What kind of friendship can an atheist give a non-atheist?

Tagged:

I’ve been going to the same coffee shop for 13 years. There’s an actor who hangs out there. We usually chat about acting and random stuff, actors always have the most interesting outlooks on things, but recently we got to discussing my favorite topic, the history of religion. At the time I was really struggling with how best to connect with atheists. I was one a long, long time ago, but I left the mindset behind around the time I turned 20 to join a Wiccan coven.

Turns out this old actor dude was seriously into getting into the mindsets of these ancient peoples, the Greeks, Hebrews, Egyptians, and Romans, and was particularly interested in how they managed to think in ways that nobody else thought before.

Well, being a mystic, I have a certain perspective on the spiritual mindset, and so we’ve managed to have many, many rousing discussions about that unique cross-section of history, the crucible in which science, Christianity and modern Judaism was formed. I was just starting to read the Bible too, so that worked its way into our conversations.

When we first started having them, he admitted to being an atheist, in such a manner that I suppose he expected me to chastise him for it. I didn’t make anything of it at first, but I eventually lamented to him that I have a tough time connecting with most atheists because so many insist heavily on a materialist worldview and won’t even entertain anything contrary to that, expecting him to chastise me on being needlessly zealous.

Instead he exclaimed, “I know!!! They have no patience for diving into mysteries!” From there on out our discussions would almost immediately dive deep into some mysterious topic. We meet almost every Sunday and find a couple of hours to yak. He remarked once, “man, I wonder what everybody else is doing at church on their Sundays.”

I greatly treasure our meetings and I’m glad to be able to bring some transcendent spirituality to an old atheist’s life. I don’t know if he’ll ever bring himself to pray or meditate or otherwise cultivate a personal spiritual connection but even if he doesn’t I’m glad he’s able to find meaning in our discourse, just as I do.