Reason #3.  I'm an atheist.  A Muslim friend in Morocco was upset by the subtitle of the blog:  Why did I have to be so aggressive about it?  Was this a guide only for atheists?  (I'm not sure that so far it's even much of a guide.)  In part, the choice was, I'll have to admit, a reaction to a specific event:  I was watching my favorite morning show, "Up" with Chris Hayes.  One of the panelists was a liberal black woman, and I was nodding and agreeing with everything she said when the subject of the death of Christopher Hitchens came up.  The panelist said that she didn't understand why atheists didn't just shut up and stop being so in-your-face about their lack of belief.  She was a Christian, and Jesus was...  On and on she went, and higher and higher went my blood pressure.  She didn't see any reason why she shouldn't expound on her beliefs, but those atheists! 

Many people have said, "I'll pray for you," and that's fine with me.  I know the intentions are good, and we atheists don't have much that's equivalent.  "I'm sending you good thoughts (or vibes or whatever)" isn't very powerful.  But I've also gotten, "Christ is the Great Physician.  You just have surrender yourself to Him" and "Disease isn't real.  You can will illness away," and then my response isn't quite so generous.

God, prayer, spirituality, heaven, hell--all are absolutely empty concepts to me.  They have no purchase, either emotionally or intellectually.  And I find that very comforting.  One of Stephen Crane's short poems reads
                                 A man said to the universe
                                 "Sir, I exist!"
                                 "However," replied the universe,
                                 "The fact has not created in me
                                 "A sense of obligation."
The speaker addresses the universe very politely.  With "Sir," he affirms his respect.  He's succinct: a simple subject and a verb.  He makes no demands, but simply states a fact.  (Perhaps he's thinking of St. Augustine's I want you to be.)  True, he ends his statement with an exclamation point, the only indication that his emotions are more intense that the content of his remark suggests.  And the universe responds with flat indifference.  Crane was a PK, a preacher's kid, and there is a certain reactive bitterness in this poem, as in most of his work.  For me, though, it what the universe says it is: a fact.  It is what it is, and that's that.

Without God, the supposed stages of grieving can be ignored entirely.  Anger?  There's no one/nothing to be angry with.  Bargaining?  Ditto.  There's no fruitless asking "Why me?"  No one will answer, and no answer would make sense. 

Life takes meaning from its shape, and the idea of hell and even more so of heaven are beyond my ken.  As in so many things religious, Twain got it exactly and hilariously right.  What would eternal life even mean?  As Wallace Stevens says in one of the most beautiful poems of the 20th century, "Sunday Morning,"
                                 Is there no change of death in paradise?
                                 Does ripe fruit never fall?  Or do the boughs
                                 Hang always heavy in that perfect sky.
                                                     . . .
                                 Alas, that they should wear our colors there

As Stevens writes in an earlier stanza, if the earth is all of paradise that we know
                                 The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
                                 A part of labor and a part of pain,
                                 And next in glory to enduring love,
                                 Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

Amen!

On a different topic, tomorrow I go to the KU Med Center for a day of testing.  Every third month, it's the complete battery: first blood work, the a full-body x-ray, then, after drinking two bottles of "creamy vanilla smoothie" (a/k/a barium), a CT scan.  Then there's a break, followed by the $11,700 bone-strengthening shot (the price went up $500 with the new year).  The primary kidney cancer hasn't been growing, nor have I had any symptoms of kidney cancer.  On the other hand, the metathesis to the bones has been very aggressive.  Here's hoping that the expensive shot is doing its work.  On Saturday, my oldest French friend is coming for a visit, and we're looking forward to a week of good food and wine and French conversation.  And then on Monday, it's another trip back to the cancer center for consultations with both the orthopedic and the renal oncologists.  Some of this schedule sounds more fun than the rest.