Dear Reader:
For folks like me of the Jesus ilk, this week is the annual remembrance of an archetypal story of all too common events with a whopper of a supernatural finale. It’s not too difficult to believe the first events of the week: it seems to me that there have been very few people who have tried to change the unholy trinity of religion, state and commerce without ending up walking a very thin plank or being nailed to one. We are a frightening, predictable species – couch any issue as an all or nothing struggle between beliefs and surely teeth will be gnashing and all will end in tears.
It strikes me as odd that we spend a lot of time rallying around what we believe rather than wondering what we are doing when we believe in something in the first place. When we believe in something, we probably function on at least two levels: we accept ‘something’ as true; and we actively commit to investing ourselves and our future outcomes on the magic of this believing, with either preventative or proactive outcomes.
A case in point: When I was a young child, I was convinced that when my grandfather would look out the window and say, “It looks like it's going to rain today,” (which he seemed to do often) that it inevitably would. I believed that if he would just stop predicting it, the rain would probably not come. With indignation at the possibility of losing another day of playing in the sunshine, I would shout at him as one in-the-know about such mystical things, “Papaw, stop talking up the rain!” It seemed simple to me: Don’t say it; don’t believe it; it won’t happen. Magic 101. I also seem to remember my grandfather grinning like the Cheshire Cat as he easily got my goat again.
We have this extraordinary capacity to believe in almost anything, if we lean into it with the force of our convictions. Belief straddles time: many of the things we believe in have experiential antecedents (I wore red underpants to my last interview and got the job. I believe they are my lucky drawers! ); and we count on their magical influence on the future (I have an important job interview Friday: better make sure to wear my lucky Underoos.) In a quixotic way, believing in something shapes our character, rightly or wrongly, (when I am wearing my rouge undies, I can take on the world!) Find someone who does not believe in anything, and you will probably find someone as dull as dishwater. I don't know if this rings true with you, but for my money, I believe that belief, with awareness, is a rather special part of being an imaginative Homo sapiens. 
Speaking of dishwater: when I lived in South Africa, many traditional leaders, including President Mandela, respected the people’s belief in the last of the Modjadji, the Rain Queen of the Balobedu in Limpopo, even though there had often been droughts historically. Belief in her did not seem to depend on whether she produced results or not. There was a deeper magic happening: by believing in the Rain Queen, one belonged and was connected to generations past. In a scientific age, parts of our brain may be perfectly aware that weather is caused by an interplay of environmental forces; yet there is another part of us that delights in believing that something extraordinary might still happen – that the ol’ gal might just have one more inexplicable cloudburst up her sleeve. Reader, I wonder if we were to scratch the surface of any of our suited and booted contemporaries, would we find underneath a chanting, fully functioning shaman/ mystic/ conjurer/ Rain Queen? We probably do rituals more times than we can imagine in a day, based on our beliefs. Maybe to be human is to be a magical being. Perhaps we refuse to believe that we could be here and not be able to affect the odds of things happening or not happening. The alternative is an acceptance that rain falls on the magical and not-so-magical regardless of our beliefs, a lesson often learned in the hardest of ways as we are forced by life and losses to re-examine certain beliefs. But this might not be the worst that can happen; this acceptance levels the playing field and reminds us that we are all in the same boat, here in this perfect storm. Maybe then, as we gain clearer perspectives on what we are hoping for when we are believing, further crucifixions and surf and turf wars can be exposed for what they are: the sad irony of a common species doing a common thing (believing), yet killing one another in the misguided hope of controlling the rain.
Glad you are there,
P
Sunny intervals. 52% Humidity.
BBC London Weather Forecast, 6 April 2012
