Holy Exploding Cathedrals Batman! It's an Atheist!

I've been grappling with 'belief' for a lot of my life.  I've never been religious, but always had a deep sense of the sacredness of life.  I've considered myself  'spiritual', but now, I don't even know what that means. I've always been a questioner.     
  
Instead my thoughts seems to have surfaced in this dream, which just rocked me awake:

I am looking out across my city's skyline.  On the foreshore of the river are three cathedrals. 
  I hear, and feel deep in my gut, a series of booming explosions.  Resonant of a heavy church bell, and also of a cracking in the earth that pulses up from deep, an earthquake.  But what it is, is a bomb.  I see the first church pulsate outwards, shift.  Then I zoom in, and enter the church.  The church is full of people, all dead.  It is gruesome.  Blood is splattered upon the walls, merging with the religious artwork.  The people, dead, still, are all knelt in prayer.   More people, like me, have entered the church since the explosion, clergy people amongst them.  The blood has formed words, below the words that were already writ, prayers.  The blood spells 'Don't move'.   So everyone else that is entering the church, post explosion, kneels with the dead, does not move, prays blindly.  I see a flitter in the corner of my eye, running up the stairs.  I think it is a terrorist.  No-one is questioning what has happened, or seeking survivors, just blindly obeying the bloody writing on the wall.  I want to shout 'watch out, this is a terrorist attack, why are you obeying what they have written in the blood of the people they have killed?!'.   I leave.

I enter the second church.  Less people are dead.  People are walking around.  There is a table of artifacts, from other cultures or religions.  Time pieces, some kind of calender.  They are dusty and have not been kept in working condition.  I sense frustration, people are still praying, not looking after the living.  I do not feel safe, feel something treacherous lurking, just out of sight again that no-one is addressing.  I move on to the third church.

This church, I don't see dead people.  But there is a sense of hurt, of tragedy.  I see the same altar of artefacts.  I see an archaic timepiece/calender thing again.  It's kinda steam-punk.  It tells the ages through the stars, the time in the universe or something.  I seem to have some knowledge of it.  (As you do in these dreams). I check to see that it is up to date, and it is.  A woman approaches, she seems to be the Priestess, the head of this church.  She sees me checking this esoteric-steam-punk- universal-astronomy-clock and says "Yes, we keep this working, otherwise what is the point of it?"   I ask about the explosion.  She says "It's not so bad".  I say  "It was in the first church, that's a house full of dead worshippers now".

That's it, I wake up.  My head hurts, my eyes sting.  I don't know what this means.  I add it the pile of stuff to analyse, my pondering of atheism.  If you're the dream analyst type feel free to have a crack at an interpretation.

 I'm Australian, our Prime Minister is a self-confessed Atheist.  It's not such a big deal here as it may be in other parts of the world.  We don't (yet) have a government run by any fanatical right wing religion.  We can say publicly that we're non-believers without vilification.

In the on-line babyloss world I hear a lot of mama's talking about God, about their babies in heaven.   Sometimes I don't know if people are truly religious, or if it's just the expected way to talk.  I don't mind other's religion, I'm not here to challenge anyone's belief.  I don't find comfort thinking my baby is in God's hand in heaven, that I will join my baby one day, but if it brings someone else comfort then I'm all for it.  If it's your deep heart felt belief, I'm not here to challenge it.  We're free to believe in what we choose, aren't we?  Just don't insist that I believe it too.

I saw an image on a baby-loss site, of some old man's hand reaching out from the clouds, in his hand he held a little baby.  I find that image creepy.  'Kidnapper! Pedophile!' is what that image screamed at me. 

While I respect other's beliefs, all the God talk still jars me sometimes.  It's a little lonely out there in baby-loss world when you don't talk about God, when you don't believe.   I'm confronted all the time by other baby-loss mums talk of God and heaven.  Early in the grief, I was on a baby-loss forum, and said something about being a 'non-believer', that I found no comfort in it, that I didn't think my son's death was part of 'God's plan', and didn't like it when other people said that to me.  Bunch of mums chose to say that regardless of my own belief, they knew my son was in heaven and they would pray for me, quoted a bunch of biblical verses, did a bit of evangelism on me.  Meh, really, it shat me at the time, I felt unsupported and offended.

It's not just the outright evangelising that I feel isolated by.  It's the casual presumption that I think my baby is in heaven.  The presumption that I believe in God.   It's not a given that we are all Christian.  It's not a given that if I'm not Christian, then surely I must be..some other religion?  Buddhist at least then?
 Faith?  Hm, what is that?   Faith in the human ability to traverse the tragedy of life, based on a moral compass that does not rely upon a supernatural deity to guide me in my thoughts and actions?   That in fact, humans are capable of having a moral compass without believing in a Deity, without a deity to tell them that 'hey there people! murder is wrong! (and you can't be trusted just to be good, so I shall threaten you with a burning hell damnation to keep you good).   

The Mr and I, early on, wanted a t-shirt that said:
 "My son died.  It was God's plan.  God must be an evil motherfucker".

I've never been 'angry' at God since my son died.  I did not feel punished by 'God',  I did not turn my back on 'God'.  I just don't believe in an Interventionist God, so not really anyone to be angry at.
I just had the average my-baby-died-the-world-is-a-shitty-place rage.  No-one to blame it on, no-one to take the pain away.   Just my good old resilient self to salve the pain.
 I've been heard to say 'nature's a bitch'.  My son dieing was what happens in nature.  Umbilical Cord Accidents.  Nature is chaos.  You can't control it.  Shit happens.
You deal, or you don't. 

My comfort comes in knowing that my son is part of the Big Cycle.  

The Big Universe. 

 Re-absorbed into the evolutionary chain, his dust becoming the air, the soil, the water, elemental, entering the life cyle again.   

In his blood was me, in my blood is him.  

In our blood is an atom of water from a dinosaur.   Right there is my comfort, my sense of the big picture.  

I don't need a God or Heaven.   I have it all here on earth.

I don't want my son to be in 'heavens nursery', waiting for me, when there is no good reason why he shouldn't be here with me.  

He's just dead now.  If he has a soul, it's free, to do whatever souls do..no waiting around for me to die.   

Maybe,  just free to join the life-cycle again.  It won't be as Jackson Bear anymore though; Jack is no more.  It hurts, it stretches into the distance, this acceptance: Jack is no more.

I find it a little selfish thinking the notion that he should be in heaven waiting for me.  

Sure, maybe on the surface it doesn't seem as comforting this not believing that I will see him again, but that's what I believe.  That's the enormity of his death, why death of a child can be so devastating.   

Is that what religion is for?  A human construct to make us feel better about the finality of death?  Except that bit about Jesus I suppose.

All this questioning of my beliefs in the last few months.  I've delved beyond my initial 'don't believe in an Interventionist Supernatural Deity who created the universe and keeps a watch on us, listen to prayers, punishing and forgiving as He sees fit' to 

'well then, do I believe in a soul?' 

 I used to.  Used to believe in re-incarnation.  That we went beyond our bodies.  Soul everlasting etcetera.  I don't know now.  Jury is still out on the soul question.  I don't know that my dream addresses any of that.  It's just left me pondering in this dawn light.

I've linked below to a very special song video that I'd like to share.  It is the song we were going to play at Jack's funeral.  'Into Your Arms', by Nick Cave.  It speaks to my and my partner's beliefs, and is a song that we listened to constantly in the weeks after Jack died.  It still brings me undone, when I need to be undone, to sit with the grief, and with the love.   The video is simple, beautiful and haunting with it's portrayal of the faces of loss, and I hope it gives something to you.
Here it is: Into My Arms