What a Difference a Day Makes: 'It hit me like a thunderbolt one day that there is no God'

Humanist celebrant Dominic Moore tells Helen O’Callaghan about a realisation that came on a summer day in 2018 and how it freed him to live his life fully and authentically.

Dominic Moore, former actor turned humanist celebrant, pictured in Cork. He says he has found his true calling in helping people mark life’s most meaningful moments. Picture Chani Anderson

I became very aware quite suddenly one day that there is no God.

It’s important for me to stress — I’m not anti-religious, I’m just non-religious.

This happened on Cape Clear in June 2018. I was walking along all by myself in this most southerly part of Ireland, not a single other sinner to be seen, walking along a very narrow path that takes you from one side of the island to the other.

I sat down and looked all around me and it hit me like a thunderbolt. That we are human beings all alone in space, living on this rock called Earth, and that we were made by the forces of physics and nature, and the Earth is the result of a very beautiful happy accident. There is no other spiritual entity outside us.

Just we human beings are absolutely, utterly responsible for our own decisions, and we all have to mind each other — and our home, which is the Earth.

I felt I’d been gifted the most amazing knowledge in the world. It was like a revelation. I began to see the world in a completely different way. Immediately I felt more empathetic towards people, which manifested in lots of ways. I became a volunteer with Simon’s soup run, and with the Cork Life Centre — teaching English there — and I joined the Humanist Association of Ireland and trained as a humanist celebrant.

I was feeling frustrated in my life at that time. It coincided with me giving up drinking. And I was anxious. I think I’ve always been anxious since the day I was born. It’s very hard to explain what a constant state of anxiousness is to someone who isn’t. I was anxious all through secondary school. Everyone else seemed to know what they were doing and I had no idea. I was in a permanent state of confusion — about life, school, relationships.

I did my Leaving Cert in 1980. The early 80s — the weather bleak, Ireland in an unemployment crisis, there always seemed to be nothing happening, a general malaise through all that period…

I became an actor to push the anxiousness away. When I was performing I felt alive, I felt really good. Acting then became almost like a drug. I started working with RTÉ in 1992, I was a TV puppeteer, which continued off and on until 2012.

For me, I think ‘God’ represented some sort of control that I had been searching to escape from — authoritarian, parental maybe, an idea, a way of thinking that was restrictive and with rules that made no sense, and that treated people with the suspicion that if they were free they’d do terrible things to each other.

I think that realisation on Cape Clear was waiting to happen and I was ready for it to happen. There was a sense of inevitability about it. I needed a break, and Cape Clear — which I’d first gone to in 1994 for the storytelling festival — was a place where I felt free, where I could be myself and people would talk to me and I wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone else. The physical freedom I found there, I was looking for that mentally too…

The drinking to excess every day had also been to push the anxiousness away… It was very difficult at the start when I decided to stop drinking — every day of that was tough. But with each day came the realisation that I had not drank that day. And slowly but surely the compulsion went.

What needs to happen when people stop drinking — something really nice needs to happen to them to assure them they’ve done the right thing.

Great faith is one… I lost weight, my skin cleared up, people started commenting on how well I looked, and for an actor, that was very nice to hear.

Dominic Moore, former actor turned humanist celebrant, pictured in Cork. He says he has found his true calling in helping people mark life’s most meaningful moments. Picture Chani Anderson

Why I became a humanist celebrant is twofold. As an actor, I feel comfortable in front of people. And also I wanted to be involved in the important parts and milestones of people’s lives. Ritual is so important. Celebrancy and being a humanist celebrant means you are allowed into people’s lives for those important moments, and that is a great trust. I have a profound gratitude to be able to do that.

I have much more clarity in my life now. The confusion is gone. If I am confused, I recognise that I am. The anxiousness isn’t crippling now. I have more energy. I tend to finish jobs. I went back to college and got an MA in digital humanities. I began to take photography very seriously. I make videos now. I’m a digital officer in the Butter Museum.

All of these little hobbies I had as part of my skillset, I earn little livings from each of them now.

To try to achieve is just a beautiful feeling, and it feels amazing because I’m realising my potential.

• Dominic Moore is a Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI) celebrant and a HSE-registered solemniser. 
• Cork-based, he travels all over Ireland to work with people to create unique ceremonies that celebrate the most important milestones in their lives.
• https://dominicmoorecelebrant.com/