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This is very much alive for me.

I will say though firstly, that nothing in my mind can transcend the response to the question, "what happens when we die" than what Keanu Reeves once said as an magical mic drop:

"The ones that that love us, will miss us".

My background is Prussian Lutheran (mum's side) and non-practicing CoE/Catholic on my dad' (Irish and Welsh)side. They raised us with nothing, no rituals other than German folk ones (Christmas, Easter) and in recent years I've found a lot of meaning and purpose from absorbing some of the older rituals and practices from the Celtic traditions. I'll given an example I think speaks to the larger thorny problem of 'what happens when we die' and Keanu's response.

Halloween is a crappy holiday nowadays, but the festival of Samhain to me is ripe for meaning and value. It's the Celtic New Year, when the 'thin places' between the living and the dead open up. It's the time when the year has died, the dead come back and can visit us. We wear the masks and costumes to hide ourselves from the spirits we want to avoid, and celebrate the liminal moment.

I'm raising my 4 year old with the Celtic and astrological festivals because I don't hold much faith (!) in the fact that Christmas will ever look like the Christmas I was raised in or is presented to us (it never snows, its increasingly not even that cold). A breakdown in climate means the regular cadences of seasons is not a prospect for her. This gives me the existential willies.

So in an attempt to buffer against those willies, I'm finding solace in the fact that the earth will continue to spin, the sun and moon will continue to rise and fall, tilt and return. That's a constant. I can call the moon a Goddess, or a celestial spirit or a satellite. There are many festivals through the year that root to the rise and fall of the celestial bodies, and despite everything else, that won't change. That's something to raise a child around in my opinion.

What matters is that in that example, is there's a language and a festival and a sense of time that during Samhain, we can bring our dead out and remember them, and take a small moment in the year to miss them, very explicitly. It's rooted in my culture, my families generational traditions, so feels right for me. I'm thinking about how to make the most of the other times in the years and find others who enjoy it too. Because doing it with others I think is important, because we cannot hope to answer or engage with these big questions inside one family.

So that's what I'll be doing next Halloween, build a shrine for our loved ones gone, and speak their names, tell some stories, so that my daughter knows who they are. It won't require any bags of sweets or costumes, but it will hopefully connect her to something bigger than herself, which I think in time is the best we can ever hope for.

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I met my now-wife on a dating app. I wasn't expecting much when I signed up but I decided to be quite specific with the filters. As an atheist, I never thought I could be truly happy being in a relationship with someone who believed in god. Partly because I knew that when I had children I wanted them to grow up learning about everything without a religious bias put on them from their parents. It's no coincidence that most children from religious families grow up following the same religions. For me, choosing a religion is something one should do (or not) as an adult because you need to have a good understanding of reason among other things. So in the app, I selected 'atheist' in the box for religious belief. My first date was with the woman I went on to marry and we pretty much see that side of things the same way. At the same time, I think we are both conscious of trying our best not to shut down our child's own inquiries (when they inevitably happen) into religion as he grows up. I consider myself very spiritual and try to instil a sense of wonder about everything in the world with him any chance I get.

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What a lovely answer, Marky. I started reading this without seeing the name and I was thinking "Hey, I have a friend who was in a very similar situation to this ..."

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Hehe xxx

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We are Hindus, of the Upanishidic variety ie the focus is on understanding the true nature of our selves and the universe. Our 11 yo girls have been having a tough time seeing my dad on late stage palliative care. It’s been impossible to answer their questions about why their grand dad of all people has such a rare disease, and why is it so unfair. I don’t think I can answer any of these, and I don’t know if answers will help. I don’t think my beliefs come into it. The only thing I can do is to acknowledge what they are feeling, assure them their feelings are valid, and keep reminding them that I am pretty lucky and massively proud to have such compassionate kids as my daughters.

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Fairness is a topic that has come up with my daughter, who is around the same age. It's a very hard question to answer. It feels like an early realisation that sometimes life isn't fair, and there's very little you can do to control it.

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Yeah, seems like being forced by the kids to talk about death or any difficult topic is a good way to practice talking about it amongst adults too.

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My wife practices a kind of Nihilistic Buddhism from her upbringing (an esoteric sect of Mahayana Buddhism being her family’s religious affiliation), and her slide into that variant was parallel to what I think many Christians do on the way to atheism and/or agnosticism). I’m even more of a weirdo: raised as a practicing Anglican (even an altar boy/acolyte!), moved into non-practicing indifference as a young adult, and then to a private practice of Esoteric Christianity for about a dozen years before settling again into a kind of indifference. I’ve invented my own rituals, tried out different ways to pray, and have conversations with the dead in my mind (almost like Six Feet Under?). But it’s all loosely held, and I’m open to being wrong.

Our kids, then, get this spiritual salad of ideas to pick and choose from. They go to a Waldorf/Steiner school where a kind of humanist ritual is a regular feature throughout the year. It’s a bit pagan at times in connecting to the seasons and the associated songs, poems, and foods that come with marking the passing of time. Questions of the afterlife get a smorgasbord of answers; I will often also turn the question on them to see what makes sense to them, what latest wisdom they might spout out. Fun talks.

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An interesting mix. Love the idea of a spirtual salad bar, where you just walk down the line and pick the bits that appeal to you.

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I'm an emancipated Christian - now atheist/agnostic. Not to be pedantic but agnostic does not fall between atheist and theist. Atheism/theism is about belief. Agnostic is about knowledge. I would contend that none of us have absolute knowledge - hence, the intellectually honest position is to be an agnostic.

However, no evidence exist for the supernatural (God, gods, ghosts, faeries, leprechauns, etc.), therefore, belief is such is not warranted. In that regard, I am an atheist.

Anywho... Even when I was a Christian, I would couch my answer about death to my children with an admission that we don't know what happens after death. Out of the four children I have, three are now atheist (whew, escaped) - including one who graduated with a degree in linguistics from Moody Bible College. One is still a church attendee - though there is a complicated story there. He is part of a community of recovering addicts and I am thankful he has that support.

Now, when asked about my belief in God from my grandkids, I tell them my belief - gently - that I haven't seen anything conclusive to make me believe in heaven but I have never talked to anyone who is dead so I don't know. This made my 9 year old grandchild laugh.

I conclude with telling them they need to work on understanding how you determine what is likely true and what is likely not true. Then, you get to arrive at your belief on your own.

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Thanks for the clarification. A dad in the community once talked about “religion as an invitation, not as force.” That always stayed with me.

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