![\"Egyptian](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2015\/11\/Egyptian-Statues.jpg\")
<\/a>Since I\u2019ve been blogging here at\u00a0Good Letters<\/em>\u00a0I have been contacted by several friends who knew me back when I was a Baptist. My friend Heidi asked, \u201cAre you a universalist now?\u201d Cliff wondered if I was, \u201cdenying or seriously doubting Jesus\u2019 claim to be God.\u201d Another asked if I was \u201cstill a believer,\u201d and yet another frankly labeled me agnostic.<\/p>\nThese friends are seeing my musings after many years away\u2014thanks to social media. Their own journeys seem to be keeping closer to their original faith, and mine not so much. There\u2019s no doubt that it\u2019s been a long road from my strict fundamentalist childhood to where I am now.<\/p>\n
In preparation for one of my classes this semester I read Joseph Campbell\u2019s\u00a0The Hero With A Thousand Faces<\/em>. I read of Osiris, the dying and resurrecting god who was the hope of eternal life for Egyptians, how sarcophagi have his face on them because people wanted to literally put off themselves and put on Osiris\u2014the god-man who beat death\u2014in order to get safely through the land of the dead.<\/p>\n Then there was Isis, who was impregnated miraculously and gave birth to a god. I first read of Isis and Osiris in a college apartment that reeked of dirty dishes and my roommate\u2019s neglected pit bull, in Huntington, West Virginia. We huddled around a gas wall heater while snowflakes blew through gaps between the windowpanes. I was reading\u00a0Areopagitica\u00a0<\/em>for my Milton class.<\/p>\n I still have the\u00a0Complete Poems and Major Prose<\/em>\u00a0from that 1988 class. I had highlighted\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0underlined the passage in which the sad friends of Truth, \u201cimitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris,\u201d cast about looking for the Truth that had been \u201chewed\u2026into a thousand pieces, and scattered\u2026to the four winds.\u201d<\/p>\n And there\u2019s the\u00a0Epic of Gilgamesh<\/em>\u00a0with its flood story that predates Moses by something like eight hundred years, and contains the story of Utnapishtim, an earlier Noah. It also has a serpent\u2014the common enemy and bringer of death in ancient Mesopotamian literature\u2014who steals Gilgamesh\u2019s one shot at evading death.<\/p>\n On and on it goes. The world of ancient mythology is chockfull of uncanny parallels with stories that I grew up hearing were literal, authoritative versions of history.<\/p>\n The parallels are not the problem. Modern science has chucked these competing truth claims into the same bin labeled\u00a0the best they could do before they knew better<\/em>. It\u2019s no wonder the tale of the bumpkin going off to college and losing his faith is a clich\u00e9. No wonder either that so many declare themselves agnostic and choose to think no more about it, but rather turn their attention to actually living in this world.<\/p>\n To Huxley, metaphysical, religious, spiritual claims are of no use. You are talking about things that can only ever be a matter of conjecture and opinion. People I know who call themselves agnostic say basically, \u201cNo one knows for certain, so why waste any more time and energy on it?\u201d<\/p>\n For some reason putting an unknown-and-unknowable label on the debate and then checking out has never been a living option for me. I\u2019ve always loved Fyodor Dostoyevsky: I recognize the feeling when his doubt rises and rises and rises. I also recognize the way, who knows how or why, faith always rises to meet it.<\/p>\n But in the rising, faith changes, takes on different shape.<\/p>\n This is also why I love reading Thomas Merton in dialogue with Buddhism<\/a>, how he accepts ambiguity about ultimate things into his faith, and how by some means that makes his faith deeper, richer.<\/p>\n In Don DeLillo\u2019s\u00a0Falling Man<\/em>, one of the characters, in the wake of the attacks of 9\/11, thinks about all the variations of belief and decides she is \u201cfree to think and doubt and believe simultaneously.\u201d This sounds fair and honest to me.<\/p>\n Hebrews 11:1 says, \u201cfaith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.\u201d The evidence of things not seen is faith in those unseen things. This appears to be some very clumsy circular reasoning, and that can be a little frustrating.<\/p>\n I think of Miguel de Unamuno\u2019s claim that the longing for immortality in the human soul is enough to justify belief in immortality. Einstein writes, \u201cSeeds of doubt are seeds of contemplation. Acknowledgement of our own ignorance before the vast mystery we face is the beginning of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n Again, acknowledgement of our own ignorance before the vast mystery we face is the beginning of faith. Faith itself is evidence that the vast mystery is substantial.<\/p>\n Is that all we get? Would it be enough?<\/p>\n When asked where I stand vis-\u00e0-vis the old-time religion, I have to honestly say, I don\u2019t know. However, that is hardly the same as calling myself agnostic. My head spins in disbelief, but unbelief is no more a living option to me than turning away from the question. I cannot shrug my shoulders and turn to more practically useful things. I sometimes wish I could; it would make for a happier life.<\/p>\n So, instead of\u00a0agnostic<\/em>\u00a0I thought maybe I would call myself\u00a0proelpizognostic<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0elpisgnostic, elpizo\u00a0<\/em>being the Greek word for\u00a0hope<\/em>. I asked my friend Amy, who is a professor of classics, what she thought. She said one of those two words would work but\u00a0elpizo<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t usually compound that way. She suggested\u00a0proupomenognostic,\u00a0<\/em>explaining that\u00a0upomeno<\/em>\u00a0means\u00a0await, endure, abide<\/em>. That\u2019s perfect.<\/p>\n So\u00a0proupomenognostic<\/em>\u00a0it is. I await a time when I will know. I still believe knowing is possible, even if it is always a knowing that thrives somehow, paradoxically, in the midst of doubt, hunger, longing.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Originally published in<\/em>\u00a0Good Letters\u00a0on October 3, 2103.<\/em><\/p>\n Vic Sizemore<\/a>\u00a0earned his MFA in fiction from Seattle Pacific University in 2009. His short stories are published or forthcoming in\u00a0StoryQuarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Connecticut Review, Portland Review, Blue Mesa Review, Sou\u2019wester, Silk Road Review, Atticus Review, PANK Magazine Fiction Fix, Vol.1 Brooklyn, Conclave,\u00a0<\/em>and elsewhere. Excerpts from his novel\u00a0The Calling\u00a0<\/em>are published in\u00a0Connecticut Review, Portland Review, Prick of the Spindle, Burrow Press Review, Rock & Sling,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Relief<\/em>. His fiction has won the\u00a0New Millennium Writings\u00a0<\/em>Award for Fiction, and been nominated for\u00a0Best American Nonrequired Reading<\/em>\u00a0and a Pushcart Prize. You can find Vic at\u00a0http:\/\/vicsizemore.wordpress.com\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n