But you know I’d stand on the corner
Embarrassed with a picket sign
If it meant I would see you when I die
— Phoebe Bridgers, “Chinese Satellite”
I’d quote the rest but you can just listen to it yourself. It’s the most honest articulation I’ve heard lately, not only of faith but of the emotion and space that faith occupies within us. That disappointment when the plea you make to something greater than yourself returns nothing but silence — “Instead I look at the sky and I feel nothing.” That sense beyond evidence — “Swore I could feel you through the walls / but that’s impossible.” Lately, I’ve been delving into areas of empirical science and rationality to try and balance out the art logic of my brain, areas which disavow religion, faith, spirituality. There is truth in this. For some, this is truth. This is the hill they die on, figuratively and eventually literally.
Maybe it’s my bias, but I can’t help but feel somewhat rogue amongst all of this rationality. For many who had religious upbringings, atheism is the rebellion. But Bridgers admits she has no faith and sings, “I want to be wrong.” In the second stanza, she describes a screaming match between her friend and “the Evangelicals”. And then she goes rogue and declares that she would picket on a street corner, embarrassed, if it meant that she could see her loved ones after death.
I was raised a Pentecostal Christian, but my parents only converted in their twenties. They were raised in families who engaged in Chinese ancestor worship. One of the first to convert was my maternal great-aunt, Gu Ma, the younger sister of my grandfather. We think she is in some sort of cult — the kind that relies on nonstop evangelising to save the souls of oneself and one’s loved ones. So she’s always preaching to those around her, even the already converted. She wore my grandfather down as she nursed him in his final years. On his deathbed, he accepted Jesus Christ as his lord and saviour. Not wanting to simply dismiss this decision as a way to shut her up, I asked my mother why he’d done it. He’d been holding out to see whether my uncle, his only son, would convert. My uncle had gestured vaguely towards Christianity during university but wasn’t strongly religious in any way. I suppose, at the end, my grandfather took the gamble. If it meant I would see you when I die. For his son, he gave his ancestors up.
And I don’t think we talk about that enough: the idea that to be here at all, to have found people you love in this existence, is all so incredibly unlikely and yet it’s the only thing we know (or remember) at this point. Before, after — it might as well all be dust. People turn away from religion to force themselves to appreciate the here and now, to live authentically and face the present head-on. But still, this doesn’t erase the uncertainty, the longing. I think about everyone I love and how they will eventually die, how I cannot guarantee that I will ever see any of them again beyond this life. Friends who were raised in religious families, particularly Christianity and Islam, lament how strict their parents are and how much they want to live beyond the bounds of doctrine. How there is so much more out there in this world. And I agree; there is.
But increasingly, now, I think about how we’re either so young when we say these things or not yet old enough to mean them. I want to acknowledge the fear at the edge of the cliff, the desire to follow the ones we love into the dark and ensure that they are coming, too, if we go before them. Enforcement of a worldview isn’t merely or always a desire for power or control. It means that we have found a reality we can live with, and if we can agree on it, then we can live together. And I love you, and you must be with me. Or, as Bridgers ends the song: “I want to go home.”