across the lawn. He can hop – did you know that? – like a tiny kangaroo. All that guinea pig food really puts the spring in one's step. Hop, hop, hop, over to the guinea pig hutch. He goes inside, orders a drink, chats at the bar for a while with Chestnut and Ginger. Then he's off again. Squeezes through the bars. Hop, hop, hop. Now he's outside the laundry. He's seen the food. His whiskers twitch suspiciously: you don't get to survive on the Australian continent for a million years without having razor-sharp instincts. But no. Poor little chap, his instincts have let him down. Like so many noble men before him, his greed has been his downfall. Quick as a flash he chews through the first poison pallet, then the second. Later, on his way home that night he bids farewell to the guinea pig sisters, who wave their silk handkerchiefs in the air as when a friend departs for a long and lonely voyage.

When I found him two days later dead on the lawn, he was curled up like a sleeping mouse. From the look on his face you would have thought he was dreaming.

I came inside and told the children that our bush rat was dead. My son wanted to know what I had done with the body. I explained that I had placed it in a plastic bag and tied the bag shut and dumped it in the rubbish bin. I saw the shocked disapproval on my son's face, and all at once I understood that there was no getting around it: we would have to give that rat a Christian burial. So now we have laid his bones to rest, and I have written him this eulogy too. No rat could ask for more.

Patristic peculiarities: John Chrysostom and the poison eucharist

This is the start of a new occasional series on some of the more peculiar arguments I've come across in early Christian literature. These are the quirky bits that somehow never made it into the textbooks. 

John Chrysostom, the great fourth-century preacher, described Christ's descent into hell as a kind of poison eucharist. When Christ died, his body descended into the ground. Death ingested his body like food. But this was no ordinary food. It was a fatal poison. It brought on violent stomach cramps, worse (Chrysostom assures us) than the agony of a woman in labour. Death could not digest Christ's body. Death writhed in pain, then vomited: "Like those who take food and vomit it up because they can't retain it, so death vomited. He received the body which he could not digest, and so he had to throw it up again" (all this is from homily 24 on 1 Cor).

But after developing this vomiting image in graphic detail, Chrysostom changes his mind. No, he observes, Christ didn't come back out of the mouth of death. He didn't come out the same way he went in. Death didn't merely vomit; it suffered a massive abdominal rupture. After death had ingested Christ's body – I warn you, this is pretty grisly – it suffered violent convulsions, and then its stomach burst open. Everything came out. Chrysostom is thinking here of the story in Bel and the Dragon, where Daniel killed the dragon by feeding it a concoction of pitch and fat and hair; upon eating this vicious recipe, the dragon's stomach burst open and it died. "For Christ didn't come forth again from the mouth of death, but issued forth from the belly of the dragon, bursting it and ripping it open from within."

Thus the body of Christ proves to be a fatal poison. It destroys death from within. When the stomach of death is violently emptied, it's not only Christ's body that is released. Everything else that death had ever ingested is released as well. The contents of death's stomach are completely emptied. Hell is left empty, and not a single one who died is left in the grave.

And Chrysostom's point? "This is the body that he has given to us to hold and to eat!" These grisly reflections come, after all, in a sermon on the eucharist. Chrysostom is reminding his congregation never to come carelessly or irreverently to the table. "Purify your soul, prepare your mind for the reception of these mysteries!" The same body that poisoned death and emptied the grave is now ingested by the believer. It is the same body, the same potent food. "So," Chrysostom cautions, "let us stir ourselves and be filled with horror." When you come to the table, don't forget what you're about to eat!

"Because of this body I am no longer earth and ashes, no longer a prisoner, but free…. This body, nailed and scourged, was more than death could stand against. The sun turned aside its beams when it saw this body sacrificed. The veil was rent for this body, and the rocks burst open and the whole earth was shaken. This is the very same body!" At the Lord's table we hold this body in our hands. We "kiss" it and "bite it with our teeth." (Chrysostom observes that lovers often nibble each other when they're passionately kissing: in the same way we lovingly nibble the consecrated bread.) Death ingested this body, not knowing that it was eating its own death. The same body is life to us when we eat it. By poisoning and slaying all death's power, this food has become "our hope, our salvation, our light, our life."

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah doodlings

by Kim Fabricius

“What a loser!” A phrase of the most dismissive social contempt which, on the lips of Christians, becomes the opening gambit of all truly counter-cultural evangelism.

On the other hand, some Christians think they are being “fools for Christ” when they are ridiculed for standing up in the public square, say, by picketing cinemas that show “blasphemous” films, or by making apocalyptic pronouncements about same-sex relationships, or by deploying pseudo-science in defence of young-earth creationism. These people fail to consider the possibility that their felt integrity is but mulish obstinacy; that their nonconformity is actually a form of self-validation confirmed by the applause of “the faithful”; and, above all, that their claims of persecution are fatally compromised by the sanctimoniousness of their witness. Self-proclaimed victims are, ipso facto, bogus victims; there is nothing cruciform about them. Secular contempt is neither here nor there, but bringing the faith into theological disrepute – that is not to be a fool for Christ, just a jerk for Jesus.

In regione caecorum rex est luscus. Credited to the humanist Erasmus, this doodling came to mind when I saw a clip of the fundamentalist Pat Robertson debunking young-earth creationism. Yes, even a luscus with glaucoma reigns among the sightless. Robertson began by saying, “There was a bishop in the Middle Ages, ah, 1800-something …” Presumably he was referring to James Ussher, ah, 1581-1656.

What’s my take on the fierce culture wars that rage in the US on “evangelical identity”? I refer you to the famous Neo-Freudian developmental psychologist Erik Erikson who coined the term “identity crisis” – and his observation that, fundamentally, it is an adolescent phenomenon.

As Samuel Beckett might advise Christians on contentious issues: “Ever discussed. Ever disagreed. Discuss again. Disagree again. Disagree better.”

For heaven’s sake, C of E: you should be paying less attention to liturgical wardrobes and more attention to episcopal closets.

When they’re planning a holiday to the US, Brits sometimes ask me what cities they should visit. “New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco,” I tell them. “If you’ve got a couple of minutes to spare …” – I mention a few others. Basically, however – to riff on Mark Twain – I tell them: “See the Big Apple and then die – but endeavour to die before you see Miami, Dallas, or LA. (Unless, of course, you’re an anthropologist.)”

Want to pare your Christmas card list? Ask yourself: if I am afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, who will come to visit me, sit with me, stay with me, speak my name, talk about the old days, and, above all, tell me how wonderful it is to see me?

Bumper sticker: “Christians aren’t perfect – just forgiven.” Just?

There once was a nomad named Abe,

a magnet to Beersheba babes;

he mated with Sarah,

but not till Viagra

was Isaac so mirthfully made.

The certainty is that there is always a calamity coming; the tragedy is that it is never the one we expect.

In the lexicon of grief, the pages are blank.

Among contemporary bullshit virtues right up there with the faux-empathy of “I feel your pain”, the pseudo-fidelity of “being true to your feelings”, and the cod-authenticity of “being real”, is sincerity, which is usually saccharine and smug doublespeak for either shameless mendacity or pathetic self-deceit.

So the first known written use of the F-word in English – “fuckin abbot” – was written by a disgruntled monk in 1528 as a marginal note in a manuscript of Cicero’s De Officiis (ironically, an authoritative text on public rectitude, particularly temperance and self-control). Was the monk describing the hypocritical sexual activity of his superior, i.e., “the abbot who fucks”? Or rather, with modern usage, deploying the term for angry emphasis? In which case, I wonder what his superior had done to piss him off so much. Whatever, the potty-mouth language clearly suggests that the monk was Lutheran. Mind, Cicero himself could resort to squalid invective (check out his diatribes against Antony after the assassination of Caesar).

There is extreme heavy lifting, but some things also require an enormous effort to put down – like words on A4.

A question occurs to me after rehearsing this scene from John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing. Hunting a huge herd of buffalo in the mountains of Colorado, four men are caught by a blizzard and snowed in for the winter. Miller, Andrews, and Schneider set about constructing a life-saving lean-to. Schneider cuts some thongs from a frozen-hard hide and throws them into a kettle. Then he calls over Andrews and Miller. “Piss in it,” he says. Andrews looks dubiously at Miller. Miller says: “He’s right. That’s the way the Indians do it. It helps draw the stiffness from the hide.” Here’s my question: Do you think this technique would work on a church-full of Presbyterians?

Of course the church is a whore. Why else would Jesus so enjoy our company?

Is the glass half-empty or half-full? That depends. Is the liquid sour milk or single malt?

According to Samuel Johnson, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Of course, had Johnson been American, the “last” would be “first”.

“May I spend eternity in hwyl!” is the prayer of every preacher in Wales.

There once was a preacher with attitude,

whose sermons weren’t greeted with gratitude;

he preached the beJesus

too gracious and grievous

for people inspired by platitudes.

If sugar is the new tobacco, does that make Mary Poppins guilty of child abuse?

It is said that there is no communication in hell, because of the pandemonium, the torment, the tedium, the vanity, the mutual abuse. This is false. There is Twitter. Hell is the telos of tweeting. In hell tweeting is compulsory.

At the icy windswept centre of Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell, a three-faced Satan chews on the triumvirate of history’s greatest betrayers: to the left and right, their heads visible, Brutus and Cassius; but – behold! – in the central maw, the “soul … which has the greatest pain”, his writhing legs protruding – hang on … – what’s that? – blood-soaked skinny jeans… Hey, it’s Rob Bell!

Finally, still on hell … Young-earth creationism is an intellectual disaster, but anthropogenic climate-change denial is, more, a moral disaster. It is not merely risible, it is repugnant; not just bad science but odious ideology. And world leaders for whom the penny has finally dropped – what do they do but loiter without intent, hands in pockets, counting their change? To wilful ignorance, economic self-interest, and political opportunism, add the global “bystander effect” – the more nations that witness other nations in even more distress than their own, the less likely any one nation will say “Enough is enough!” and act – well, one despairs even of damage limitation (like chemo with late-stage cancer). And you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows: extreme meteorological events, environmental devastation, human suffering will worsen; mass migrations and territorial conflict will ensue; only fundamentalists will rejoice – they’ll have a sodden field day with the book of Revelation. We say climate-change denial is an “opinion”; our grandchildren will ask us why we didn’t call it like it is – a sociopathology.

Google it: 20 questions Google can and can't answer

I went to the cemetery to eat my lunch. I always like it there. There are plenty of shady trees and places to sit. The human inhabitants of the place are uncharacteristically quiet. You can hear every bird and cricket. I ate my sandwich and read some of the gravestones – Mary, aged 42 years; Henry, aged 67 years; Margaret, aged 2 weeks; John, aged 6 years – and it got me thinking. Leaning back against a cool stone I thought to myself: 

I wonder how old I'll be when I die? 

By some automatic almost-biological instinct I noticed my hand reaching for the phone in my pocket. Can you believe it, reader? Faced with the burning riddle of my own mortality, my first instinct was to Google it. How old will I be when I die? That is how ingrained the habit has become of turning to Google whenever I want to know the answer to some minor factual question. Luckily I realised my mistake before I had typed the question. How embarrassing! I don't have to tell you that I felt pretty foolish. What would Google have thought of me if I entered a question like that? What would the dead think? (Blushing, I glanced around to check that none of them were looking.)

I'm grateful to be able to use a tool like Google. I rejoice in the ability to procure instant answers to some of life's niggling questions. It's a relief to be able to terminate one's curiosities within seconds of their gestation. No mistake about it, there are some questions for which Google proves to be an indispensable aid. These include, but are not limited to:

1. Which is cooler, Gangnam style or tattoos?
2. But will facial tattoos hurt?
3. Recipes for boiling an egg?

4. What is twerking and why does Miley Cyrus do it?

5. Best ways to cheat at scrabble?
6. How to lose weight and influence people?
7. Best kids iPad games about wanton killing?
8. Did the tv show Lost mean anything?
9. How do hippos mate?

10. Why are all Australians so lovable?
11. How to get a perfect body in 30 days?

12. Things to do while waiting for the next episode of True Detective?

13. I keep fainting while driving truck: IS THIS DANGEROUS?

14. Who is Justin Bieber?

15. Best pickup lines from bollywood movies?

16. Why are Christians on facebook always so angry?
17. Why do all my plants keep dying? Where can I buy better plants?
18. Help!!! What is the number for 911?

19. How to train labrador to stop chewing socks?

20. How to train children to behave as good as labrador?

But then there are other questions that Google cannot answer. These are things we have to carry around a little longer inside us. Such questions include, but are not limited to:

1. Why is music so beautiful?
2. Did I cry from pain when I was born or mostly from surprise?
3. Have I ever ruined anybody's life, and, if so, will I be forgiven?
4. What are the first things?
5. Am I a good father? If not, what does my life mean?
6. Why do I ask questions?
7. Who would I be if one day my brain was damaged so that I couldn't use language anymore? What would become of all my questions?
8. What is the truest thing I have ever done?
9. What is the truest thing anyone has ever done for me?
10. Am I lucky to be alive, or unlucky? Does it make any difference?
11. Will I ever be truly happy, and, if so, will I know it at the time?

12. Am I loved? (And how would I know for sure?)
13. Do I love? (And how would I know for sure?)
14. Was it my fault the bus driver was so rude to me? Am I an objectionable person?
15. Do I have a soul?

16. Why are human beings so cruel?
17. If something happened a very very very long time ago, is it still true?

18. Why are human beings so wonderful?
19. Is there a God, and, if so, where is the best place to hide?
20. How do I find the right questions? And who am I asking when I ask them?