Calendars and religion

So here we are, a (Gregorian) month since we buried dad. If I were Jewish, I'd visit his grave about now and place on it a pebble in remembrance and honour. I'm not Jewish, but did it anyway because I wanted to. The calendars get all screwed up at this time in the cycle, because it's both a Gregorian (solar) and Jewish (lunar) leap year, when an extra day or month (respectively) are fitted in. Note that Easter is this weekend but Pesach next month, in a year when the two cycles are maximally out-of-phase.

I could've researched orthodox Jewish calendars and traditions exhaustively and discovered the exact date and time I should make the ritual, but he wouldn't and doesn't care. Were he here, he'd be perplexed and quite probably amused that I'm carrying out mitzvot* such as this, since I'm quite possibly an atheist and definitely a goy.

Over this month, I've been trying clumsily to sort out my own muddled ideas on religion. On the one hand, I have little interest, engagement or comfort from ideas of an afterlife, and on the other there have been times that having formulae and practices to recognise and process experiences of death in this life have been very helpful.

Reading Daniel Dennett's 'Breaking the Spell; religion as a natural phenomenon' this week, I suspect that I'm one of a class who like to practice without belief. I think that I think that just now I like religion in some of its aspects (a 'word' that I can read but re-interpret at will, while drawing on established community rituals), though I can't sign up to the whole package.

*An act, often ritual, which combines kindness, blessing and duty.