By Harley E. Ryley

I am ten years old. Our new primary school headteacher is a religious man, and he has introduced religious songs to our weekly assemblies. ‘On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese’ is gone, and ‘Thank you Lord for this fine day’ is here to stay. When we reach the line thanking the Lord for little birds, my best friend and I are called out by the headteacher for making our birds peck each other instead of singing the song.

The concept of a ‘Lord’ is not one I have ever related to. Singing descants in the church choir at school, I felt nothing except the pride of being able to reach the high notes. While I have always respected the people in my life who do believe in a God, or gods, I never have. I refused to believe that there was someone or something out there setting me on a path. I am the master of my own destiny, as the saying goes.  

But then a change came. I felt it first after the death of one of my lifelong friends. Several weeks after the funeral, I noticed a series of small things. Westlife playing in a shop as I picked up a pre-packed sandwich for a working lunch. The smell of garlic bread. A friend buying a milkshake and joking about it bringing all the boys to the yard. Every instance, a reminder of my beautiful friend. I found myself thinking of her as ‘with me’. But, since I didn’t believe in the afterlife, I couldn’t reconcile that these were anything more than coincidences. In the quiet hours before going to sleep, I found myself revisiting the memories each instance had prompted and thinking, do I believe in Heaven now?

Six months later came a set of seemingly apocalyptic life changes. Divorce, house sale, moving home to live with my parents. I couldn’t believe in any of this – the grief of losing a friend, the grief of the ending of a marriage or the grief of leaving my home – being part of a plan. An acquaintance told me she would say a prayer for me and while I thanked her, I was uncertain what it would do to alleviate the catastrophic mess my life was in.

And then I found myself sitting in a beer garden, waiting for a train home. I decided to stay for another drink, to miss my train. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the sun on my face or the freedom of being out on my own. I made eye contact with a stranger. And then I made a bit more eye contact. Eventually, after more hours and more missed trains, he came over to talk to me. For hours. He was a writer, with a similar worldview to my own and a laugh that made my stomach flip. Having tentatively downloaded Tinder with the intention of putting myself out there, I couldn’t help but think ‘the universe’ had saved me the job.

At this point, I was finding it hard not to question my adamant atheism. There were too many moments where infinitesimal chances coalesced into being exactly where I needed to be. Was this ‘fate’? It couldn’t be. I didn’t believe in fate. So, at risk of undermining my long-held beliefs, I started reading. The Bible, a little. The Tao Te Ching. And then I came across Peace is Every Step by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.

‘The truth is that everything contains everything else. We cannot just be, we can only inter-be. We are responsible for everything that happens around us.’ I wrote that quote in my notebook, and I still recall the sharp intake of breath when I first read it. This, this was what it felt like. I started learning to meditate and found the places my mind wandered to be vast and informative. Connections sprang up, creative ideas flowed. Another important quote I reflect on often comes from the Tao Te Ching and reads: ‘Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source.’ An idea begins to form, not of a god, or gods, but of… people. Normal, everyday, human beings.

I felt like I was close to understanding, but it took a few more months before I could articulate it. Then a friend told me that they’d downloaded an astrology app. They joked that they hoped it wouldn’t conflict with their religious beliefs. I downloaded it too. I logged in some days and found the advice didn’t resonate. Like the day it told me I should ‘do legwarmers’. Thanks universe.  On others, it felt like someone was pointing to me and saying ‘I see you’. On the day I decided I wasn’t going to buy a flat for myself, despite months of trying, I logged on that evening to ‘This decision is yours alone’. Before, I’d have found it spooky, a sign, questioning once again the higher power. But the penny dropped.

What I was feeling, what I’d experienced through Westlife, and the unexpected joy of finding someone in a beer garden, was a connection. The books, even the astrology app, were a way of shedding light on that connection, drawing my attention to it beyond the everyday mundanity. It wasn’t fate that brought me to those moments, but the string of connections and memories that gave each of these random events their meaning. How many people would have heard ‘Uptown Girl’ and thought nothing of it? Would have sat in the same beer garden I did and caught their trains home without a hitch? What made these moments meaningful was the way they connected to the parts of my life and my history that matter most to me.

When I searched for a word to describe it, I found ‘spirituality’. A connection to something bigger than myself. Not religion, or a god, but the world and the people around me; both those who were part of my life and those who are still, whose complex histories intertwine and leave imprints in unexpected ways. Meditation, checking astrology apps and allowing beer garden serendipity to unfold are just the ways that I choose to tap into spirituality.

I am a complex web of love and loss that has shaped and formed who I am. I don’t need to believe in a god or in religion to listen to the stories the world is telling me about where I am and where I’m headed.  I just need to keep opening my eyes and ears to what those deep, beautiful connections will show me next.