Twice in recent years I have found myself making signs of devotion.
The first was on a starless night by the ash-swept banks of the Ganges, where Hindu souls depart this world in a grand and eerie spectacle. The silent, unseen river was to my right, left the roaring furnaces, and centre-stage the tiny cloth-wrapped bundles of human forms laid reverently on their pyres like bandaged dolls. Wreaths of smoke clung to riverside temples, and bonfires burned with a slow intensity in front of them. It gave the scene the flavour of a medieval siege, as if the pyres were the campfires of a besieging army of the dead, camped out before the turrets of the living. Even amongst this otherworldly drama my eyes became drawn to the familiar – the wrinkled hazel-nut brown nose of a grandfather, swallowed by the vastness around him, before he was consumed by fire.
Looking at this all from a sort of viewing platform I became apprehensive. The only foreigner in sight I expected to be asked to leave at any moment. I felt uneasy not at the sight of the bodies, but at my own shameful voyeurism, my intrusion into a private world of grief. I felt my gaze, if it found a mourner, would somehow betray my atheist heart. And why that would matter, I couldn’t really say.
There was another emotion at play here too. I was jealous, envious of a belief system where death wasn’t the end. Re-birth promised new life in the cycle of samsara, where the soul eternal finds new material form, and the cycle of life continues. It was impossible in that moment not be enticed by that idea. I do not believe that actually happens, but I was beguiled by the idea that night more than at any other time. Scepticism could wait for tomorrow.
The result of this cosmic pondering was that I felt I needed some outward and easily understood sign that I believed in some way, that I was moved by it all. For the first time since my brief dalliance with Christianity in my teen years, in the heat and light of that fiery midnight, I made the sign of the cross, so that any watching family member could see I was a human too, and felt their loss.
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The second time was in the more familiar environment of a cemetery in my Medellin neighbourhood of Christ the King (of course). Under a shower of parakeets and macaws my jogging route ended by the chapel of rest where mourning families assembled before setting out for grand and eye-catching Catholic graves.
Although I had been reassured by staff, I sometimes fancied – with zero evidence – that I was the object of disapproval. I always slowed to walking pace near funeral groups of course, but I always harboured the fear that I was far too conspicuously healthy and alive in my running gear.
One golden evening I finished a downhill sprint as a teary family made their way to the chapel. As I slowed I checked my pulse, as I always did. But it now seemed an insensitive time to draw attention to my magnificently pumping ventricles. “130 beats per minute – that’s 130 beats faster than your dearly departed is managing” I seemed to scream in their faces. What damage would I inflict next? The sombre faces were set in mourning not rebuke – my presence went barely noticed – but to my panicked and oxygen-deprived brain I was the villain here. So I did it again (twice actually): the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Sorry Hitchens, Sorry Dawkins. I think that was the last time I jogged in the cemetery.
So my temporary catholic conversions had at their root a desire not to appear a heartless, godless bastard. But living abroad with the ranks of the faithful demands some concession to piety. Plus if it is all true I have a limited portfolio of faith to argue my case with at the pearly gates, but I don’t think much of my chances.
faroverthewater. 
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