Exercises in Thought: Religion

Sweeney: A Reflection

I don’t know who all goes to heaven, but I know who would have made the best entrance. There’s this song called “Blues In Dallas” that’s all about JFK. As you listen to the song you wonder if it’s someone singing about JFK or if it’s JFK singing. This is how the first verse makes you wonder:

Will I see you there when that final trumpet blows

If I don’t see you there I will run a comb through my hair

And I will wait, I will wait, I will wait.

See, that makes you think it’s not JFK singing, because JFK can’t run a comb through his hair because his head is blown off. But then you wonder if maybe JFK has precisely enough head left to make some adjustments.

Personally, though, I like to imagine his head is blown off all the way. Why, I don’t know. I just get the feeling that JFK’s head is blown off better than most people’s heads are blown on. So maybe it’s best to rule out that it’s JFK singing altogether.

Of course, you can’t really do that, because there’s the third verse:

Down in Dealey Plaza the tourists mill about

And I am far from where we live and I have not learned how to forgive

But I will wait, I will wait, I will wait.

Now that sounds like JFK.

So if you’re only looking at the first and third verse, my theory about it being JFK with his head blown all the way off, rather than JFK with his head partially blown off, isn’t very sound. But I think I can still have my way. Listen to the second verse:

Will you walk on in when the angel summons you

There! — well, sorry. I guess you can’t hear when it’s just typed out like that. On the recording, in the pause between the words “in” and “when,” there’s the slightest scraping creak of the boombox tape. Now, I can understand why you might think that JFK’s whole head isn’t blown off if you don’t catch that creak. But if you do! — the gate scrapes out across the floor of heaven, the only sound of eternity, and in the endless white there can only be John, without his head, standing stately in his perfectly stained suit.

He would have made the best, the most magnificent entrance! But he stays just outside. He is waiting to hear that fateful scrape.

I hope you don’t think I’m making light of a national tragedy. To the contrary, I don’t think we’ve really considered how terrible that day still is. Yet how am I to demonstrate my consideration? The thought of him standing there suggests to me what is perhaps the proper action — a similarly polite refusal of comfort.

I guess what I’m saying is: I am not religious. I am not ‘spiritual, but not religious.’ I believe in seeing things as in a mirror dimly, and then seeing each other face to face. That is what I believe.

Carroll: Confession from a Failed Blood Donor

Perhaps I’ve had a normal number of near-death experiences for someone my age. Once, on a high ropes course during a high school freshman orientation trip, I unknowingly unclipped both safety carabiners of my harness and was prancing around a wooden pole 50 feet above the ground with nothing to save me in the event of a misplaced foot or an overenthusiastic leap. The high ropes instructor, 20 feet away, noticed, and promptly began screaming my name, telling me to clip back onto a cable, Tim, clip on, right now. For some odd reason, I completely tuned him out as I meandered around that rickety wooden pole. When I eventually worked my way towards him, he gave me a firm pat on the back and immediately sent me down off the course after only completing one obstacle. I was confused until I got to the bottom and my roommate chided me for such an impressive show of ignorance.

In all, that is, I’ve had one near-death experience. But only recently have I had the privilege of a near-life experience. I tried to donate blood earlier this semester. Of course, everyone’s had blood drawn before, but maybe not everyone has donated blood. I had never. They take way more blood, so I would learn. And the blood is not for you; it’s for someone else. Spurred by a weak feeling of altruism, I signed up for a late afternoon donation slot. I take care of my health, I told myself. I eat lots of vegetables. I work out six times a week. I take a concoction of vitamins every morning, without fail. My blood will be high quality, I thought.

The day before, I was having second thoughts. I have so much work to do. I’ll probably get really tired after donating. Maybe I should just cancel and study instead. Then, I remembered how the organizers needed a relatively precise headcount for donors, which is why we had to sign up in advance. They had to know how much blood to expect. Besides, wouldn’t it be pathetic if I couldn’t sacrifice a tiny bit of my own comfort to do something objectively good? To “save a life?” So I resolved against backing out.

At lunch right before my donation session, a friend told me how she saw some people faint that morning when she donated. Hilarious, I thought. Could not be me. I asked a different friend if he wanted to come along to my donation — “not as emotional support,” I said, “but as a witness.” He agreed.

Donations were held in the Powerhouse. Upon entering, I saw some other good friends of mine donating blood. One stared up at the ceiling, and blinked slowly. I could swear he looked paler than usual. The time passed slowly, signing various forms and waiting for a spot to open. Finally, walking up to the donor chair, I threw off my button-down shirt in a cavalier gesture. But as the nurse inserted the needle, I did not look. And it hurt pretty bad. I keenly felt the sharpness of the needle, like it was continuously poking me.

I looked at the site of the needle’s insertion. The point where the needle met my skin was draped with a piece of gauze. Does the nurse do that for everyone, or does she think I can’t handle the sight of the needle in my arm because I looked away? She probably does it for everyone. I looked at my red blood filling the tube leading out of my arm. My life juices are flowing out of me, to eventually flow into someone else who needs it, I thought. The nurse gave me a stress ball to squeeze. “Keeps the blood flowing,” she said. Keeps the blood flowing out of my arm and into the bag, I thought. My arm felt a little numb. I gave the ball a squeeze. My arm still felt numb. I thought about how tired I would be after donating. But I was glad I committed to donating. I could feel my heartbeat in my chest. Was it stronger than usual? Slower than usual? Was it slowing down? Should I not breathe too deeply? I took a shallow breath.

“So, for 48 hours after donating, make sure to avoid any strenuous physical activity,” the nurse began, after tenuously assuming that the donation went off without a hitch. Then, my vision started going. My peripheral view shrank into a dark static. My head felt very light. I tried to will myself awake, somehow. It wasn’t working. As I opened my mouth to say something along the lines of “I don’t feel so good” or “I’m getting a little dizzy,” I was no longer there.

I was somewhere far away. I was in a dimly-lit classroom, like in elementary school, at the end of the day, when the teachers would turn off the lights and the kids would play “Heads Up Seven Up.” But my high school debate coach was there, too. I couldn’t see him, but I felt his presence. And some other presences. I felt relaxed. Then, I felt as if I was sitting in an armchair beneath a porch, or, more accurately, in a car. It started raining. The rain got heavier. Rain drops pounded the ceiling with increasing intensity. The auditory cacophony turned into a physical percussion, which I felt on my upper chest. I heard distant, muffled voices coming closer. I saw three figures standing over me with a bright light shining above them. Was I just born? I thought. Just delivered in a hospital? I was excited. Are these the doctors and will I momentarily be swooped up and swaddled by my mother’s arms after they exclaim, “It’s a boy!”?

Over the next few seconds, I felt as if I was watching a movie but the distance between me and the screen was decreasing until my vision was the screen and I was fully inhabiting the body of the person whose perspective I was just watching. Then, I realized all at once that — no, I was not dreaming; this is real life. I must have fainted during the donation. Then, I panicked and wondered if I ended up in the hospital after a horrifically botched donation. But I was not in a hospital. I was in the same chair that I was in before, what felt like 30 minutes ago. The hospital lights were the Powerhouse lights. And the tapping of the rain on the roof was the tapping of the nurses’ fingers on my chest. And the voices I heard were the nurses attempting to wake me by asking, “Did you dream? Did you dream? Did you dream?” I stared at them. After putting it all together and double- and triple-checking my mental math, I whispered, “Yes.”

The nurses had already sprung into action, popping open cold packs for my neck, which was hot and sweaty, and filling up a cup of water for me to sip through a bendy straw. I meagerly followed their commands — don’t cross your legs, keep drinking, slip on this blood pressure cuff, and so on. My friend (“witness”), stood nearby, wide-eyed, pacing with hands in pockets. “How long was I out for?” I asked. “Just three seconds,” another nurse answered. I could tell she had practiced that voice, that mixture of aggressive reassurance balanced to minimize a newly-awakened donor’s anxiety. Over the next 10 minutes as the nurses oversaw my return to consciousness, I felt the most dejected, defeated, and emasculated that I have felt in a long, long time.

The remarkable thing about this experience is how little interference was necessary to sever the fine thread of my waking experience. Losing less than half a pint of blood and overthinking it was enough to shuffle me off the mortal coil, even if for only a moment. You might think that my education as an EMT would be enough to make me realize the fragile contingency of our subjective experience on a select few biological processes. We studied an entire textbook of ways in which things can, simply put, go wrong. But only actually passing out from donating blood made it click. As I slowly paced out of the Powerhouse, I was filled with an inimitable feeling of wonder over the miracle of existence.

You also might think that this would instill a belief into the remarkably material nature of conscious experience. After all, my fainting was the result of a very clear material phenomenon: an overactive vagus nerve in response to an acute but negligible loss of blood. But that is not what stuck with me. I did not think, “Wow, isn’t it incredible that my conscious experience is supported by very fragile biological processes!” but rather, “Wow, I can’t believe that my life goals, heartbreaks, and passions all rely on this little red fluid’s ability to deliver oxygen to my brain.”

Alternatively: Everyone knows that dream time is not the same as waking time. But has everyone experienced what felt like anywhere between 30 seconds and 30 minutes of dream time and been told immediately afterward that it was “just three seconds?” All, that is, experienced against your will, before you could even vocalize what was happening to you. Followed, that is, by your reemergence into the world, like you were born again. Yet this time, your first word was not a recognition of your progenitor, but an affirmation that what you had just experienced was an illusion.

Maybe dying isn’t such a bad experience. When I do die, it will either be slow, in which case it’s unlikely to be physically painful (unless I find myself in the fortunate position of being some kind of political or military prisoner — in which case, I will hopefully have consolation enough from my principles), or it will be fast, in which case, maybe some sharp sensation will accompany a quick loss of vision and a deep fatigue, just like falling asleep. And then will that be all there is to life? All that there is to me? Will I be seeing the waters of the deep soon thereafter? I’ve been turning this over in my head ever since.