*
Your love had provided you with a sweet-smelling yard, a garden smudged at its edge -- like chalk in the rain -- with sudden open fields. Although the yard was bounded, it was infinite. You could well walk the labyrinth of its pine-needle path for a lifetime without reaching a pause in its great mystery.
You were alone there or comfortable enough that it felt like being alone in any case. Where are you, my sweet one, you would sometimes call with sorrow in your voice but if you asked with enough insistence and for a sufficient time, God could always be found. God could be depended upon.
And in any case love was always more delicious being found after being lost. Just as truth always feels *most* true at the moment that it is revealed.
There was a sort of bricked enclosure in the center of the garden. It was like a fortress yet somehow much easier of access, and the truth was that it let anyone in who really wanted to come in. So if it was a place guarding from danger, the danger wasn't you. You seemed to have free privileges there. Now the fortress was called Orthodoxy and it was an expression of your dear one's love. Orthodoxy was not a set of beliefs, though it looked that way from the outside. It was really a mode of protection, a place in which, standing covered, you could think safely. For instance, your doubt existed as a fact of life in the world. But when you stood within the fortress you could envision doubt without getting hurt by it. The place was not a book of facts but more like a concavity of knee-worn stone where you could feel the touch of a certain kind hand, God's hand. There were oddities in Orthodoxy's structure but these oddities could only be seen, much less understood, from the inside. So, in summary, Orthodoxy was another word for protection.
You did not spend your life within this place but you did go to very great effort to make sure it was never far. For its assurance was realer than real and truer than true.
If these bricks made in some sense a house of assignation, nevertheless the love that was made there was clean and holy and enduring. David's ark was not so far away in spirit and truth. People mingled here from various faiths that were able to keep their privacy and integrity just that, intact. Mingling heightened the purity of faith; no reductivism occurred. It was like a house of prayer that had never stooped to politicize prayer. People were happy here. God was so much present that you became dizzy with joy.
Such was Orthodoxy -- hated by those who didn't know how tender it was.
Your only sorrow -- in this place that was single yet filled with folk -- was to watch friends you loved grow comfortable and play fast and loose with their own protection.
I am completely safe, they said. I can walk out of this place and not worry. God is love and God is everywhere, they said -- a truth that was correct and yet not complete. I am not going to worry, they said. They were like Milton's Eve, who when she gathered flowers was yet a more perishable apparition than the flowers she gathered. Don't worry about us, these friends would say, then they would wander off into the smudged and confused edges of the open field, never indeed to be seen again.
*
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Monday, December 20, 2004
Story: 2 brazen sluts -- ?? -- The "Girls for God"
*
"My song is Love Unknown".
*
Christians, read this story to the end before you judge it.
*
2 teenage girls were comparing their love adventures from the previous night. The teacher overheard and felt enormous shock. Said to himself: America is doomed. Doomed.
First girl: He was so tender, so understanding. When there was a movement in my heart, he anticipated it and made the movement *first*! He was the perfect dance partner. All night long. I felt so safe inside his rhythm and his thrust.
Second girl: Well, my love was rough with me, maybe a bit really. He took my spirit places I thought I didn't want to go. Weird exciting places. With him I decided to go. I went. Pain waited for me there and yet, on the other side of the pain, this vast "acceptance". A sense of beyond pain. Not without it but beyond it. Nobody ever gave me that before.
First girl: So did you "entregar"? Did you give yourself completely?
Second girl: Oh girl, me entrego, there's *no* hesitation, I assure you, I just do it. No ifs or buts or filthy qualms or lacy gloved evasions. Oh no. I'm there for him. He's there for me. We don't measure our love, we go for it.
Teacher: Why you brazen, shameless little sluts. But then the 2 girls laughed at him.
For the girls both had the same lover and that lover was God.
What they described was a sort of prayer life, in a world where prayer is real.
And their teacher was only shocked at them because he didn't believe any of it, that poor sad man. He had unwillingly become a sort of atheist. Which was another way of saying that, when it came to the life of faith, the teacher was nothing but a prude.
*
Christians, read this story to the end before you judge it.
*
"My song is Love Unknown".
*
"My song is Love Unknown".
*
Christians, read this story to the end before you judge it.
*
2 teenage girls were comparing their love adventures from the previous night. The teacher overheard and felt enormous shock. Said to himself: America is doomed. Doomed.
First girl: He was so tender, so understanding. When there was a movement in my heart, he anticipated it and made the movement *first*! He was the perfect dance partner. All night long. I felt so safe inside his rhythm and his thrust.
Second girl: Well, my love was rough with me, maybe a bit really. He took my spirit places I thought I didn't want to go. Weird exciting places. With him I decided to go. I went. Pain waited for me there and yet, on the other side of the pain, this vast "acceptance". A sense of beyond pain. Not without it but beyond it. Nobody ever gave me that before.
First girl: So did you "entregar"? Did you give yourself completely?
Second girl: Oh girl, me entrego, there's *no* hesitation, I assure you, I just do it. No ifs or buts or filthy qualms or lacy gloved evasions. Oh no. I'm there for him. He's there for me. We don't measure our love, we go for it.
Teacher: Why you brazen, shameless little sluts. But then the 2 girls laughed at him.
For the girls both had the same lover and that lover was God.
What they described was a sort of prayer life, in a world where prayer is real.
And their teacher was only shocked at them because he didn't believe any of it, that poor sad man. He had unwillingly become a sort of atheist. Which was another way of saying that, when it came to the life of faith, the teacher was nothing but a prude.
*
Christians, read this story to the end before you judge it.
*
"My song is Love Unknown".
*
Defense of Muslims and Jews
*
American evangelicals make a great deal out of verbally professing Jesus's name -- something even a White House warlord can do.
But what if the key factor is not your recognizing Jesus but Jesus recognizing *you*?
*
American evangelicals make a great deal out of verbally professing Jesus's name -- something even a White House warlord can do.
But what if the key factor is not your recognizing Jesus but Jesus recognizing *you*?
*
Love and death
*
The lover fingered death like a product in a store. If I were to put this on now, would I be closer to the one I love?
Like any shopper the lover found it difficult to just walk away, because the price seemed so low. Every bargain screams to be bought. Otherwise someone else will buy it, some stranger, and then the good will run out. And you will be left out. The rack seemed so tempting. But oh no. This was not the way to get close to God. Paying for closeness with your own conduct. That was not the way.
How did you get here, get this existence? You were foisted on earth, rolled out of darkness brutally into existence, shaken there out of the dark sack of genetics. You existed, you lived. That meant that you were wedged in conduct -- the conduct flowed out of your body like a form of energy. So God was insisting that you live here and spend your being *here*, use it up for your love's sake, not dare to bury this vibrancy in the ground like the smothered talent in the sacred story. So death was the shortcut you were not allowed to take, lover.
Conduct was not a side-issue but the center of one's love for God. People said that the ones who loved God spent their entire lives trying to learn what God wanted and then do it. If so, you had to be too busy listening for his advice to so much as consider a cheap good like suicide. God is God of the living not the dead.
Even so, you wondered why people who don't much care about God act as better Christians than you ever seem to manage!
*
The lover fingered death like a product in a store. If I were to put this on now, would I be closer to the one I love?
Like any shopper the lover found it difficult to just walk away, because the price seemed so low. Every bargain screams to be bought. Otherwise someone else will buy it, some stranger, and then the good will run out. And you will be left out. The rack seemed so tempting. But oh no. This was not the way to get close to God. Paying for closeness with your own conduct. That was not the way.
How did you get here, get this existence? You were foisted on earth, rolled out of darkness brutally into existence, shaken there out of the dark sack of genetics. You existed, you lived. That meant that you were wedged in conduct -- the conduct flowed out of your body like a form of energy. So God was insisting that you live here and spend your being *here*, use it up for your love's sake, not dare to bury this vibrancy in the ground like the smothered talent in the sacred story. So death was the shortcut you were not allowed to take, lover.
Conduct was not a side-issue but the center of one's love for God. People said that the ones who loved God spent their entire lives trying to learn what God wanted and then do it. If so, you had to be too busy listening for his advice to so much as consider a cheap good like suicide. God is God of the living not the dead.
Even so, you wondered why people who don't much care about God act as better Christians than you ever seem to manage!
*
"If push came to shove..."
*
So you vowed never to abandon yourself to anyone's hands except God's hands. Only those hands.
I will be faithful above all and after all. This was how you put it. Yes but God's hands, however mighty, were invisible and hard to measure. It was still you who decided, it was still your responsibility.
So that even when Father Sam, in his kindness, said: Do (some specified) thing and you will be purposeful and happy, you had to stop. You stopped and thought.
What if "purpose" took you away from God? What if "happiness" moved you out of God's hands? Wouldn't you rather be close to God than be happy? That is, if push came to shove, and the kingdom of God drew "near".
*
So you vowed never to abandon yourself to anyone's hands except God's hands. Only those hands.
I will be faithful above all and after all. This was how you put it. Yes but God's hands, however mighty, were invisible and hard to measure. It was still you who decided, it was still your responsibility.
So that even when Father Sam, in his kindness, said: Do (some specified) thing and you will be purposeful and happy, you had to stop. You stopped and thought.
What if "purpose" took you away from God? What if "happiness" moved you out of God's hands? Wouldn't you rather be close to God than be happy? That is, if push came to shove, and the kingdom of God drew "near".
*
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Poem of waking -- someone had willed the recurrence of your will
*
Your best moment was your waking. Existence occurred, not for some judicial motive but because it simply did. There was someone who loved you and wanted you alive.
The waking was full of silence and the silence was full of order.
Your love awakened you. As long as God continued to breathe you, you would continue to breathe.
*
Your best moment was your waking. Existence occurred, not for some judicial motive but because it simply did. There was someone who loved you and wanted you alive.
The waking was full of silence and the silence was full of order.
Your love awakened you. As long as God continued to breathe you, you would continue to breathe.
*
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Magical?
*
There is something magical about being poor. What, you mean drinking polluted water and not having medical care? No, not that, I didn't mean that, something else. Something that can't be pulled off like a decal and applied to the rich (as anxiety can). Hey, one thing is, the poor know they're poor, the others don't know -- but still are. Still that isn't quite it.
*
It isn't just knowing but knowing what it means.
*
There is the shiver of existence, the fact of having it -- so many people don't anymore or never have or will. They don't *exist*, forget about happy and sad. So why does X have it, when Y has had it taken away? It's not like an injection or an application, it's more like you yourself. X exists. He cannot say he deserves it, he can't say that. You can deserve a salary or title maybe. But existence never. To deserve you would first have to *exist* and what justifies *that*??
So back to the nakedness of existence, and this is something the poor still understand and the wealthy would seem to have forgotten. Because it seems that if you barely have it, you have more of it than someone who thinks he has so much that he can take it for granted and ends up -- well, essentially not even existing.
*
There is something magical about being poor. What, you mean drinking polluted water and not having medical care? No, not that, I didn't mean that, something else. Something that can't be pulled off like a decal and applied to the rich (as anxiety can). Hey, one thing is, the poor know they're poor, the others don't know -- but still are. Still that isn't quite it.
*
It isn't just knowing but knowing what it means.
*
There is the shiver of existence, the fact of having it -- so many people don't anymore or never have or will. They don't *exist*, forget about happy and sad. So why does X have it, when Y has had it taken away? It's not like an injection or an application, it's more like you yourself. X exists. He cannot say he deserves it, he can't say that. You can deserve a salary or title maybe. But existence never. To deserve you would first have to *exist* and what justifies *that*??
So back to the nakedness of existence, and this is something the poor still understand and the wealthy would seem to have forgotten. Because it seems that if you barely have it, you have more of it than someone who thinks he has so much that he can take it for granted and ends up -- well, essentially not even existing.
*
Friday, December 17, 2004
The blessing of Brokenness
*
"I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame." (Job 29:15, KJV)
Yes but what an arrogant bastard I was -- not like Job at all!
Whenever I was "eyes to the blind", they would try to avert them, they would turn their eyes away, in order not to see how broken I myself was.
*
"I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame." (Job 29:15, KJV)
Yes but what an arrogant bastard I was -- not like Job at all!
Whenever I was "eyes to the blind", they would try to avert them, they would turn their eyes away, in order not to see how broken I myself was.
*
The secular ones...
*
... act more or less correctly but no longer know why they do this -- or want to -- or ought to. Who this is for
-- & thus expend the capital of their own love.
*
... act more or less correctly but no longer know why they do this -- or want to -- or ought to. Who this is for
-- & thus expend the capital of their own love.
*
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Like dying
*
The sweetness of your love is like dying. It hurts like nothing else on earth, hurts way more than a petty orgasm, hurts like a body tearing to let transcendence come in. Scary, horrible. So do it. Come in.
This is not a "safe" love. This is not a healthy love from the point of view of your dietician or neurologist or even your priest. But what they no longer see behind the damage is the new life that the damage hides. Are you addicted to God? Oh yes, you will never let this go no matter what. Only it seems that your addiction is different from the countless others insofar as it leads you to nurture the widow and orphan and to pray for all prisoners, homeless, little ones in pain. Because they are now you and *you* -- through sheer crazy love -- have chosen also to be *them*. And if you don't do this, you are not in love.
*
The sweetness of your love is like dying. It hurts like nothing else on earth, hurts way more than a petty orgasm, hurts like a body tearing to let transcendence come in. Scary, horrible. So do it. Come in.
This is not a "safe" love. This is not a healthy love from the point of view of your dietician or neurologist or even your priest. But what they no longer see behind the damage is the new life that the damage hides. Are you addicted to God? Oh yes, you will never let this go no matter what. Only it seems that your addiction is different from the countless others insofar as it leads you to nurture the widow and orphan and to pray for all prisoners, homeless, little ones in pain. Because they are now you and *you* -- through sheer crazy love -- have chosen also to be *them*. And if you don't do this, you are not in love.
*
When God takes away...
*
The most amazing aspect of God's interaction with his lover is that when he takes away he gives.
One movement, not two.
*
When he takes away everything -- yes but look carefully. That is when he gives the most. Nothing but himself equals -- himself.
*
The most amazing aspect of God's interaction with his lover is that when he takes away he gives.
One movement, not two.
*
When he takes away everything -- yes but look carefully. That is when he gives the most. Nothing but himself equals -- himself.
*
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Love not a drug, after all
*
No way. "I have love so it doesn't matter what I do." Forget all that, you simpleton. Conduct matters more than anything.
Conduct was the only communion on offer to you. It mattered what you did. Helpful?
Terrifying?
Love not an assuagement, not really comfort. Your new age friends told you what a fool you were to have chosen this love. Chosen? Was love ever chosen?
Time accumulated and spawned reflection. Then reflection invaginated and became a will -- your own. So your conduct was still a mystery, was it?
What to do from moment to moment, given love has eyes, given love watches. Guards in a way, in a way not. Breathless. Ask the question without stopping for breath: what should I do?
They said that love would tell you what to do but you had to ask, so had to know how to ask, how to hear the answer when it came, words or silence, perhaps silence. But a silence full of clues.
Oh God, make it easier for me.
It seemed your conduct always got in the way of your asking and hearing. How to pray in front of a honking horn, in the middle of an argument, on a weary day like today? Hearing the phone ring, not answering? Hearing a voice on the phone that pulled you into outer space without a helmet, without a plan. Why have you left me here so unsupported, Lord?
Or was this conduct itself a way of speaking, a form of conversation? Were you saying what needed to be said?
Was even this a kind of test? And if so, were you failing the test or passing it?
*
No way. "I have love so it doesn't matter what I do." Forget all that, you simpleton. Conduct matters more than anything.
Conduct was the only communion on offer to you. It mattered what you did. Helpful?
Terrifying?
Love not an assuagement, not really comfort. Your new age friends told you what a fool you were to have chosen this love. Chosen? Was love ever chosen?
Time accumulated and spawned reflection. Then reflection invaginated and became a will -- your own. So your conduct was still a mystery, was it?
What to do from moment to moment, given love has eyes, given love watches. Guards in a way, in a way not. Breathless. Ask the question without stopping for breath: what should I do?
They said that love would tell you what to do but you had to ask, so had to know how to ask, how to hear the answer when it came, words or silence, perhaps silence. But a silence full of clues.
Oh God, make it easier for me.
It seemed your conduct always got in the way of your asking and hearing. How to pray in front of a honking horn, in the middle of an argument, on a weary day like today? Hearing the phone ring, not answering? Hearing a voice on the phone that pulled you into outer space without a helmet, without a plan. Why have you left me here so unsupported, Lord?
Or was this conduct itself a way of speaking, a form of conversation? Were you saying what needed to be said?
Was even this a kind of test? And if so, were you failing the test or passing it?
*
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
The main thing....
*
The main thing for the Christian at least is not to "give to the poor" but to *be* poor, and then to give from the gushing abundance of your poverty, which is infinite and bottomless.
Not to be separate but to be with -- and to give as to a brother, a sister, or to yourself.
*
The main thing for the Christian at least is not to "give to the poor" but to *be* poor, and then to give from the gushing abundance of your poverty, which is infinite and bottomless.
Not to be separate but to be with -- and to give as to a brother, a sister, or to yourself.
*
Obsessive passion
*
You now seemed to spurn your friends, you lost consciousness of them. Your love was everything. You sat at your desk waiting for the allotted time to end so that you could run to be with your love. The thought of your happiness constricted your breath. Then like a bell ringing slowly came the hour that had been designated and you rushed to your meeting, stood waiting for the door to open. It was the hour when things were still visible but without sun, everything outlined and a little bit dark. There were dry crackling branches against the walls, and shadows in the chalk powder alcoves. Where was your love? What could you do to get close to your love and give yourself away completely, forever? You climbed into the bus. All the passengers were drab and sad.
Your love was here, riding in the bus (as he’d been at the desk before), but you couldn’t just take a seat next to him, he wasn’t simply sitting in one of the seats. It wasn’t that simple! Your love, your God, was more widespread than a single seat or a single hour.
*
One certain fact: every gesture of love that is given to God or received from God has this in common, that it has some relation to the poor. Sometimes in America, it is hard to tell who is poor, the poverty can be hidden behind money, of all things, but there it is, and God is not far away. After all, who exactly is poor, if not you yourself?
*
There are many more poor than the poor themselves realize, no, don’t say they, say we. Why hide? A refusal to be poor is a hindrance to love.
What is wealth but a distraction?
*
It is on the bus that you first betray your love – by not in fact loving, not sharing it somehow – for instance, in this space where all the poor are riding home, sullen and disconsolate. You know what you are supposed to do but you don’t do it. You are worn down by sharing, you want to keep it all. So you frown at the other passengers or ignore them. The love ebbs away at the exact moment when you think you are storing it. And it is a shock how poor you yourself will suddenly feel.
No longer abundant but scarce.
*
“Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not; he passeth on also, but I perceive him not.” (Job 9:11, KJV)
*
You now seemed to spurn your friends, you lost consciousness of them. Your love was everything. You sat at your desk waiting for the allotted time to end so that you could run to be with your love. The thought of your happiness constricted your breath. Then like a bell ringing slowly came the hour that had been designated and you rushed to your meeting, stood waiting for the door to open. It was the hour when things were still visible but without sun, everything outlined and a little bit dark. There were dry crackling branches against the walls, and shadows in the chalk powder alcoves. Where was your love? What could you do to get close to your love and give yourself away completely, forever? You climbed into the bus. All the passengers were drab and sad.
Your love was here, riding in the bus (as he’d been at the desk before), but you couldn’t just take a seat next to him, he wasn’t simply sitting in one of the seats. It wasn’t that simple! Your love, your God, was more widespread than a single seat or a single hour.
*
One certain fact: every gesture of love that is given to God or received from God has this in common, that it has some relation to the poor. Sometimes in America, it is hard to tell who is poor, the poverty can be hidden behind money, of all things, but there it is, and God is not far away. After all, who exactly is poor, if not you yourself?
*
There are many more poor than the poor themselves realize, no, don’t say they, say we. Why hide? A refusal to be poor is a hindrance to love.
What is wealth but a distraction?
*
It is on the bus that you first betray your love – by not in fact loving, not sharing it somehow – for instance, in this space where all the poor are riding home, sullen and disconsolate. You know what you are supposed to do but you don’t do it. You are worn down by sharing, you want to keep it all. So you frown at the other passengers or ignore them. The love ebbs away at the exact moment when you think you are storing it. And it is a shock how poor you yourself will suddenly feel.
No longer abundant but scarce.
*
“Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not; he passeth on also, but I perceive him not.” (Job 9:11, KJV)
*
Love the forbidden substance
*
A. So do you think the whole conflict between faith and sensual pleasure is based on a fallacy? People talk about sex and drugs as sort of incomparable, delicious forbidden things. You know, nonpareil. But what if those sensations didn't even *exist* compared with the love of God?
B. You mean that feeling God would be like the ultimate high? But if that were true, how come nobody ever says so? How come nobody knows?
*
Why was faith always described as a duty? Why didn't anyone mention the joy?
*
A. So do you think the whole conflict between faith and sensual pleasure is based on a fallacy? People talk about sex and drugs as sort of incomparable, delicious forbidden things. You know, nonpareil. But what if those sensations didn't even *exist* compared with the love of God?
B. You mean that feeling God would be like the ultimate high? But if that were true, how come nobody ever says so? How come nobody knows?
*
Why was faith always described as a duty? Why didn't anyone mention the joy?
*
Monday, December 13, 2004
What the fig tree sang
*
Oh you sweet idiot (the fig tree sang). The pain and sorrow, they come to you whether you love or not. Love as love has nothing to do with pain. Only the 2 of them, that is love and pain, huddle together under a single reality opened like a transparent poncho, a fabric that ripples while rain falls on top of everything, all things equally wet.
Then the sunlight transpired and you stood in the garden. And the fig's "hands" were huge and its leafsurface rough, and the uneaten fruit fell onto the slab in a livid color like a three dimensional bruise.
*
Oh you sweet idiot (the fig tree sang). The pain and sorrow, they come to you whether you love or not. Love as love has nothing to do with pain. Only the 2 of them, that is love and pain, huddle together under a single reality opened like a transparent poncho, a fabric that ripples while rain falls on top of everything, all things equally wet.
Then the sunlight transpired and you stood in the garden. And the fig's "hands" were huge and its leafsurface rough, and the uneaten fruit fell onto the slab in a livid color like a three dimensional bruise.
*
The Pains of Love
*
Why you're really a pervert, some sort of degenerate. That's what your friends now say. Ex-friends, it might seem.
You don't have any more words to fight them with. Love has drained the fight out of you, truly.
Your situation has become one of intense pain. Was love supposed to lead to pain? Other lovers have weddings. Why is it that only your love leads to ridicule? Shouldn't we all be in this together? (But in "what" are you to be in "this"?)
If we all belong to God, why are we so torn among ourselves?
*
Why you're really a pervert, some sort of degenerate. That's what your friends now say. Ex-friends, it might seem.
You don't have any more words to fight them with. Love has drained the fight out of you, truly.
Your situation has become one of intense pain. Was love supposed to lead to pain? Other lovers have weddings. Why is it that only your love leads to ridicule? Shouldn't we all be in this together? (But in "what" are you to be in "this"?)
If we all belong to God, why are we so torn among ourselves?
*
Friday, December 10, 2004
Explaining your love of God
*
Oh no, you try to tell your friends that this love of yours -- which you pause to relish for a moment in bliss -- you try to tell them that this is not an *instance* of love, not one more *case* of being in love, oh no -- it's not like a story in some book they've already read, where everything turns out weepy and tragic, oh no -- oh, no -- and it's not like some illness that comes and goes or the redness of the trees in fall, oh no! The contrary! You guys have it *exactly* upside down. This thing that *you guys* are calling love is just a bad reflection of the reality of love that our world has distorted but cannot explain. But they only reply: yes yes, every lover always says that.
So you say to yourself -- your you says secretly to your you -- okay okay, allright, I'm just not going to talk about it at all. Nothing anymore, no thanks but then God says, No. That's not an option. You have to talk about it. At least your body does. Your conduct. The behavior that oozes out of you based on who you are, which is: a person in love.
And of course whatever God says goes. Absolutely. No one is questioning that. Because anyway that's the way you want it to be. That's the kind of love you go for and go after. No other. Complete abandon, complete risk, no hesitations. Anything else is something else, not love.
People talk about "safe sex" but there is *no* such thing as "safe love".
Now when your own mother says, You seem to be talking about a brute and a bully, you answer: No way, Mom. Because "brute" and "bully", those words are for *men*.
And really that's the issue: Nobody understands who you're talking about. When they say "overpowering" and "terrifying" they've barely taken their first baby step into the mystery. Because God is love. And he isn't kidding about that!
*
Oh no, you try to tell your friends that this love of yours -- which you pause to relish for a moment in bliss -- you try to tell them that this is not an *instance* of love, not one more *case* of being in love, oh no -- it's not like a story in some book they've already read, where everything turns out weepy and tragic, oh no -- oh, no -- and it's not like some illness that comes and goes or the redness of the trees in fall, oh no! The contrary! You guys have it *exactly* upside down. This thing that *you guys* are calling love is just a bad reflection of the reality of love that our world has distorted but cannot explain. But they only reply: yes yes, every lover always says that.
So you say to yourself -- your you says secretly to your you -- okay okay, allright, I'm just not going to talk about it at all. Nothing anymore, no thanks but then God says, No. That's not an option. You have to talk about it. At least your body does. Your conduct. The behavior that oozes out of you based on who you are, which is: a person in love.
And of course whatever God says goes. Absolutely. No one is questioning that. Because anyway that's the way you want it to be. That's the kind of love you go for and go after. No other. Complete abandon, complete risk, no hesitations. Anything else is something else, not love.
People talk about "safe sex" but there is *no* such thing as "safe love".
Now when your own mother says, You seem to be talking about a brute and a bully, you answer: No way, Mom. Because "brute" and "bully", those words are for *men*.
And really that's the issue: Nobody understands who you're talking about. When they say "overpowering" and "terrifying" they've barely taken their first baby step into the mystery. Because God is love. And he isn't kidding about that!
*
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
The gift of destitution
*
Exploring the gift
So destitution is a gift from God, a gift that first takes away and then gives.
They say that every true gift tells as much about giver as recipient. So a gift is not simply something that the recipient wants or needs. To be true it needs to speak to the giver, say something about that person. If this is true, then destitution must not only be from God but somehow of God. Yet how could the creator be destitute? Or is it a form of destitution and kenosis merely to notice human beings at all, to stoop to interact with their dissheveled unruly attitudes? Is the destitution one goes through something God is going through at the very same time? And is that in fact the gift?
*
Exploring the gift
So destitution is a gift from God, a gift that first takes away and then gives.
They say that every true gift tells as much about giver as recipient. So a gift is not simply something that the recipient wants or needs. To be true it needs to speak to the giver, say something about that person. If this is true, then destitution must not only be from God but somehow of God. Yet how could the creator be destitute? Or is it a form of destitution and kenosis merely to notice human beings at all, to stoop to interact with their dissheveled unruly attitudes? Is the destitution one goes through something God is going through at the very same time? And is that in fact the gift?
*
Friday, December 03, 2004
That God is love -- is a frightening thought
*
We're talking about a destructive passion. The love of God is like explosive material handed to babies.
*
This is not a sanctioned relationship and nobody approves of it. No one who takes the least thought for your welfare, your comfort, is anything but disturbed. God is the wrong match for you, darling -- everyone agrees. The ladies sit and talk about it. Your family, your teachers, your counselors, your friends, the person who writes editorials for the New York Times -- they all, there are no exceptions, not one, all of them try to dissuade you before it's too late. It's a life decision --
And even your enemies are dismayed to see you enter so violent a relationship!
He will hurt you really bad, they say.
Right -- you answer. And now you're going to tell me that God will leave me too.
No they say. Not that. You'll be in pain and begging to be left to your selfish idleness, alone. You will beg, it won't be pretty. But no, he won't listen to you -- he is always faithful -- he will never leave you or let you down. Can you even bear such love? We really doubt it!
*
We're talking about a destructive passion. The love of God is like explosive material handed to babies.
*
This is not a sanctioned relationship and nobody approves of it. No one who takes the least thought for your welfare, your comfort, is anything but disturbed. God is the wrong match for you, darling -- everyone agrees. The ladies sit and talk about it. Your family, your teachers, your counselors, your friends, the person who writes editorials for the New York Times -- they all, there are no exceptions, not one, all of them try to dissuade you before it's too late. It's a life decision --
And even your enemies are dismayed to see you enter so violent a relationship!
He will hurt you really bad, they say.
Right -- you answer. And now you're going to tell me that God will leave me too.
No they say. Not that. You'll be in pain and begging to be left to your selfish idleness, alone. You will beg, it won't be pretty. But no, he won't listen to you -- he is always faithful -- he will never leave you or let you down. Can you even bear such love? We really doubt it!
*
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Evangelism to the Flesh
*
A new month, a new topic. New? Aren’t we still trying to get well?
*
Well, I am not yet well. But move on so that we can hover there.
*
We Americans are a fleshy people, we love sex without commitment, Lord almighty how we love this! So how do you evangelize God’s love to such a weird people? Don’t walk away, oh no. Instead you try to speak what an ear can hear. What was always true remains true now. “Be all things to all people.” Okay. So you remind the people of the times they were smitten, against their will, by a lewd armpit popping with smoky curls, a nipple with a briny sheen, and a little tender fold of skin that is pouting like a face. Oh, I’m in love, a person would cry, but this is never exactly love. It had the sting of something temporary – namely, of flesh. And the person with this horrible power over you would always abuse you in one way or perhaps in another. There was always abuse. Because a human body, in fact *because* it was human, was not likely to be a fit object for worship, oh my delightful yes but not *fit*. And so the human one with this power over you would betray you to your face, that was just how sex operated, one of the rules of the game. Yes, but the intensity of the passion, that still hung around when the object of the passion had disintegrated and fled. There was always a sudden opening of the soul. The opening was real anyway.
And so you tell the people of one you love with the same intensity as this. You love this one just as much. But this one does not betray you or hurt you in a wanton fashion. This one is so oddly *worthy* of your love. And the hearer starts to have the awful impossible suspicion that the one who is worth loving is God. He was here all the time, why did we ignore the passion in that name?
*
A new month, a new topic. New? Aren’t we still trying to get well?
*
Well, I am not yet well. But move on so that we can hover there.
*
We Americans are a fleshy people, we love sex without commitment, Lord almighty how we love this! So how do you evangelize God’s love to such a weird people? Don’t walk away, oh no. Instead you try to speak what an ear can hear. What was always true remains true now. “Be all things to all people.” Okay. So you remind the people of the times they were smitten, against their will, by a lewd armpit popping with smoky curls, a nipple with a briny sheen, and a little tender fold of skin that is pouting like a face. Oh, I’m in love, a person would cry, but this is never exactly love. It had the sting of something temporary – namely, of flesh. And the person with this horrible power over you would always abuse you in one way or perhaps in another. There was always abuse. Because a human body, in fact *because* it was human, was not likely to be a fit object for worship, oh my delightful yes but not *fit*. And so the human one with this power over you would betray you to your face, that was just how sex operated, one of the rules of the game. Yes, but the intensity of the passion, that still hung around when the object of the passion had disintegrated and fled. There was always a sudden opening of the soul. The opening was real anyway.
And so you tell the people of one you love with the same intensity as this. You love this one just as much. But this one does not betray you or hurt you in a wanton fashion. This one is so oddly *worthy* of your love. And the hearer starts to have the awful impossible suspicion that the one who is worth loving is God. He was here all the time, why did we ignore the passion in that name?
*
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
A Summary of the Plot
*
A novel? A diseased allegory? Here is the plot of "The Ridiculous Knight" with pointers to the chapters.
*
A suburban church has gone into an interim condition -- an emergency wrapped in cotton? -- after the former rector known as "Father Sam" is forced to leave in order to dry out. [ADD DATE POINTER]. The church is fairly well demarcated into insiders and outsiders ("the broken") [DATE]. But in fact the insiders are broken too, and one example is the conflicted character Don [DATE]. He is a youth minister, teacher and gung ho Christian, one who has "washed his hands" like the speaker of Psalm 26. But he breaks down when he accidentally touches a student, not because of what he's done but because of all the things he thinks about and doesn't do. [DATE] He disappears and abandons his apartment and his cat. [DATE]
Meanwhile one of the church's members has been entrusted with church finances -- not a great idea. [DATE] It takes a criminal to spot another, they say, and the only person whose suspicions are aroused is a slightly seedy ex-con named Dave. This man somehow becomes the main character of the "novel" against his will and against anyone's will.
When the de facto leader of the church, a woman named Elise, discovers that Don is missing, she seems to panic and asks Dave to go on a quest of recovery. [DATE] The quest takes him through the allegorical land of his own sexual trauma and self doubt -- no end or bottom to that land! He meets the false Duessa, in fa light from Spenser's Faerie Queene epic, as well as the vicious "Sans" brothers -- without law, without faith, without joy -- and a guardian angel or 2: the asexual girl Elf and the anchoress, who sometimes plays the role of Wisdom as best a mere human can. [DATE]
Dave passes through 3 temptations. He and Elf free Don from some ugly sexual game playing, too mean and futile to be described. [DATE] But Dave becomes emmeshed and re-entangled in his own trauma when the man he rescues kisses him in Christian love. [DATE] And so Dave disappears. [DATE] Someone perhaps Elf may need to go on a brand new quest.
The spiritual reflections that sometimes hide the narrative, and at other times move it along, offer, not an explanation of the story, but the reason that the story is worth telling and living over. No ridiculous knight ever reaches his shelter on earth.
*
A novel? A diseased allegory? Here is the plot of "The Ridiculous Knight" with pointers to the chapters.
*
A suburban church has gone into an interim condition -- an emergency wrapped in cotton? -- after the former rector known as "Father Sam" is forced to leave in order to dry out. [ADD DATE POINTER]. The church is fairly well demarcated into insiders and outsiders ("the broken") [DATE]. But in fact the insiders are broken too, and one example is the conflicted character Don [DATE]. He is a youth minister, teacher and gung ho Christian, one who has "washed his hands" like the speaker of Psalm 26. But he breaks down when he accidentally touches a student, not because of what he's done but because of all the things he thinks about and doesn't do. [DATE] He disappears and abandons his apartment and his cat. [DATE]
Meanwhile one of the church's members has been entrusted with church finances -- not a great idea. [DATE] It takes a criminal to spot another, they say, and the only person whose suspicions are aroused is a slightly seedy ex-con named Dave. This man somehow becomes the main character of the "novel" against his will and against anyone's will.
When the de facto leader of the church, a woman named Elise, discovers that Don is missing, she seems to panic and asks Dave to go on a quest of recovery. [DATE] The quest takes him through the allegorical land of his own sexual trauma and self doubt -- no end or bottom to that land! He meets the false Duessa, in fa light from Spenser's Faerie Queene epic, as well as the vicious "Sans" brothers -- without law, without faith, without joy -- and a guardian angel or 2: the asexual girl Elf and the anchoress, who sometimes plays the role of Wisdom as best a mere human can. [DATE]
Dave passes through 3 temptations. He and Elf free Don from some ugly sexual game playing, too mean and futile to be described. [DATE] But Dave becomes emmeshed and re-entangled in his own trauma when the man he rescues kisses him in Christian love. [DATE] And so Dave disappears. [DATE] Someone perhaps Elf may need to go on a brand new quest.
The spiritual reflections that sometimes hide the narrative, and at other times move it along, offer, not an explanation of the story, but the reason that the story is worth telling and living over. No ridiculous knight ever reaches his shelter on earth.
*
Monday, November 15, 2004
2nd Epilogue: The Missing Retreat
*
A few days later or perhaps more.
I can take you where I think he is, Elf said. Dave is probably back in the barrio, recuperating.
After all, even our town, nice as it is, has its own sort of skid row.
Elf sat in the right hand seat while Elise drove, rather stiffly, through the part of town she'd never had much occasion to visit. Signs were sometimes in foreign languages, storefronts were largely broken and empty. The blight seemed kin to an organism, it had a biological outline. One was really afraid to touch this part of town. There were some churches on corners but not the kind she'd ever considered going inside. Former dry cleaners that now said Assembleo de Cristo in crooked lettering. But of course people live here, souls that is, so I should be drawn, not repelled. It was always possible that the human repulsion one felt was a kind of sin in disguise.
Up there is the anchoress's place, Elf said. The lady who made the hot meals and had the emergency beds. She would be, I pretty much think, a good person for you to talk to, Elise, but whoa, what has *happened* here?
Where are you pointing to anyway?
They drove by a beaten up old warehouse, maybe a warehouse, now tattooed with grafitti, otherwise exorcised and empty, and now there was a straggly charter school, barred from outside entry, with a Tongan guard in front. So where is her, you know, her hermitage? Elise asked.
All I see is a vacant lot.
Elf didn't answer. Her jaw hung open. There was nothing, no hermitage, no house, no garden, no toolshed, no mud, no whirlpool, no people, no anchoress, no anger. Nothing.
There might have been an aroma of Christian spirit hanging in the air. But no thing tangible.
*
"My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off." [Psalm 38:11, KJV]
the end
*
A few days later or perhaps more.
I can take you where I think he is, Elf said. Dave is probably back in the barrio, recuperating.
After all, even our town, nice as it is, has its own sort of skid row.
Elf sat in the right hand seat while Elise drove, rather stiffly, through the part of town she'd never had much occasion to visit. Signs were sometimes in foreign languages, storefronts were largely broken and empty. The blight seemed kin to an organism, it had a biological outline. One was really afraid to touch this part of town. There were some churches on corners but not the kind she'd ever considered going inside. Former dry cleaners that now said Assembleo de Cristo in crooked lettering. But of course people live here, souls that is, so I should be drawn, not repelled. It was always possible that the human repulsion one felt was a kind of sin in disguise.
Up there is the anchoress's place, Elf said. The lady who made the hot meals and had the emergency beds. She would be, I pretty much think, a good person for you to talk to, Elise, but whoa, what has *happened* here?
Where are you pointing to anyway?
They drove by a beaten up old warehouse, maybe a warehouse, now tattooed with grafitti, otherwise exorcised and empty, and now there was a straggly charter school, barred from outside entry, with a Tongan guard in front. So where is her, you know, her hermitage? Elise asked.
All I see is a vacant lot.
Elf didn't answer. Her jaw hung open. There was nothing, no hermitage, no house, no garden, no toolshed, no mud, no whirlpool, no people, no anchoress, no anger. Nothing.
There might have been an aroma of Christian spirit hanging in the air. But no thing tangible.
*
"My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off." [Psalm 38:11, KJV]
the end
*
Sunday, November 14, 2004
1st Epilogue: Church function
*
Checks were bouncing. Mary Louise was mysteriously gone (new start in Las Vegas, they said). Absconded with funds not hers? We're talking plain thievery. How sad. Church membership somewhat dropping. The interim rector a mild bashful sort, out of his depth in a shallow pool. Still the church moved ahead through time, it persisted, it was like a barge, sometimes bumping the side of the canal, yes. But standing still was no option at all.
Elise, sitting in a folding chair at the church function, watched the early refreshments (out of her own purse) run out. Why aren't you upset and concerned about the money, Elise? I don't know, I just rarely am. Someone stole church funds but a church is more than its funds. She felt too heavy to move around but hardly wanted to. Kindly folk shifted through the place. It was odd, everyone always made fun of a church. That was because people's goodness, or at least their aspiration to be good, stood so exposed in a church. Being laughed at can be really not so bad.
Sometimes I see someone looking at me in church who is thinking I'm a good person and then I try to be what they see against my basic evil nature, which of course wishes to be otherwise. But momentarily at least, I am good. So, over all, the effect of this place on me is good.
After the minister's wandering grace the people all began eating the main course. A young woman stuck her head into the room and backed out, then came all the way in. Then turned back to the door and talked through it to someone one couldn't see. Something in Elise's heart began to tingle like the music in "Shaker Loops". Her thoughts started to flutter and she put her plate down.
Then the young woman came back into the room leading a gloomy stranger behind her and the stranger was somehow Don. Elise's husband stood up and started to approach, then became still. They all were still really. Even the little ones at their special table. Still. For a moment the room was as absorbent and tender as a paper towel.
Nobody spoke. The stranger moved toward Elise through recognition that was baffled. Because he was different. Oh Don.
Are you more of a Christian? Less of a Christian? Out of the fold? Huddling in some place we can't follow?
Oh, my heart is hurting for joy, Elise said. Oh Don. Oh Don.
*
We brought him back, the young lady sad, the elfin creature, the little elf, indeed Elf. Dave and myself but mostly Dave really. We did bring him back.
But Dave got lost on the way. We don't know where Dave is, we've lost track of him. We had only this partial success, as you see.
Oh Don! Sweet child, you sweet child (Elise said).
[So ends the first epilogue. The second epilogue immediately follows.]
*
Checks were bouncing. Mary Louise was mysteriously gone (new start in Las Vegas, they said). Absconded with funds not hers? We're talking plain thievery. How sad. Church membership somewhat dropping. The interim rector a mild bashful sort, out of his depth in a shallow pool. Still the church moved ahead through time, it persisted, it was like a barge, sometimes bumping the side of the canal, yes. But standing still was no option at all.
Elise, sitting in a folding chair at the church function, watched the early refreshments (out of her own purse) run out. Why aren't you upset and concerned about the money, Elise? I don't know, I just rarely am. Someone stole church funds but a church is more than its funds. She felt too heavy to move around but hardly wanted to. Kindly folk shifted through the place. It was odd, everyone always made fun of a church. That was because people's goodness, or at least their aspiration to be good, stood so exposed in a church. Being laughed at can be really not so bad.
Sometimes I see someone looking at me in church who is thinking I'm a good person and then I try to be what they see against my basic evil nature, which of course wishes to be otherwise. But momentarily at least, I am good. So, over all, the effect of this place on me is good.
After the minister's wandering grace the people all began eating the main course. A young woman stuck her head into the room and backed out, then came all the way in. Then turned back to the door and talked through it to someone one couldn't see. Something in Elise's heart began to tingle like the music in "Shaker Loops". Her thoughts started to flutter and she put her plate down.
Then the young woman came back into the room leading a gloomy stranger behind her and the stranger was somehow Don. Elise's husband stood up and started to approach, then became still. They all were still really. Even the little ones at their special table. Still. For a moment the room was as absorbent and tender as a paper towel.
Nobody spoke. The stranger moved toward Elise through recognition that was baffled. Because he was different. Oh Don.
Are you more of a Christian? Less of a Christian? Out of the fold? Huddling in some place we can't follow?
Oh, my heart is hurting for joy, Elise said. Oh Don. Oh Don.
*
We brought him back, the young lady sad, the elfin creature, the little elf, indeed Elf. Dave and myself but mostly Dave really. We did bring him back.
But Dave got lost on the way. We don't know where Dave is, we've lost track of him. We had only this partial success, as you see.
Oh Don! Sweet child, you sweet child (Elise said).
[So ends the first epilogue. The second epilogue immediately follows.]
*
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Story (Part 8): The Third Temptation
*
As if shaken free of allegory the warehouse seemed cold and bare. It was like the garage of one's childhood where the kids would go together to escape the heat, sitting on the cement floor and eating Popsicles. It was as close to cool as there could be. But here, in this cool place, the prodigal son, the fallen Don, sat propped against the wall. The dirtiest of all the walls. Dave found a pair of old overalls and threw them on top of him. He was no longer leashed like a dog but he still looked like an animal until he put the overalls on. Then he almost regained the dignity of a human. But not quite. He sank back to the floor, too beat and ashamed to stand.
I think this sh**ty place is just where I belong, he said, wetting the asterisks with his spit. No way, Jose (Dave replied). Elise is holding onto little Tinker Bell for you. That whole weird church is waiting for you to at least come back and show them that you're still alive.
There's been so much churn, some people are holding their breath waiting for you. Hey, it's not gloating. Everybody breaks. Some people are really quiet about it, that's all.
Okay, Don said. Then: Can you help me up stranger?
*
He was like a child inside the body of a football player. Dave reached down to his armpits and lifted. Slippery, harsh. This was like manual labor in the prison yard, don't think about that. A demoralizing smell. So much of life is nothing but an effort not to be demoralized.
There was a third person in the room watching. Who was watching? Who stood there in the darkness? Was it the prison guard? The guard was corrupt, a criminal himself, bought off, paid to be bad. The guard pretended not to be a criminal. Pharisee. Pretended not but was.
Bad people blocked the sight of the good one who stood over all. They couldn't block it forever. You had to hold out.
A third person watched. Then Don got up on his feet. He reached forward and embraced his rescuer, a Christian embrace. A Christian embrace. Can we all be brothers? Can we love each other as our savior asked us to? You know, just brothers, nothing more? And then the third temptation stepped out of the wall rubbing its hands, smiling, indeed gloating. Dave's body fell into the embrace like a traveller stepping in a warm bath. Overwhelming memories filled him of the prison, of being passed around like a slave. The most terrible thing in the world. Even the memory was bad as a bone breaking. He shivered and tried to step out of his skin, like the dead rat once picked up in an old swimming pool whose innards just slipped out of its skin. Help me, Jesus, now more than ever.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Don was saying. Please take me back so I can -- I don't know, let's go see Elise. Make things right somehow. I am so grateful.
And so in a simultaneous movement one of them stepped out of danger. And one stepped right in. And it was the same step, just 2 different sets of feet!
*
As if shaken free of allegory the warehouse seemed cold and bare. It was like the garage of one's childhood where the kids would go together to escape the heat, sitting on the cement floor and eating Popsicles. It was as close to cool as there could be. But here, in this cool place, the prodigal son, the fallen Don, sat propped against the wall. The dirtiest of all the walls. Dave found a pair of old overalls and threw them on top of him. He was no longer leashed like a dog but he still looked like an animal until he put the overalls on. Then he almost regained the dignity of a human. But not quite. He sank back to the floor, too beat and ashamed to stand.
I think this sh**ty place is just where I belong, he said, wetting the asterisks with his spit. No way, Jose (Dave replied). Elise is holding onto little Tinker Bell for you. That whole weird church is waiting for you to at least come back and show them that you're still alive.
There's been so much churn, some people are holding their breath waiting for you. Hey, it's not gloating. Everybody breaks. Some people are really quiet about it, that's all.
Okay, Don said. Then: Can you help me up stranger?
*
He was like a child inside the body of a football player. Dave reached down to his armpits and lifted. Slippery, harsh. This was like manual labor in the prison yard, don't think about that. A demoralizing smell. So much of life is nothing but an effort not to be demoralized.
There was a third person in the room watching. Who was watching? Who stood there in the darkness? Was it the prison guard? The guard was corrupt, a criminal himself, bought off, paid to be bad. The guard pretended not to be a criminal. Pharisee. Pretended not but was.
Bad people blocked the sight of the good one who stood over all. They couldn't block it forever. You had to hold out.
A third person watched. Then Don got up on his feet. He reached forward and embraced his rescuer, a Christian embrace. A Christian embrace. Can we all be brothers? Can we love each other as our savior asked us to? You know, just brothers, nothing more? And then the third temptation stepped out of the wall rubbing its hands, smiling, indeed gloating. Dave's body fell into the embrace like a traveller stepping in a warm bath. Overwhelming memories filled him of the prison, of being passed around like a slave. The most terrible thing in the world. Even the memory was bad as a bone breaking. He shivered and tried to step out of his skin, like the dead rat once picked up in an old swimming pool whose innards just slipped out of its skin. Help me, Jesus, now more than ever.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Don was saying. Please take me back so I can -- I don't know, let's go see Elise. Make things right somehow. I am so grateful.
And so in a simultaneous movement one of them stepped out of danger. And one stepped right in. And it was the same step, just 2 different sets of feet!
*
Interlude: The ark
*
The ark! Elf walked outside the dead warehouse and looked up at the ark.
The ark was in fact the entire planet and its boundary, for humans, was this blue sky the color of a cop's uniform. Once the billboards were turned off the stars could pierce your heart again.
How had we ever allowed so much human wrongness to enter such a sacred place?
*
The ark! Elf walked outside the dead warehouse and looked up at the ark.
The ark was in fact the entire planet and its boundary, for humans, was this blue sky the color of a cop's uniform. Once the billboards were turned off the stars could pierce your heart again.
How had we ever allowed so much human wrongness to enter such a sacred place?
*
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Story (Part 7): The Mask of Sorrow
*
The bar -- or is it a casino? or a communal performance space? -- or a sick child's video game, hidden from parents? -- what word fully covers this space? Is it the inside of a pinball being tilted by Satan? Tell me, is this the inside of your fevered nightmare? Or the side effect of a drug from the sixties? Or is this someone's everyday reality? And where is God, can our loving God be found even here? Even in this space? So is it that even in the human's denial, God cannot deny himself? Can this truth be applied?
The entrance is of tapestries but the tapestries move. They before your eyes and cling to you as you move through. Zeus and Apollo gallop through their multitudinous loves. There is a hologram of a Christian politician consorting with the Caesarites. He holds up a coin with his face on it, winking and smirking like a fratboy. Is this what it means to be "wise as serpents"? As the spectators clap, Sans Foy and his gang walk through the image and disperse it into a flickering migraine.
Of these images some are real and some are merely projections of brightly dyed photons that the sound of a gong will destroy. They say that fiction hardens people and encourages them to treat their neighbors as only fictions like itself. Watch what happens. Duessa dances on the bar while Moloch her slothlike manager (predatory old guy in leather and steel) ogles her wiggle from a low side table. Is it really a woman dancing or an animated image? What a terrible thing to have to ask. Is it real, the little dagger hanging from her heart? Or is it just a prop on her costume?
You tear my heart in two, she sings.
*
I want to stop living the life I'm leading, she cries. An Arab boy walks up to her and tried to touch her. Her image goes up in flames but there she is on the other side of the room, wearing a new non costume and surrounded by Renaissance cupids. She has 2 leashes in her hand. Each holds a man topped by a dunce's cap. I can't seem to get them to heel no matter what I do.
Do not describe more. Allegory's deepest wish is to point to God. When Allegory discusses the world it does so reluctantly, in deep and resonant euphemisms. If you touch the world without a mediator you will be defiled, and this she knows. She wants to lay all her words in God's hands so that what they depict will become tolerable and cease to harm. But artists (like myself?) exploit her and use her to depict all the things that are too vile to be described on this "as is" basis, things whose depiction outside God (if there is such a place?) would make the heart stop -- as for so many people it already has! The way evil invades the soul -- that is the very topic that Reader's Digest decided not to tell you about. Not everything is external. Nor can an artist safely discuss it without becoming unwillingly immersed in what it is and what it does. You must somehow learn how to walk through dirt and stay clean, like a forties gumshoe. But the Black Maskers pretend it is easier than it is.
*
Inside the mildewy vestibule with its dripping glitter, Dave fell onto his knees because, as Lincoln once said, "there was no place else to go". Elf hovered beside him looking fiercely left then fiercely right. She carried a knife from Wisdom's kitchen, something Dave didn't know.
Thank you , Lord, for existence. Thank you for pain. Thank you for this plowing and harrowing of my heart because in this condition it is just like a heavy metal dial pointed straight at reality. At least I beg you to make it so. Yes indeed.
Even here, God is good.
*
Then the 2 giant brothers, Sans Loy and Sans Foy, dragged their brain damaged uncle Sans Joy into the room and propped him up against the bar. The wood shifted with distaste. They saw the interloper on the edge of the battlefield. Pressed forward.
Colors of some other team, a gang we don't like. Not good not good.
Their movements were slow and larded over, as though their inner heat was on reserve or their memory was running low. The closer voice was unsteady like a frayed tape: Get out of this place, stupid Christian. The one in front had a power saw in his hand. Dave was about to be cut in two. And the fool was on his knees praying! So Elf closed her eyes and plunged forward with the blunt knife, hardly good enough to cut butter, but terrible all the same, and she felt herself as much under attack as the goon, because she had been a committed pacifist all her life, but was someone else now that commitment was more than a name she liked to use. And it seemed that something inside her was painfully tearing, now it was torn. Yet the knife fell as through butter or Jello, there was no body inside the person she attacked. Sans Foy split open like a vegetable as Sans Loy bellowed in pain, was it pain or a construct's rendition of pain? The moan came of herself. And Dave cried out: Please no violence. Let's find another way.
The 2 dogs were loose and one of them, hardly human anymore, was nipping at the image of Sans Joy on the bar floor, but it was like one delusion chewing another. Were they real? The Cupids fled screaming, the allegory dispersed. Moloch withdrew for a better occasion, or fled like an abject coward, pursued by a man in the shape of a dog or the other way around.
*
The blood is supposed to be over. The blood of Christ is to be the last blood shed on earth, an end to the shed blood, so that all the violence afterward -- in Iraq or at home -- is really just the thrashing of the ones who have not heard the news, not really heard it, like the soldier on the island who didn't realize that the war was already over so kept fighting. And there are others who can't seem to subsist in a world of peace. The ones who need war. Elf, please (Dave said), withdraw your sword and acknowledge the new realm. But when she pulled her hand loose, dropping the sword into the vat of melting lard, she found she had cut the night club's power cord somehow. The delusions sank slowly to the floor. It was nothing but an unused warehouse that they stood within. Duessa now looked 60 years old or perhaps more. Her white mane hung brittle on her shoulders like Christmas tinsel when the holiday's done. I am really a Christian myself, she cried. I go to church. I uphold family values.
This is just my work! It has nothing to do with -- with.
She sank "on top of" her knees on the cement. I don't like anything about myself. I am not going to defend myself.
But if you were inside me you'd know how I got here.
I would pray now if you only let me pray. But nobody listened to her, for good or for ill, and inexorably in the course of the dream time, the melting swirling lard that had been her bodyguards rose and covered her voice for good.
*
The bar -- or is it a casino? or a communal performance space? -- or a sick child's video game, hidden from parents? -- what word fully covers this space? Is it the inside of a pinball being tilted by Satan? Tell me, is this the inside of your fevered nightmare? Or the side effect of a drug from the sixties? Or is this someone's everyday reality? And where is God, can our loving God be found even here? Even in this space? So is it that even in the human's denial, God cannot deny himself? Can this truth be applied?
The entrance is of tapestries but the tapestries move. They before your eyes and cling to you as you move through. Zeus and Apollo gallop through their multitudinous loves. There is a hologram of a Christian politician consorting with the Caesarites. He holds up a coin with his face on it, winking and smirking like a fratboy. Is this what it means to be "wise as serpents"? As the spectators clap, Sans Foy and his gang walk through the image and disperse it into a flickering migraine.
Of these images some are real and some are merely projections of brightly dyed photons that the sound of a gong will destroy. They say that fiction hardens people and encourages them to treat their neighbors as only fictions like itself. Watch what happens. Duessa dances on the bar while Moloch her slothlike manager (predatory old guy in leather and steel) ogles her wiggle from a low side table. Is it really a woman dancing or an animated image? What a terrible thing to have to ask. Is it real, the little dagger hanging from her heart? Or is it just a prop on her costume?
You tear my heart in two, she sings.
*
I want to stop living the life I'm leading, she cries. An Arab boy walks up to her and tried to touch her. Her image goes up in flames but there she is on the other side of the room, wearing a new non costume and surrounded by Renaissance cupids. She has 2 leashes in her hand. Each holds a man topped by a dunce's cap. I can't seem to get them to heel no matter what I do.
Do not describe more. Allegory's deepest wish is to point to God. When Allegory discusses the world it does so reluctantly, in deep and resonant euphemisms. If you touch the world without a mediator you will be defiled, and this she knows. She wants to lay all her words in God's hands so that what they depict will become tolerable and cease to harm. But artists (like myself?) exploit her and use her to depict all the things that are too vile to be described on this "as is" basis, things whose depiction outside God (if there is such a place?) would make the heart stop -- as for so many people it already has! The way evil invades the soul -- that is the very topic that Reader's Digest decided not to tell you about. Not everything is external. Nor can an artist safely discuss it without becoming unwillingly immersed in what it is and what it does. You must somehow learn how to walk through dirt and stay clean, like a forties gumshoe. But the Black Maskers pretend it is easier than it is.
*
Inside the mildewy vestibule with its dripping glitter, Dave fell onto his knees because, as Lincoln once said, "there was no place else to go". Elf hovered beside him looking fiercely left then fiercely right. She carried a knife from Wisdom's kitchen, something Dave didn't know.
Thank you , Lord, for existence. Thank you for pain. Thank you for this plowing and harrowing of my heart because in this condition it is just like a heavy metal dial pointed straight at reality. At least I beg you to make it so. Yes indeed.
Even here, God is good.
*
Then the 2 giant brothers, Sans Loy and Sans Foy, dragged their brain damaged uncle Sans Joy into the room and propped him up against the bar. The wood shifted with distaste. They saw the interloper on the edge of the battlefield. Pressed forward.
Colors of some other team, a gang we don't like. Not good not good.
Their movements were slow and larded over, as though their inner heat was on reserve or their memory was running low. The closer voice was unsteady like a frayed tape: Get out of this place, stupid Christian. The one in front had a power saw in his hand. Dave was about to be cut in two. And the fool was on his knees praying! So Elf closed her eyes and plunged forward with the blunt knife, hardly good enough to cut butter, but terrible all the same, and she felt herself as much under attack as the goon, because she had been a committed pacifist all her life, but was someone else now that commitment was more than a name she liked to use. And it seemed that something inside her was painfully tearing, now it was torn. Yet the knife fell as through butter or Jello, there was no body inside the person she attacked. Sans Foy split open like a vegetable as Sans Loy bellowed in pain, was it pain or a construct's rendition of pain? The moan came of herself. And Dave cried out: Please no violence. Let's find another way.
The 2 dogs were loose and one of them, hardly human anymore, was nipping at the image of Sans Joy on the bar floor, but it was like one delusion chewing another. Were they real? The Cupids fled screaming, the allegory dispersed. Moloch withdrew for a better occasion, or fled like an abject coward, pursued by a man in the shape of a dog or the other way around.
*
The blood is supposed to be over. The blood of Christ is to be the last blood shed on earth, an end to the shed blood, so that all the violence afterward -- in Iraq or at home -- is really just the thrashing of the ones who have not heard the news, not really heard it, like the soldier on the island who didn't realize that the war was already over so kept fighting. And there are others who can't seem to subsist in a world of peace. The ones who need war. Elf, please (Dave said), withdraw your sword and acknowledge the new realm. But when she pulled her hand loose, dropping the sword into the vat of melting lard, she found she had cut the night club's power cord somehow. The delusions sank slowly to the floor. It was nothing but an unused warehouse that they stood within. Duessa now looked 60 years old or perhaps more. Her white mane hung brittle on her shoulders like Christmas tinsel when the holiday's done. I am really a Christian myself, she cried. I go to church. I uphold family values.
This is just my work! It has nothing to do with -- with.
She sank "on top of" her knees on the cement. I don't like anything about myself. I am not going to defend myself.
But if you were inside me you'd know how I got here.
I would pray now if you only let me pray. But nobody listened to her, for good or for ill, and inexorably in the course of the dream time, the melting swirling lard that had been her bodyguards rose and covered her voice for good.
*
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
The Pseudo Evangelical's Trap (10/19/04)
*
The Pseudo Evangelical’s Trap
The anchoress was so angry that she almost seemed out of control.
But if Christ is who he says he is, we have no time for the games played by pseudo evangelicals, definitely not just no time but less than that. Less than none.
What do you mean, game? Here is what I mean. The pseudo evangelical – Jerry Falwell or President Bush or, for that matter, that person, whoever he is, who heads the Southern Baptists – pretends that evangelizing non Christians is a high priority. And he speaks the old words of evangelizing, from Luke and Paul, while knowing perfectly well that these particular words will fail, will never reach a non Christian. So his effort fails and he knew that it would fail. And he is happy that it failed. He expected it to and enjoyed this expectation, since it made his own club membership all the more exclusive!
Because nothing that he did was ever really directed to the non Christians who are in desperate need of his help. Everything he did was really directed to Christians, shall I say pseudo Christians of his own neighborhood, the pseudo evangelicals much like himself, who now can of course smugly congratulate themselves on this “effort” that was no effort at all. And they can say that, well, they tried, although clearly they didn’t. Of course it was no valid effort if it was predeterminded to fail and if it even congratulates itself on its own failure. We have a very deep hypocrisy here, to be sure.
What would it be to be an actual evangelical? It would be to speak the language of the one you wish to save. It would be to show, no, not only show, but to feel concern for the person you would otherwise be manipulating into Christianity. Christ uses persuasion and Christ plays fair.
The deepest scandal of our church is not gay bishops or whatever but the fact that evangelicals are comfortable not really being what they say, only speaking the words to their own comfort. And they slap Christ in the face whenever they do this. And that no longer matters to them!
By this time the anchoress was so mad that she could hardly speak and Elf had to calm her down, soothe her back into a normal non-fanatical humanity -- the kind that says “Let us endure awhile and see injustice done.”
And the blond young man they called the Southerner gently rebuked her: Ma'am those people you critique all tend to come from my neck of the woods. And when Northerners critique them out of context, even though what they say may be right, or have some right in it, it still becomes wrong because it never makes mention of the *context*, ma'am. Their context or *your* context either. And you kept telling me that true faithful conduct was a *place*, was not just words, but now I don't know whether to believe you.
And I do surely know that you're not claiming that *this* place is the model that *they* are going to follow? Not Duessa with her bloody dogs and all those prostitutes tortured like rabbits? Please, ma'am.
I counted on you to be balanced.
And Elf said: I always felt that the part in the Lord's prayer about trespasses was really saying: Oh please, do not demonize.
Even the demons are pitiful in a way.
Oh you people, the anchoress said. Just leave me alone. I may apologize tomorrow. And I may not!
Meanwhile, the convict, the ridiculous knight, lay on the floor snoring like a sawmill. A big quest tomorrow.
*
The Pseudo Evangelical’s Trap
The anchoress was so angry that she almost seemed out of control.
But if Christ is who he says he is, we have no time for the games played by pseudo evangelicals, definitely not just no time but less than that. Less than none.
What do you mean, game? Here is what I mean. The pseudo evangelical – Jerry Falwell or President Bush or, for that matter, that person, whoever he is, who heads the Southern Baptists – pretends that evangelizing non Christians is a high priority. And he speaks the old words of evangelizing, from Luke and Paul, while knowing perfectly well that these particular words will fail, will never reach a non Christian. So his effort fails and he knew that it would fail. And he is happy that it failed. He expected it to and enjoyed this expectation, since it made his own club membership all the more exclusive!
Because nothing that he did was ever really directed to the non Christians who are in desperate need of his help. Everything he did was really directed to Christians, shall I say pseudo Christians of his own neighborhood, the pseudo evangelicals much like himself, who now can of course smugly congratulate themselves on this “effort” that was no effort at all. And they can say that, well, they tried, although clearly they didn’t. Of course it was no valid effort if it was predeterminded to fail and if it even congratulates itself on its own failure. We have a very deep hypocrisy here, to be sure.
What would it be to be an actual evangelical? It would be to speak the language of the one you wish to save. It would be to show, no, not only show, but to feel concern for the person you would otherwise be manipulating into Christianity. Christ uses persuasion and Christ plays fair.
The deepest scandal of our church is not gay bishops or whatever but the fact that evangelicals are comfortable not really being what they say, only speaking the words to their own comfort. And they slap Christ in the face whenever they do this. And that no longer matters to them!
By this time the anchoress was so mad that she could hardly speak and Elf had to calm her down, soothe her back into a normal non-fanatical humanity -- the kind that says “Let us endure awhile and see injustice done.”
And the blond young man they called the Southerner gently rebuked her: Ma'am those people you critique all tend to come from my neck of the woods. And when Northerners critique them out of context, even though what they say may be right, or have some right in it, it still becomes wrong because it never makes mention of the *context*, ma'am. Their context or *your* context either. And you kept telling me that true faithful conduct was a *place*, was not just words, but now I don't know whether to believe you.
And I do surely know that you're not claiming that *this* place is the model that *they* are going to follow? Not Duessa with her bloody dogs and all those prostitutes tortured like rabbits? Please, ma'am.
I counted on you to be balanced.
And Elf said: I always felt that the part in the Lord's prayer about trespasses was really saying: Oh please, do not demonize.
Even the demons are pitiful in a way.
Oh you people, the anchoress said. Just leave me alone. I may apologize tomorrow. And I may not!
Meanwhile, the convict, the ridiculous knight, lay on the floor snoring like a sawmill. A big quest tomorrow.
*
Sunday, October 31, 2004
2nd interlude: The anchoress speaks
*
No one understands sin today and that no doubt includes myself and tempers what I am about to say. I will say it anyway -- you know me.
Here is my stab, however dark. To understand sin first you must think of the 2 kinds of pain we experience: pain as subject and pain as object.
Pain as object is something one feels as from the outside. It is a feeling put on from without. When you have it relieved, the relief is like having something taken off the way a sheath is taken off a sword -- or a sock off the foot. Such pain is not you but something you undergo. Some people say that therapy or an operation or the sheer passing of time will remove it. It is not you. It does not have you.
The other pain is pain as subject and cannot be removed. It is not something you feel. It is you. Whenever you feel it also feels and whatever you feel it indeed feels. It does your feeling for you, against you. Whatever thought you have it is the pain that thinks.
No operation takes it off. A subject cannot be "removed" but only annihilated or (from far within "within") somehow healed. No doctor can bring a help or a cure, not for this. Only a brand new "you" can escape a pain that is "you".
No one who has not touched this second pain -- and been burned past the point of healing -- will understand me when I say it is a privilege to have it, if and only if you in fact know that you have it -- and know what it draws you to do. It is not enough to have it, you need to know that you have.
Without the need, what would relief of need even mean? Could you be relieved of what you deny? Yes, but denial actually *is* this second pain, in hardened form, like the crust of a bruise. So you would have to deny the denial and get back to feeling the pain, to the point where it throws you to the floor. And on the floor, thrown, maybe the next step can be taken.
So... the two pains. Pain as object can be a great teacher, the anchoress said. In its small window, pain can be good. So it needs to be listened to -- walked through -- learned from -- and only then relieved. Relieved within awareness.
But as for the second pain, avoid it with every inch of your strength and conscience! Never let pain become you and eclipse your own being. Even if you can only hold onto one small thread of yourself, you can still hand that thread to God and implore him to pull, so that the evil will at last unravel. Never forget that pain as subject is unmitigated evil. Feel the pain but never let it feel you.
Any pain can be borne and is tolerable as long as it is only that one thing: pain.
But do not imagine that you are strong enough and Christly enough to go any deeper than this. Because you are not.
*
The next morning, early November with its frayed leaves shrinking with the cold, the anchoress stood like Dwight Moody, with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. And she was livid with anger, out of control, tearing the newspaper in her pain. Elf and the others ducked but could not get away as she began to speak.....
*
No one understands sin today and that no doubt includes myself and tempers what I am about to say. I will say it anyway -- you know me.
Here is my stab, however dark. To understand sin first you must think of the 2 kinds of pain we experience: pain as subject and pain as object.
Pain as object is something one feels as from the outside. It is a feeling put on from without. When you have it relieved, the relief is like having something taken off the way a sheath is taken off a sword -- or a sock off the foot. Such pain is not you but something you undergo. Some people say that therapy or an operation or the sheer passing of time will remove it. It is not you. It does not have you.
The other pain is pain as subject and cannot be removed. It is not something you feel. It is you. Whenever you feel it also feels and whatever you feel it indeed feels. It does your feeling for you, against you. Whatever thought you have it is the pain that thinks.
No operation takes it off. A subject cannot be "removed" but only annihilated or (from far within "within") somehow healed. No doctor can bring a help or a cure, not for this. Only a brand new "you" can escape a pain that is "you".
No one who has not touched this second pain -- and been burned past the point of healing -- will understand me when I say it is a privilege to have it, if and only if you in fact know that you have it -- and know what it draws you to do. It is not enough to have it, you need to know that you have.
Without the need, what would relief of need even mean? Could you be relieved of what you deny? Yes, but denial actually *is* this second pain, in hardened form, like the crust of a bruise. So you would have to deny the denial and get back to feeling the pain, to the point where it throws you to the floor. And on the floor, thrown, maybe the next step can be taken.
So... the two pains. Pain as object can be a great teacher, the anchoress said. In its small window, pain can be good. So it needs to be listened to -- walked through -- learned from -- and only then relieved. Relieved within awareness.
But as for the second pain, avoid it with every inch of your strength and conscience! Never let pain become you and eclipse your own being. Even if you can only hold onto one small thread of yourself, you can still hand that thread to God and implore him to pull, so that the evil will at last unravel. Never forget that pain as subject is unmitigated evil. Feel the pain but never let it feel you.
Any pain can be borne and is tolerable as long as it is only that one thing: pain.
But do not imagine that you are strong enough and Christly enough to go any deeper than this. Because you are not.
*
The next morning, early November with its frayed leaves shrinking with the cold, the anchoress stood like Dwight Moody, with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. And she was livid with anger, out of control, tearing the newspaper in her pain. Elf and the others ducked but could not get away as she began to speak.....
*
Interlude: The widow and the judge
*
There is a wonderful story in Luke 18 about a widow and a judge. He is a repulsive judge but she is indefatigable and her particular nature finally wears the judge down. She gets the action that she wants.
Most of the implications -- for instance, that you must pray with great energy even against the odds -- are clear enough. But I do have some questions:
- Why does a reader automatically take the role of the widow, not the judge?
- Why does even a male reader take the role of a female character, not the male one?
- Why does a judge reading this identify with the widow not the judge?
- Why is it that a judge who has just ("in his day job") ruled against a widow and hurt her, nevertheless, when he reads this parable, will always take her part and thus thinks of himself as widow, not judge?
- Is there any reason one should think of taking the role of judge instead, and perhaps consider oneself venal and stiff and deaf, also of course a bit bored? Does any of that describe any of us? Are we really good enough people to take the role of widow so offhandedly? Would it make sense to think of ourselves instead as the ones being importuned by voices we can't quite hear, or choose not to hear, voices that don't go away?
The parable then might be speaking to the very part of us that chooses not to hear it.
*
There is a wonderful story in Luke 18 about a widow and a judge. He is a repulsive judge but she is indefatigable and her particular nature finally wears the judge down. She gets the action that she wants.
Most of the implications -- for instance, that you must pray with great energy even against the odds -- are clear enough. But I do have some questions:
- Why does a reader automatically take the role of the widow, not the judge?
- Why does even a male reader take the role of a female character, not the male one?
- Why does a judge reading this identify with the widow not the judge?
- Why is it that a judge who has just ("in his day job") ruled against a widow and hurt her, nevertheless, when he reads this parable, will always take her part and thus thinks of himself as widow, not judge?
- Is there any reason one should think of taking the role of judge instead, and perhaps consider oneself venal and stiff and deaf, also of course a bit bored? Does any of that describe any of us? Are we really good enough people to take the role of widow so offhandedly? Would it make sense to think of ourselves instead as the ones being importuned by voices we can't quite hear, or choose not to hear, voices that don't go away?
The parable then might be speaking to the very part of us that chooses not to hear it.
*
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Story (Part 6): The Second Temptation
*
The missing piece is conduct (Wisdom said). People say they understand. But true understanding is a place, it is not just words. You stand within it (or you stand "under" it). If your conduct is not worthy of the place where you stand, then have you really understood? To understand is the skeleton of doing. Reciting words, that is not enough.
*
Wisdom sighed and turned back to her cupboard, pulling the Italian seasoning off its shelf. She flavored the ground turkey. She sighed. Again. The ears were pushing her away.
Clients unfolded tables in the mess hall and set the tables, their fingers moving swiftly underneath the surgical gloves the state required. There people, the so called needy, were secretly the deity's favored children. Their destitution was a way that God spoke to them. But again the ears would usually push away what was heard. Only Dave and the Southerner really stood quietly to listen to her.
Now not knowing what else to do, the convict who had become the accidental knight picked up a dirty pan and began washing it. Elf stood at his side and got happily splashed. After dinner and evening prayers they lay down in their borrowed sleeping bags. The second temptation stood nearby in futurespace, rubbing its hands and waiting to occur.
*
As the poor ones ate, the anchoress lectured them in her rough staccato voice, chopping words like bits of food. Questions are best answered not by a look behind but a look ahead, she said. Not just what caused what you did -- because that's a bit sterile, you can't change that now, my dear ones, but instead think about what you will do next, that is where discernment becomes potent. That is the mystery of your coming conduct. If you spent every minute of your day pondering your *future* conduct it would not be too much time. But of course you can't do that. So your acts themselves must ponder and make progress.
*
There she stood, the anchoress playing the role of Wisdom. She was not supposed to be in the room where he clients slept, but she was there anyway, with her graying braid dangling down her back and a thick and grubby night gown. Her clothes were as musty as the sleeping bags. But such was her authority that not one person dared to snicker, nor even dared to consider it.
*
You are my family, she said. I love you as my family. Ruth who is one of my heroines made her family even out of loss, and clung to it even after it had been taken away from her; and Jesus once said that whoever did God's bidding was his family. When you clean my floor, I must say, you bring Him very close to me. You are family, I feel this. So let's not quibble about DNA or skin color. Okay?
Some of you I might not have chosen. But a family is not exactly the people you choose or would choose. More true it would be to say that a family chooses you. Or else your community is nothing but an act of will, how sad. God's will is always better and to be preferred.
So lie down now. Dear ones. And let us not have any quarrels over turf or toothbrush, nothing of that manner, not tonight.
*
Dave floated in a half sleep that was deeper than sleep and felt himself in God's embrace. It was an extraordinary concession on God's part to embrace and reassure such an appalling self-doubtful Christian, or pseudo-Christian (that was the doubt) just at the moment when that Christian needed it the most. One knows abstractly that God loves one but abstraction is simply not enough. I need to be nourished, thank you. All of us, we are simply children as the anchoress says, and we need reassurance in the most concrete form. In this embrace, Dave felt comforted in a way he hadn't seemed to know consciously since he was a teenager. A no-strings-attached love. Must be agape. Then he woke up and found Elf with her arms around him, a mere carnal spirit clutching his ugly hairy shoulders. And his disappointment was grimmer than words.
He scrambled to his feet like a soldier under attack. He said:
I don't sleep with people. I just don't.
Dave, I was just resting, Elf said. I wasn't doing anything. Aren't you my brother really? Aren't we siblings?
Like a bad spirit the second temptation hovered in the air. It wasn't sex, it wasn't sexual temptation. There was none of that around. Elf rubbed her eyes in the semi-darkness, grinding little stars out of the gray air. People have got to band together, she said.
No they don't, Dave said, to his own surprise. A pause then try again. Battles like this, I mean spiritual battles, against evil, if that's what this is, I think I have to do this kind of thing solo, not just the battle but I mean the warrior, the one who has to go out and die -- he does that solo. I think I have to be, well, what I obviously am, just by definition, you know, alone, stop looking at me. What is this? What else is this? Because I am about to go and either *be* hurt or else to *do* hurt in a way that, look, it needs to be that nobody else gets touched because -- because I feel sick and twisted, so please don't cry, it isn't your fault and it isn't *you*. Okay. Not your fault that I'm so sick. Every time I breathe out I start to barf. Look at me, no please don't. This is what solitude looks like. So Dave dragged his sleeping bag to an isolated corner, a wilderness. Elf waited till the knight fell asleep then lay down near his feet, a little fool, like a dog. And it was humiliating and wrong. But not so wrong that she couldn't live with it, meanwhile saying nothing at all. And so the second temptation slunk out of the room, evading people's eyes in its shame.
Now if the first temptation was about being seduced, perhaps the second temptation was to see seduction everywhere, in everything, and thereby reject your own friends (and you don't have very many, after all). Dave had almost given into it but not quite. The family that the anchoress had talked about, this was something that Dave still had.
*
The missing piece is conduct (Wisdom said). People say they understand. But true understanding is a place, it is not just words. You stand within it (or you stand "under" it). If your conduct is not worthy of the place where you stand, then have you really understood? To understand is the skeleton of doing. Reciting words, that is not enough.
*
Wisdom sighed and turned back to her cupboard, pulling the Italian seasoning off its shelf. She flavored the ground turkey. She sighed. Again. The ears were pushing her away.
Clients unfolded tables in the mess hall and set the tables, their fingers moving swiftly underneath the surgical gloves the state required. There people, the so called needy, were secretly the deity's favored children. Their destitution was a way that God spoke to them. But again the ears would usually push away what was heard. Only Dave and the Southerner really stood quietly to listen to her.
Now not knowing what else to do, the convict who had become the accidental knight picked up a dirty pan and began washing it. Elf stood at his side and got happily splashed. After dinner and evening prayers they lay down in their borrowed sleeping bags. The second temptation stood nearby in futurespace, rubbing its hands and waiting to occur.
*
As the poor ones ate, the anchoress lectured them in her rough staccato voice, chopping words like bits of food. Questions are best answered not by a look behind but a look ahead, she said. Not just what caused what you did -- because that's a bit sterile, you can't change that now, my dear ones, but instead think about what you will do next, that is where discernment becomes potent. That is the mystery of your coming conduct. If you spent every minute of your day pondering your *future* conduct it would not be too much time. But of course you can't do that. So your acts themselves must ponder and make progress.
*
There she stood, the anchoress playing the role of Wisdom. She was not supposed to be in the room where he clients slept, but she was there anyway, with her graying braid dangling down her back and a thick and grubby night gown. Her clothes were as musty as the sleeping bags. But such was her authority that not one person dared to snicker, nor even dared to consider it.
*
You are my family, she said. I love you as my family. Ruth who is one of my heroines made her family even out of loss, and clung to it even after it had been taken away from her; and Jesus once said that whoever did God's bidding was his family. When you clean my floor, I must say, you bring Him very close to me. You are family, I feel this. So let's not quibble about DNA or skin color. Okay?
Some of you I might not have chosen. But a family is not exactly the people you choose or would choose. More true it would be to say that a family chooses you. Or else your community is nothing but an act of will, how sad. God's will is always better and to be preferred.
So lie down now. Dear ones. And let us not have any quarrels over turf or toothbrush, nothing of that manner, not tonight.
*
Dave floated in a half sleep that was deeper than sleep and felt himself in God's embrace. It was an extraordinary concession on God's part to embrace and reassure such an appalling self-doubtful Christian, or pseudo-Christian (that was the doubt) just at the moment when that Christian needed it the most. One knows abstractly that God loves one but abstraction is simply not enough. I need to be nourished, thank you. All of us, we are simply children as the anchoress says, and we need reassurance in the most concrete form. In this embrace, Dave felt comforted in a way he hadn't seemed to know consciously since he was a teenager. A no-strings-attached love. Must be agape. Then he woke up and found Elf with her arms around him, a mere carnal spirit clutching his ugly hairy shoulders. And his disappointment was grimmer than words.
He scrambled to his feet like a soldier under attack. He said:
I don't sleep with people. I just don't.
Dave, I was just resting, Elf said. I wasn't doing anything. Aren't you my brother really? Aren't we siblings?
Like a bad spirit the second temptation hovered in the air. It wasn't sex, it wasn't sexual temptation. There was none of that around. Elf rubbed her eyes in the semi-darkness, grinding little stars out of the gray air. People have got to band together, she said.
No they don't, Dave said, to his own surprise. A pause then try again. Battles like this, I mean spiritual battles, against evil, if that's what this is, I think I have to do this kind of thing solo, not just the battle but I mean the warrior, the one who has to go out and die -- he does that solo. I think I have to be, well, what I obviously am, just by definition, you know, alone, stop looking at me. What is this? What else is this? Because I am about to go and either *be* hurt or else to *do* hurt in a way that, look, it needs to be that nobody else gets touched because -- because I feel sick and twisted, so please don't cry, it isn't your fault and it isn't *you*. Okay. Not your fault that I'm so sick. Every time I breathe out I start to barf. Look at me, no please don't. This is what solitude looks like. So Dave dragged his sleeping bag to an isolated corner, a wilderness. Elf waited till the knight fell asleep then lay down near his feet, a little fool, like a dog. And it was humiliating and wrong. But not so wrong that she couldn't live with it, meanwhile saying nothing at all. And so the second temptation slunk out of the room, evading people's eyes in its shame.
Now if the first temptation was about being seduced, perhaps the second temptation was to see seduction everywhere, in everything, and thereby reject your own friends (and you don't have very many, after all). Dave had almost given into it but not quite. The family that the anchoress had talked about, this was something that Dave still had.
*
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Story (Part 5): Travels in the Mud. The 1st Temptation.
*
As Elf and the convict walked into the yard, they passed Body and Soul, the most unhappily plighted couple on God's earth, arguing next to the toolshed. Soul like a righteous husband said: I want to go to Las Vegas and prove I am cured; but Body responded: No no no. You always take me with you and you leave me so damaged. We need to stay home this time. Because the proof that you're cured is that you don't go there at all -- not that you go there and try to resist what you never should have gone near in the first place. Now with a rote anger Soul scolded his spouse: You're always trying to tell me what to do. Even when you're quiet it's such an aggressive and *muddy* quiet.
Body folded her wings and was quiet.
Elf grabbed Dave's arm and pointed to the back fence. Who is that up ahead?
That's the Nazi Kommandant's wife, Dave said. She was in our Bible study. She's not really in a coma, I guess. She's still alive, it looks like.
The woman lay huddled, clutching her thighs. She wouldn't move or look up at them or at anyone in the yard. She was still a fervent woman of faith, so it was said, but now the edges of the cross she held were biting into her hand. In her appearance of despair perhaps she was trying to mimic one of the Holocaust victims that her "set", as if deliberately, had know nothing about at the epoch when knowledge would have been more historical, more useful, more fruitful. Now in its belated form the knowledge still cut her but without offering any healing. It couldn't. And it is said that suffering is in fact objective, exists outside any given human conscience and so *will* be experienced, like it or not, if not at the appropriate time, then with great futility at another time that you wouldn't choose. But it must happen. Because God would never be so cruel as deliberately to withhold the gift called suffering from any of his creatures. So much for the pitiful shivering woman.
Psalms stood like people on the side of the path. Different psalms would speak on different days (such as Psalm 104 which falls always on the 20th evening of the month). There was no doubt that Psalms were calling to you as you passed. "My foot stands on level ground." One prayed for this to be true. "Righteousness and peace have met together."
Finally, the two of them reached the mudpool near the cyclone fence. It shifted and moved. A woman lay floating face down.
That's Duessa! Elf cried.
She was very beautiful, with her look of wounded youth, slender, having eyes close together and a rather sharp jaw. Her mane was luxuriant. There was a physical resemblance to the girl, to Elf, which the girl herself trembled and rejected. As Duessa turned toward the pilgrims, her center activated but her leg sank deeper into the mire, the quagmire, all the way to her hip. Please help me, she cried.
I don't want to be the way I am. Not only filled with doubt but enjoying my doubt, luxuriating in it. It's beginning to harden and I have no future.
Her eyes closed down on the convict like a pair of tongs. He began to pull her out of the swamp, selva pantanosa, while Elf stood irresolute. There! There now! With a slap her leg pulled itself loose. It was the most beautiful leg on the planet earth. This was Dave's first temptation of the three to come. He backed away and closed his eyes. Far far away, next to the back door, the anchoress stood ringing her bell. She was crying: Children! It's time to come in now!
When Duessa heard the sound she shivered and ran away. She climbed the back wall to the school, even naked as she was, then she ran away into the night. So the first temptation had been survived.
*
As Elf and the convict walked into the yard, they passed Body and Soul, the most unhappily plighted couple on God's earth, arguing next to the toolshed. Soul like a righteous husband said: I want to go to Las Vegas and prove I am cured; but Body responded: No no no. You always take me with you and you leave me so damaged. We need to stay home this time. Because the proof that you're cured is that you don't go there at all -- not that you go there and try to resist what you never should have gone near in the first place. Now with a rote anger Soul scolded his spouse: You're always trying to tell me what to do. Even when you're quiet it's such an aggressive and *muddy* quiet.
Body folded her wings and was quiet.
Elf grabbed Dave's arm and pointed to the back fence. Who is that up ahead?
That's the Nazi Kommandant's wife, Dave said. She was in our Bible study. She's not really in a coma, I guess. She's still alive, it looks like.
The woman lay huddled, clutching her thighs. She wouldn't move or look up at them or at anyone in the yard. She was still a fervent woman of faith, so it was said, but now the edges of the cross she held were biting into her hand. In her appearance of despair perhaps she was trying to mimic one of the Holocaust victims that her "set", as if deliberately, had know nothing about at the epoch when knowledge would have been more historical, more useful, more fruitful. Now in its belated form the knowledge still cut her but without offering any healing. It couldn't. And it is said that suffering is in fact objective, exists outside any given human conscience and so *will* be experienced, like it or not, if not at the appropriate time, then with great futility at another time that you wouldn't choose. But it must happen. Because God would never be so cruel as deliberately to withhold the gift called suffering from any of his creatures. So much for the pitiful shivering woman.
Psalms stood like people on the side of the path. Different psalms would speak on different days (such as Psalm 104 which falls always on the 20th evening of the month). There was no doubt that Psalms were calling to you as you passed. "My foot stands on level ground." One prayed for this to be true. "Righteousness and peace have met together."
Finally, the two of them reached the mudpool near the cyclone fence. It shifted and moved. A woman lay floating face down.
That's Duessa! Elf cried.
She was very beautiful, with her look of wounded youth, slender, having eyes close together and a rather sharp jaw. Her mane was luxuriant. There was a physical resemblance to the girl, to Elf, which the girl herself trembled and rejected. As Duessa turned toward the pilgrims, her center activated but her leg sank deeper into the mire, the quagmire, all the way to her hip. Please help me, she cried.
I don't want to be the way I am. Not only filled with doubt but enjoying my doubt, luxuriating in it. It's beginning to harden and I have no future.
Her eyes closed down on the convict like a pair of tongs. He began to pull her out of the swamp, selva pantanosa, while Elf stood irresolute. There! There now! With a slap her leg pulled itself loose. It was the most beautiful leg on the planet earth. This was Dave's first temptation of the three to come. He backed away and closed his eyes. Far far away, next to the back door, the anchoress stood ringing her bell. She was crying: Children! It's time to come in now!
When Duessa heard the sound she shivered and ran away. She climbed the back wall to the school, even naked as she was, then she ran away into the night. So the first temptation had been survived.
*
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Story: The Ridiculous Knight (Part 4)
*
The knight dreamed that his heavenly master had pulled him out of a burning building. The Lord's garments were brighter than neon bulbs and made the eyes pulse with a migraine. Pain the blessed messenger, our healer, and builder. "Do you think that the one who made your ear doesn't hear you?" Earaches more than flutters of the air.
In his dream Duessa, looking her true age, about 90 years old, was railing at Christians for giving in to their delusions. Don't they know, she cried, that anyone who touched the hem of his garment would have been electrocuted?
Terrible dreams came that were like giant moths covering the ceiling. And when they flew away the ceiling itself was gone, nothing but sky.
Stop it, you're screaming, Elf said, the little creature, not male, seemingly not quite female, who followed him around. When Dave woke up he found himself in the anchoress's back yard. All his bruises lay on him like mere decals applied to his surface and waiting to be shucked off. You slept for ages, the anchoress said, and this little one tended you all the time.
He had sores below his calves from where the thugs had hung him like meat from a hook. But wasn't that all a bad dream, a hallucination?
Elf followed the convict around, playing with gusto her lowly role of faithful servant or quasi slave. Such was the role of the -- what was she? a budding angel? a human whose gender was somehow dead-ended? Who are you, what are you?
I have no idea, I have no status, she said, not even among the Christians who like to pretend status doesn't matter.
The ones who talk the poverty talk but walk the supply side walk.
But now the anchoress has taken me in. Nobody dares confront her, whatever she does is just done. So at this point I would say that I am safe.
*
The anchoress was moralizing aloud in the garden while the rest of the soup kitchen, volunteers and clients together, cleaned up the tables. She sounded to Dave like Elise wound up into a second intensity. We no longer understand involuntary sin, she was saying.
People see *sin* as something they have chosen. Of course what you choose you ocan maybe later unchoose. But I would turn our eyes to the sin that has chosen *you* and wedged itself deeper than your own will. That's another story.
Picture the person born into a slave-holding societ. She did not choose for there to be slaves. She did not will slavery. But if she is not a slave, she is still implicated in slavery and, since she benefits, she participates in the sin. It is also her sin, it is also hers. She has chosen not to respond to the existence of this sin, its existence in her *own* life.
It cuts like the bitter October wind, it enters the body but it doesn't leave.
Sometimes, such is the mystery, you pay for sins that another person not yourself committed. They have committed the sin on you and as if engendered you with it. Not fair! Involuntary! But the simple fact that your role was to receive it instead of committing it, that does not cause the sin to cease to exist. And if it exists, it must be handled.
*
You must respond. You must deal with it. Because evading your need to do so only wedges you deeper!
*
After the dishes were clean, Elf and the convict walked into the tiny windy backyard to rest and meditate. This yard had the faerie-realm quality of never definitely ending. You saw the back of the charter school playground in the distance but you never got there. The path went on and on. It was like the world's most complicated labyrinth -- yet the eye's image of it was as bald and straight as a high school track. So the dizziness that twisted the lanes was something that the human brought within himself as he walked.
I have been working on my soul for months and months, Dave said. And yet it never seems to get any better.
*
The knight dreamed that his heavenly master had pulled him out of a burning building. The Lord's garments were brighter than neon bulbs and made the eyes pulse with a migraine. Pain the blessed messenger, our healer, and builder. "Do you think that the one who made your ear doesn't hear you?" Earaches more than flutters of the air.
In his dream Duessa, looking her true age, about 90 years old, was railing at Christians for giving in to their delusions. Don't they know, she cried, that anyone who touched the hem of his garment would have been electrocuted?
Terrible dreams came that were like giant moths covering the ceiling. And when they flew away the ceiling itself was gone, nothing but sky.
Stop it, you're screaming, Elf said, the little creature, not male, seemingly not quite female, who followed him around. When Dave woke up he found himself in the anchoress's back yard. All his bruises lay on him like mere decals applied to his surface and waiting to be shucked off. You slept for ages, the anchoress said, and this little one tended you all the time.
He had sores below his calves from where the thugs had hung him like meat from a hook. But wasn't that all a bad dream, a hallucination?
Elf followed the convict around, playing with gusto her lowly role of faithful servant or quasi slave. Such was the role of the -- what was she? a budding angel? a human whose gender was somehow dead-ended? Who are you, what are you?
I have no idea, I have no status, she said, not even among the Christians who like to pretend status doesn't matter.
The ones who talk the poverty talk but walk the supply side walk.
But now the anchoress has taken me in. Nobody dares confront her, whatever she does is just done. So at this point I would say that I am safe.
*
The anchoress was moralizing aloud in the garden while the rest of the soup kitchen, volunteers and clients together, cleaned up the tables. She sounded to Dave like Elise wound up into a second intensity. We no longer understand involuntary sin, she was saying.
People see *sin* as something they have chosen. Of course what you choose you ocan maybe later unchoose. But I would turn our eyes to the sin that has chosen *you* and wedged itself deeper than your own will. That's another story.
Picture the person born into a slave-holding societ. She did not choose for there to be slaves. She did not will slavery. But if she is not a slave, she is still implicated in slavery and, since she benefits, she participates in the sin. It is also her sin, it is also hers. She has chosen not to respond to the existence of this sin, its existence in her *own* life.
It cuts like the bitter October wind, it enters the body but it doesn't leave.
Sometimes, such is the mystery, you pay for sins that another person not yourself committed. They have committed the sin on you and as if engendered you with it. Not fair! Involuntary! But the simple fact that your role was to receive it instead of committing it, that does not cause the sin to cease to exist. And if it exists, it must be handled.
*
You must respond. You must deal with it. Because evading your need to do so only wedges you deeper!
*
After the dishes were clean, Elf and the convict walked into the tiny windy backyard to rest and meditate. This yard had the faerie-realm quality of never definitely ending. You saw the back of the charter school playground in the distance but you never got there. The path went on and on. It was like the world's most complicated labyrinth -- yet the eye's image of it was as bald and straight as a high school track. So the dizziness that twisted the lanes was something that the human brought within himself as he walked.
I have been working on my soul for months and months, Dave said. And yet it never seems to get any better.
*
Friday, October 15, 2004
Poem: A color problem
*
Among the decals of the flowers applied
to this green base that life rested upon,
I felt my colors clash -- and I felt wrong,
part of an uncorrected palette
that painted at a slant --
that painted images I did not want --
through a break or crack in things. My life did not
fit the world it was wedged in nor did it
deserve the daily rapture that it lived,
repeatedly, ecstatically,
its joy simply and slantedly to be
this gas of self that rose out of the flowers
loading the air with its own weight
of -- still unbalanced -- quick to dissipate.
*
Among the decals of the flowers applied
to this green base that life rested upon,
I felt my colors clash -- and I felt wrong,
part of an uncorrected palette
that painted at a slant --
that painted images I did not want --
through a break or crack in things. My life did not
fit the world it was wedged in nor did it
deserve the daily rapture that it lived,
repeatedly, ecstatically,
its joy simply and slantedly to be
this gas of self that rose out of the flowers
loading the air with its own weight
of -- still unbalanced -- quick to dissipate.
*
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Story: The Ridiculous Knight (Part 3 - El barrio rojo)
*
The red light district, it was set up as a hallucination -- a visual puzzle designed to keep people from thinking sustained thoughts such as this one -- or thoughts any longer than this one -- thoughts that might burst like a lion through the hoop of sorrow into another world -- but the marketers had decided and recommended.... oh they had done their work.... and so the colors flashed just barely off the beat -- so that whenever a bit of human mentation threatened to sprout, the flashing lights would burst into your visual field and kill it. As a movie this red district would have had no tracking shots a la Max Ophuls, only a series of disoriented quick cuts, frenetic like the kind of television show whose whole purpose is to make sure the viewer doesn't click the remote or remember anything at all including what was just said, no, already forgotten. The whole thing was exciting, but nothing that could be followed and cut loose. You were meant to live short term, just sensing everything... or everything but the One you could not sense in this immediate way. So vice was a powerful tool for keeping God out of the picture. And the quick cuts were meant to cut God like flesh.
The tourists gaped at the billboards with their subliminal changes. Slippage, despair. Hey, everywhere, utterly nude hostesses advertising car batteries, life insurance and the coldest wettest beer. The weirdness wasn't just the images of these hostesses but the way people, that is, mostly men would now take them for granted, forcing them to be outrageous to be noticed at all.... for all this slavelike labor of being sexy. So was there a sadness, a reflective sorrow behind the fake allure? Oh it seemed so. But all they were there to do was sell things.
The convict, the Christian, the ridiculous knight tied his imaginary horse in the bower next to a giant performance space -- or was it a casino? or was it a bar? or just a warehouse? -- which was the place where Don now lived, prodigal son of a Father that our air's perfumed insecticides -- country fresh incense of forbidden love -- tried to whoosh away with its spray. I think I said that already, did I? but the sensory overload in this neighborhood has emptied my head! Did I already say this too? Because you couldn't think a straight thought in this place, the atmosphere was too heavy and twisted and off. And yet God was said to be here, even here, lowering hooks to catch the humans and save them. The hooks would have to be extreme, to be sure.
*
The bouncers Sans Foy and Sans Loy, 2 huge ugly brothers, blocked the door with their elbows. Behind them giant posters of Duessa holding up a Coke. She would be performing tonight.
What kind of luck you got today? Sans Foy asked Sans Loy. Then Sans Loy said to Sans Foy, I got the best of luck today, brother, and pulled a rabbit's foot out of his pocket. The foot was still bleeding and still twitching, very fresh. God help me, tell me that the blood is not real. Would this be part of the allegory? Because they say that writers use allegory for 2 different reasons: 1) to express things that can't be stated in any less mysterious way; and 2) to mask the direct expression of all of the things in the world too horrible to be said directly. In other words, to say what must be said but is too horrible to say.
Because sometimes it is a sin to hide the truth and equally a sin to tell the truth. And that's when you have to ask for help from the bag of magical evasions.
The brute Sans Loy put the rabbit's foot back into his pocket while the foot continued to try to run away. There was a rabbit's scream but it was imaginary, it hadn't happened. This is a personal gift from Duessa, he said.
And the 2 of them refused to let anyone in and they beat the people who tried. Their uncle Sans Joy was a miasma in the back alley that was trying to swallow up stray pedestrians and cars.
*
So staring at the 2 bouncers, you felt nausea flood your heart and overcome it, a familiar sensation alas. Your head still worked but somehow it didn't care to. It was pulling in its horns. In this neighborhood people laughed a lot and were very afraid. But the ridiculous knight was maybe too dense to catch the ordinary signals. He walked up to them and committed one of the sins he was known for: he lost his temper big time. First breaking the nose of the closest one, he leaned to the side and disabled the kneecap of the other. So immersed in violence he became violent. Crying, get away from me you goons, he pushed his way into the warehouse, stood open mouthed at the the tapestries of blood that hung like brochures until their slaughterhouse smell overcame him and he began to totter. And someone knocked him out from behind, felling him like the flat of a sword.
*
He collapsed through hallucinations and a vision of Don lying buckled to the wall, connected to an electric prod. Did you come to rescue me? Don asked. But Dave wasn't listening. He lay like one dead.
*
The red light district, it was set up as a hallucination -- a visual puzzle designed to keep people from thinking sustained thoughts such as this one -- or thoughts any longer than this one -- thoughts that might burst like a lion through the hoop of sorrow into another world -- but the marketers had decided and recommended.... oh they had done their work.... and so the colors flashed just barely off the beat -- so that whenever a bit of human mentation threatened to sprout, the flashing lights would burst into your visual field and kill it. As a movie this red district would have had no tracking shots a la Max Ophuls, only a series of disoriented quick cuts, frenetic like the kind of television show whose whole purpose is to make sure the viewer doesn't click the remote or remember anything at all including what was just said, no, already forgotten. The whole thing was exciting, but nothing that could be followed and cut loose. You were meant to live short term, just sensing everything... or everything but the One you could not sense in this immediate way. So vice was a powerful tool for keeping God out of the picture. And the quick cuts were meant to cut God like flesh.
The tourists gaped at the billboards with their subliminal changes. Slippage, despair. Hey, everywhere, utterly nude hostesses advertising car batteries, life insurance and the coldest wettest beer. The weirdness wasn't just the images of these hostesses but the way people, that is, mostly men would now take them for granted, forcing them to be outrageous to be noticed at all.... for all this slavelike labor of being sexy. So was there a sadness, a reflective sorrow behind the fake allure? Oh it seemed so. But all they were there to do was sell things.
The convict, the Christian, the ridiculous knight tied his imaginary horse in the bower next to a giant performance space -- or was it a casino? or was it a bar? or just a warehouse? -- which was the place where Don now lived, prodigal son of a Father that our air's perfumed insecticides -- country fresh incense of forbidden love -- tried to whoosh away with its spray. I think I said that already, did I? but the sensory overload in this neighborhood has emptied my head! Did I already say this too? Because you couldn't think a straight thought in this place, the atmosphere was too heavy and twisted and off. And yet God was said to be here, even here, lowering hooks to catch the humans and save them. The hooks would have to be extreme, to be sure.
*
The bouncers Sans Foy and Sans Loy, 2 huge ugly brothers, blocked the door with their elbows. Behind them giant posters of Duessa holding up a Coke. She would be performing tonight.
What kind of luck you got today? Sans Foy asked Sans Loy. Then Sans Loy said to Sans Foy, I got the best of luck today, brother, and pulled a rabbit's foot out of his pocket. The foot was still bleeding and still twitching, very fresh. God help me, tell me that the blood is not real. Would this be part of the allegory? Because they say that writers use allegory for 2 different reasons: 1) to express things that can't be stated in any less mysterious way; and 2) to mask the direct expression of all of the things in the world too horrible to be said directly. In other words, to say what must be said but is too horrible to say.
Because sometimes it is a sin to hide the truth and equally a sin to tell the truth. And that's when you have to ask for help from the bag of magical evasions.
The brute Sans Loy put the rabbit's foot back into his pocket while the foot continued to try to run away. There was a rabbit's scream but it was imaginary, it hadn't happened. This is a personal gift from Duessa, he said.
And the 2 of them refused to let anyone in and they beat the people who tried. Their uncle Sans Joy was a miasma in the back alley that was trying to swallow up stray pedestrians and cars.
*
So staring at the 2 bouncers, you felt nausea flood your heart and overcome it, a familiar sensation alas. Your head still worked but somehow it didn't care to. It was pulling in its horns. In this neighborhood people laughed a lot and were very afraid. But the ridiculous knight was maybe too dense to catch the ordinary signals. He walked up to them and committed one of the sins he was known for: he lost his temper big time. First breaking the nose of the closest one, he leaned to the side and disabled the kneecap of the other. So immersed in violence he became violent. Crying, get away from me you goons, he pushed his way into the warehouse, stood open mouthed at the the tapestries of blood that hung like brochures until their slaughterhouse smell overcame him and he began to totter. And someone knocked him out from behind, felling him like the flat of a sword.
*
He collapsed through hallucinations and a vision of Don lying buckled to the wall, connected to an electric prod. Did you come to rescue me? Don asked. But Dave wasn't listening. He lay like one dead.
*
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
The Reader's Digest Prayer
*
- When you pray, do not just pray the Reader's Digest prayer (the anchoress said).
- What do you mean? What kind of prayer is that?
- Well, there is a magazine, or there was a magazine that made its reputation on rescue stories and "life endangered" stories. A girl rescued from a stalker, a town saved from a forest fire, a little boy who gets his donated kidney just in time.
- What's wrong with that? Is there something wrong with being rescued?
- Well there was a question that the magazine never asked. Once the rescue has happened, what kind of life does the rescued person live? Is it that they shopped at Walmart, then had their danger, then were rescured, and then went back shopping at Walmart every day? As though nothing had really happened?? Was that the rescue? Was that the good life they were born to live?
- I'll bite. *Was* it?
- But that's not the question I'm asking, not exactly. (Since I don't even know the person who was rescued.) I'm not asking whether their ordinary life, outside the emergency, was a good life. I'm asking, how do we decide? How can we know? And why doesn't the writer of this article help us answer this? Why this focus on protecting the normal day to day secularity and never looking beyond.
- And when it comes to prayer....
- Do not settle for the Reader's Digest prayer. That was what I was saying. Do not be so sure you know what to pray for. When a person living an empty life suffers a fire in her house, pray for her to survive the fire, pray for her house to survive. But don't stop without also praying for that life that was rescued also to be rescued, if need be -- rescued a second time, a deeper time. Even if that second rescue comes in the form of fire.
*
- When you pray, do not just pray the Reader's Digest prayer (the anchoress said).
- What do you mean? What kind of prayer is that?
- Well, there is a magazine, or there was a magazine that made its reputation on rescue stories and "life endangered" stories. A girl rescued from a stalker, a town saved from a forest fire, a little boy who gets his donated kidney just in time.
- What's wrong with that? Is there something wrong with being rescued?
- Well there was a question that the magazine never asked. Once the rescue has happened, what kind of life does the rescued person live? Is it that they shopped at Walmart, then had their danger, then were rescured, and then went back shopping at Walmart every day? As though nothing had really happened?? Was that the rescue? Was that the good life they were born to live?
- I'll bite. *Was* it?
- But that's not the question I'm asking, not exactly. (Since I don't even know the person who was rescued.) I'm not asking whether their ordinary life, outside the emergency, was a good life. I'm asking, how do we decide? How can we know? And why doesn't the writer of this article help us answer this? Why this focus on protecting the normal day to day secularity and never looking beyond.
- And when it comes to prayer....
- Do not settle for the Reader's Digest prayer. That was what I was saying. Do not be so sure you know what to pray for. When a person living an empty life suffers a fire in her house, pray for her to survive the fire, pray for her house to survive. But don't stop without also praying for that life that was rescued also to be rescued, if need be -- rescued a second time, a deeper time. Even if that second rescue comes in the form of fire.
*
Monday, October 11, 2004
Poem: Epigram of the pilgrim
*
May my life pacify my faithful aching
and every move I make be of God's making.
*
May my life pacify my faithful aching
and every move I make be of God's making.
*
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Interlude: Wisdom stands at the intersection
*
Wisdom stood at the intersection calling. The cars would cover her voice and then roll away.
Follow me and stop medicating yourself with wine and speed. Don't flee your sorrow but turn and face it, confront it, let it shape you into the person you were born becoming.
This here is prayerspace, she said. Not somewhere else but here.
Wisdom was with God before he even created the world. He did not shut you folks out of his blessedness -- not ever -- nor did he ever choose to exclude this place. This place here. Therefore the first step into his kingdom can be, could be, taken just as well here as anywhere.
*
Come listen to me, Wisdom called, but the pimps and dealers laughed at her ill-fitting clothes and un-made-up face and they swore they would never stop and eat her charity food or sleep in her hermitage. She wasn't to their taste, they said. The others, most of them, walked by without stopping. A certain heedlessness bound rich and poor, young and old, black and white. They were all equally averse to her words. And outside her retreat the cars went by in a relentless mood, a form of fury, ready to run over anyone of any age who got in their way.
The convict stood in the street and drank in her words. He never wanted to move past her. And it wasn't that he lived by what she said, as much as he might have wanted to. It was just that he was nourished by hearing them and he wanted to listen forever.
*
Wisdom stood at the intersection calling. The cars would cover her voice and then roll away.
Follow me and stop medicating yourself with wine and speed. Don't flee your sorrow but turn and face it, confront it, let it shape you into the person you were born becoming.
This here is prayerspace, she said. Not somewhere else but here.
Wisdom was with God before he even created the world. He did not shut you folks out of his blessedness -- not ever -- nor did he ever choose to exclude this place. This place here. Therefore the first step into his kingdom can be, could be, taken just as well here as anywhere.
*
Come listen to me, Wisdom called, but the pimps and dealers laughed at her ill-fitting clothes and un-made-up face and they swore they would never stop and eat her charity food or sleep in her hermitage. She wasn't to their taste, they said. The others, most of them, walked by without stopping. A certain heedlessness bound rich and poor, young and old, black and white. They were all equally averse to her words. And outside her retreat the cars went by in a relentless mood, a form of fury, ready to run over anyone of any age who got in their way.
The convict stood in the street and drank in her words. He never wanted to move past her. And it wasn't that he lived by what she said, as much as he might have wanted to. It was just that he was nourished by hearing them and he wanted to listen forever.
*
Sunday, October 03, 2004
Story: The Ridiculous Knight (Part 2)
*
So the knight in Spenser's Arthurian poem, saddled and caparisoned to such a point that his will disappeared beneath allegorical paint -- how did he manage to move at all? Every inch of ground became so meaningful and symbol laden that the horse's hoof sank in and could not could not move. Dave in his nightmare rode the horse (though he didn't know how to ride a horse) while beautiful Elise (in reality strong minded, definitely stronger than he) fell out of her natural role and stood at the edge of the clearing wringing her hands. Find Don and bring him back to reality, she implored him in the "voice without refusal" that Dave at least would not know how to refuse.
But was this reality? Dave looked down at the valiant Arthurian knight that he was pretending to be. His body, his real body, was covered with tattoos and arty obscenities from his former life. He was no knight, he was not in any shape to rescue anyone. All his own color was ashen.
He woke up slowly, cautiously, and dressed (it was like putting the eggshell back onto the egg). Then he set out to find this guy, this Don whom Elise valued so much.
*
St Diodochos of Photiki distinguished evil dreams from innocent ones by pointing out that the demons were by nature restless, squirming in their misery, unable to hold still, and the dreams that they sent were the same. A reality forever in flux was like the doubled tongue in the Book of James. You needed to gallop through this particular land without letting it touch you and convince you. Likewise the first temptation of our leader in the wilderness was the work of the master of flux: "tell these stones to become bread".
*
Whereas the person of faith -- whether artist or Arthurian knight -- sought nothing so much as to live in a vision that was sustained. But this aspiration was not simply granted, it had to be achieved.
*
But what held steady was not the symbols, only what they pointed to. Dave stopped and rested his steed, wiped his sweaty forehead as best he could. In the baddest part of town the gas statons were all shuttered up and the anchoress's soup kitchen was practically the only legitimate business. Prostitutes from the casinos floated by the pumps waiting for their dealers. They were very sad and very hard, no, the hardness only masked the sadness but made it impossible of access because time was running out. They needed medication to get through the day. Their medicines came from the south. The wino with the bag of wine, sitting on the bench, he too was in desperate search for medication. All of them, they looked at Dave and recognized one of their own, just in the way he was flinching.
*
I cannot go through with this, he said to himself.
*
So the knight in Spenser's Arthurian poem, saddled and caparisoned to such a point that his will disappeared beneath allegorical paint -- how did he manage to move at all? Every inch of ground became so meaningful and symbol laden that the horse's hoof sank in and could not could not move. Dave in his nightmare rode the horse (though he didn't know how to ride a horse) while beautiful Elise (in reality strong minded, definitely stronger than he) fell out of her natural role and stood at the edge of the clearing wringing her hands. Find Don and bring him back to reality, she implored him in the "voice without refusal" that Dave at least would not know how to refuse.
But was this reality? Dave looked down at the valiant Arthurian knight that he was pretending to be. His body, his real body, was covered with tattoos and arty obscenities from his former life. He was no knight, he was not in any shape to rescue anyone. All his own color was ashen.
He woke up slowly, cautiously, and dressed (it was like putting the eggshell back onto the egg). Then he set out to find this guy, this Don whom Elise valued so much.
*
St Diodochos of Photiki distinguished evil dreams from innocent ones by pointing out that the demons were by nature restless, squirming in their misery, unable to hold still, and the dreams that they sent were the same. A reality forever in flux was like the doubled tongue in the Book of James. You needed to gallop through this particular land without letting it touch you and convince you. Likewise the first temptation of our leader in the wilderness was the work of the master of flux: "tell these stones to become bread".
*
Whereas the person of faith -- whether artist or Arthurian knight -- sought nothing so much as to live in a vision that was sustained. But this aspiration was not simply granted, it had to be achieved.
*
But what held steady was not the symbols, only what they pointed to. Dave stopped and rested his steed, wiped his sweaty forehead as best he could. In the baddest part of town the gas statons were all shuttered up and the anchoress's soup kitchen was practically the only legitimate business. Prostitutes from the casinos floated by the pumps waiting for their dealers. They were very sad and very hard, no, the hardness only masked the sadness but made it impossible of access because time was running out. They needed medication to get through the day. Their medicines came from the south. The wino with the bag of wine, sitting on the bench, he too was in desperate search for medication. All of them, they looked at Dave and recognized one of their own, just in the way he was flinching.
*
I cannot go through with this, he said to himself.
*
Friday, October 01, 2004
The world as an entity?
*
Some people assigned this world of ours to the devil, others insisted that it belonged wholly to God. Well, manifestly the 2 of them never "co-owned" any entity, or played a game of sharing, so did that mean that our world was not an entity, not a thing per se, but rather a transition, and a place of transition? More like an arena than a home?
So that one couldn't own it or survey it or even describe it, one merely crossed over and hoped the direction was a good one?
In any case, its basic transience somehow seemed truer in October than in August.
*
Some people assigned this world of ours to the devil, others insisted that it belonged wholly to God. Well, manifestly the 2 of them never "co-owned" any entity, or played a game of sharing, so did that mean that our world was not an entity, not a thing per se, but rather a transition, and a place of transition? More like an arena than a home?
So that one couldn't own it or survey it or even describe it, one merely crossed over and hoped the direction was a good one?
In any case, its basic transience somehow seemed truer in October than in August.
*
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Am I well yet? An interlude
*
No, not yet. September has come and gone and I am far from healed, far from being a Christian. As the month on the calendar changed, the ridiculous knight rode through all the brittle leaves on the sidewalk, the emblem of October. On the corners children gathered and began to prepare for the coming day of pagan fear and family closeness on the last day of the month. But it couldn't really be October, could it be? Could time be moving so fast? The calendars and chronometers didn't lie -- but in a way they did. They would run down like thermodynamic laws, they went in only one direction, which was that of the knight's and everyone's dissolution. But he was riding in the other direction, against biology and physics really, not against in any conceptual sense but in a ride more fundamental than that -- just the other direction, against whatever flow they made. So as he moved into middle age, into withering and death, he felt a strength and even a dim glowing of light up ahead, if he only could figure out -- just how to move into the place where it was.
Horses grazed and humans rested, only it wasn't really resting. It was resting that was full of tension and needed another name. In twilight the anchoress prayed and let all the poor people through her gate. You had to assume that she knew which direction one was supposed to go. She looked like Elise. Otherwise he would have run away.
So Dave lay down and dreamed his usual irrational nightdreams, knowing that the devil would be sure to use them to try to ruin him - but knowing also that God was in there too, hidden within the burning yellow images and crackling October leaves.
*
No, not yet. September has come and gone and I am far from healed, far from being a Christian. As the month on the calendar changed, the ridiculous knight rode through all the brittle leaves on the sidewalk, the emblem of October. On the corners children gathered and began to prepare for the coming day of pagan fear and family closeness on the last day of the month. But it couldn't really be October, could it be? Could time be moving so fast? The calendars and chronometers didn't lie -- but in a way they did. They would run down like thermodynamic laws, they went in only one direction, which was that of the knight's and everyone's dissolution. But he was riding in the other direction, against biology and physics really, not against in any conceptual sense but in a ride more fundamental than that -- just the other direction, against whatever flow they made. So as he moved into middle age, into withering and death, he felt a strength and even a dim glowing of light up ahead, if he only could figure out -- just how to move into the place where it was.
Horses grazed and humans rested, only it wasn't really resting. It was resting that was full of tension and needed another name. In twilight the anchoress prayed and let all the poor people through her gate. You had to assume that she knew which direction one was supposed to go. She looked like Elise. Otherwise he would have run away.
So Dave lay down and dreamed his usual irrational nightdreams, knowing that the devil would be sure to use them to try to ruin him - but knowing also that God was in there too, hidden within the burning yellow images and crackling October leaves.
*
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Prayer as a Wave
*
The prayerful kneading is like a piece of death because you don’t know where it’s going to take you and you have absolutely no say. Nor could you nor should you.
*
So what more to say of the kneading except that it is full of terror? Is that why people don’t go to this wonderful place? Is this why we avoid intimacy with our God? The immersion – in God – is like body surfing within the megawaves, the ones that hold you down forever and rub your nose in sand. Your mouth, your shoulders, slide in the strong feel of reality, the sweetness in the core of turbulence. Can you survive this power? And you stand up stupefied in the water, look behind you and see an even bigger wave coming up. And then you pray to God that God’s own wave won’t kill you. And the kneading begins again.
*
PRAYER AS ACTION
So that for you the realm known as providence waits on the other side of prayer, can only be found there, and you must ride, or be carried, through your own annihilation to get there. Captives go free but first are captives. A true prayer must be a kind of action, a form of change, a behavior that leaves you changed. The verb in the prayer is the oar that rows you closer – yes but closer? closer to where? Closer to where the prayer itself is going. You cannot say that place before you are there. And words fail you when you are there.
*
PRAYER AS THE EAR CHEWING WHAT IT HEARS
Therefore, for you, ugly Dave, listening to reality’s word became a most active passivity. The ear moved and changed within the word it heard. And this was not only like chewing food but also like being chewed by one’s food.
*
A PEACE INSIDE THE ROAR
Prayer was the peace in the midst of the roar. It was perhaps found nowhere else. There was no other access road. In prayerspace all people of faith gathered together. The rest of the world was there too but with a different look a different feel. A different slant of light fell on all things and made a different kind of shadow. Things were softened and loosened. That was because they were now prayed for.
*
PRAYER AS TEMPORARY OR TEMPORAL
One of the requirements for being here was that you had to step back out again. God was going to pull you like dough back into the world. You didn’t want to go.... but on the other hand, it was God’s world to which you were called or called back.
*
The prayerful kneading is like a piece of death because you don’t know where it’s going to take you and you have absolutely no say. Nor could you nor should you.
*
So what more to say of the kneading except that it is full of terror? Is that why people don’t go to this wonderful place? Is this why we avoid intimacy with our God? The immersion – in God – is like body surfing within the megawaves, the ones that hold you down forever and rub your nose in sand. Your mouth, your shoulders, slide in the strong feel of reality, the sweetness in the core of turbulence. Can you survive this power? And you stand up stupefied in the water, look behind you and see an even bigger wave coming up. And then you pray to God that God’s own wave won’t kill you. And the kneading begins again.
*
PRAYER AS ACTION
So that for you the realm known as providence waits on the other side of prayer, can only be found there, and you must ride, or be carried, through your own annihilation to get there. Captives go free but first are captives. A true prayer must be a kind of action, a form of change, a behavior that leaves you changed. The verb in the prayer is the oar that rows you closer – yes but closer? closer to where? Closer to where the prayer itself is going. You cannot say that place before you are there. And words fail you when you are there.
*
PRAYER AS THE EAR CHEWING WHAT IT HEARS
Therefore, for you, ugly Dave, listening to reality’s word became a most active passivity. The ear moved and changed within the word it heard. And this was not only like chewing food but also like being chewed by one’s food.
*
A PEACE INSIDE THE ROAR
Prayer was the peace in the midst of the roar. It was perhaps found nowhere else. There was no other access road. In prayerspace all people of faith gathered together. The rest of the world was there too but with a different look a different feel. A different slant of light fell on all things and made a different kind of shadow. Things were softened and loosened. That was because they were now prayed for.
*
PRAYER AS TEMPORARY OR TEMPORAL
One of the requirements for being here was that you had to step back out again. God was going to pull you like dough back into the world. You didn’t want to go.... but on the other hand, it was God’s world to which you were called or called back.
*
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Story: The Ridiculous Knight (Part 1)
*
All faith reflections stopped abruptly on the avenue where Don lived, or used to live. A black cat walked up to Elise and rubbed her calf. The cat was emaciated. No, I can't believe it. This is Don's cat, Elise said. he's letting her starve to death. This is impossible. I can't be seeing this but I am.
How could he ever be such a brute?
She looked at Dave in a state of melting bewilderment, even her features were moving. Indeed he had never before seen her not in control. It was horrible. He would never have been able to say, before it happened, how unnerving it was to see this woman in distress.
You could say that seeing Elise in a helpless state put him in the same state -- or worse. After all, she was one of his pins, one of the people who kept him pinned and upright. She led the study of scriptures, she discerned things correctly, she spent all her time helping the poor and sorrowful, she knew how to pray without making other people's flesh crawl, she was always always calm. He depended on her to be dependable, always. Seeing her in distress made him come undone. It was as though every 911 phone in the universe was ringing at once.
Here, give her to me, he said. I'll go feed her, he said. (Referring awkwardly to the little cat.)
Yes, but where is Don? Elise asked. What has happened to Don?
*
When Dave came back from the convenience store (carrying a round bundle that wanted to get back onto the ground), he found Elise talking to a stranger. She seemed worse than before, more disturbed if possible, and Dave's heart began having -- what was this? Were these palpitations? He did not love her. What he felt for her was a whole lot worse (that is, better) than love.
Elise, calm down. Elise, please. got is still h ere.
The stranger, probably the landlord, was saying: He just disappeared, lady.
I can tell you, miss, it bothers me considerably not having him around.
He was my best tenant.
*
When he saw Elise crying, Dave turned *instantly* into the Knight of Courage and Sorrow, a knight out of Spenser or Don Quixote, a ridiculous role for an ex-con, a former criminal, an all-around terrible Christian, such as this worm called himself, but by the time he had ascertained this obvious fact, the armor was already all but buckled on. Never fear. I'll find him, ma'am. This I promise. The little kitten, Tinker Bell, curled around Dave's ankle. This man Don was missing and needed to be found.
TO BE CONTINUED
*
All faith reflections stopped abruptly on the avenue where Don lived, or used to live. A black cat walked up to Elise and rubbed her calf. The cat was emaciated. No, I can't believe it. This is Don's cat, Elise said. he's letting her starve to death. This is impossible. I can't be seeing this but I am.
How could he ever be such a brute?
She looked at Dave in a state of melting bewilderment, even her features were moving. Indeed he had never before seen her not in control. It was horrible. He would never have been able to say, before it happened, how unnerving it was to see this woman in distress.
You could say that seeing Elise in a helpless state put him in the same state -- or worse. After all, she was one of his pins, one of the people who kept him pinned and upright. She led the study of scriptures, she discerned things correctly, she spent all her time helping the poor and sorrowful, she knew how to pray without making other people's flesh crawl, she was always always calm. He depended on her to be dependable, always. Seeing her in distress made him come undone. It was as though every 911 phone in the universe was ringing at once.
Here, give her to me, he said. I'll go feed her, he said. (Referring awkwardly to the little cat.)
Yes, but where is Don? Elise asked. What has happened to Don?
*
When Dave came back from the convenience store (carrying a round bundle that wanted to get back onto the ground), he found Elise talking to a stranger. She seemed worse than before, more disturbed if possible, and Dave's heart began having -- what was this? Were these palpitations? He did not love her. What he felt for her was a whole lot worse (that is, better) than love.
Elise, calm down. Elise, please. got is still h ere.
The stranger, probably the landlord, was saying: He just disappeared, lady.
I can tell you, miss, it bothers me considerably not having him around.
He was my best tenant.
*
When he saw Elise crying, Dave turned *instantly* into the Knight of Courage and Sorrow, a knight out of Spenser or Don Quixote, a ridiculous role for an ex-con, a former criminal, an all-around terrible Christian, such as this worm called himself, but by the time he had ascertained this obvious fact, the armor was already all but buckled on. Never fear. I'll find him, ma'am. This I promise. The little kitten, Tinker Bell, curled around Dave's ankle. This man Don was missing and needed to be found.
TO BE CONTINUED
*
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
The Bent Witness and In the Darkness with a Candle
*
I cannot evangelize you, my sweet Lord, because I am broken. When an advertisement appears on TV, the models are always young and strong and beautiful. They are not allowed to sell a product unless they appear to be sound.
But I am bent over inside and my soul, considered in itself, is not a pretty sight. How can I “sell” you, my sweet one, when I myself am so ugly?
Now it is true that you hate advertising and therefore want me to witness in a different way.
But don’t I need to be healed first? Doesn’t my body need to witness what you can do? Doesn’t your power need to be seen in me?
Or is it that this breaking of me, this humiliation and the way I am knocked to the ground, is it that this is the witness of your love and your wisdom?
*
IN THE DARKNESS WITH A CANDLE
*
Here is how the kneading of Dave's relation with the Lord would act itself out in reality. To begin with, he found deepest intimacy with God only when he was alone, in a room without windows. In the darkness with a candle. Withdrawn from all women and men. In solitude so deep that it was beneath any loneliness. Yes but in the solitude what did he find? What it contained was the command to go into the community.
But you couldn’t *be* in community without going through here first. Community only existed on the far side of your withdrawal into God.
*
I cannot evangelize you, my sweet Lord, because I am broken. When an advertisement appears on TV, the models are always young and strong and beautiful. They are not allowed to sell a product unless they appear to be sound.
But I am bent over inside and my soul, considered in itself, is not a pretty sight. How can I “sell” you, my sweet one, when I myself am so ugly?
Now it is true that you hate advertising and therefore want me to witness in a different way.
But don’t I need to be healed first? Doesn’t my body need to witness what you can do? Doesn’t your power need to be seen in me?
Or is it that this breaking of me, this humiliation and the way I am knocked to the ground, is it that this is the witness of your love and your wisdom?
*
IN THE DARKNESS WITH A CANDLE
*
Here is how the kneading of Dave's relation with the Lord would act itself out in reality. To begin with, he found deepest intimacy with God only when he was alone, in a room without windows. In the darkness with a candle. Withdrawn from all women and men. In solitude so deep that it was beneath any loneliness. Yes but in the solitude what did he find? What it contained was the command to go into the community.
But you couldn’t *be* in community without going through here first. Community only existed on the far side of your withdrawal into God.
*
Friday, September 17, 2004
Story: The blessed treadmill
*
Dave's movement through time was endless kneading, as he backed away from the world (or maybe from his own sleazy impulses to rob that world for his own benefit), as he backed into God's hands, which shaped and were warm sides of prayerspace. Alone in prayerspace, the ex-con would beg God to change his heart. Then God would knead his heart like the stiff dough that it was. The man would emerge from God's hands renewed, re-energized, and find himself in a new place, one that prayer itself had opened.
There it was possible to breathe and exist (and even hold down a job) for a few minutes or days, until his impulses (only they weren't truly his) took control again and he was forced to call out to God: take me back into your hands! Then the kneading began again.
It was not a way of life in which you could make plans, build a career, do the things other people did. Dave lived from moment to moment, except that the units of this life were not really temporal "moments". The rule that measured them was God's, of God. God measured out the units of one's comings and goings. Secular life felt like little more than a slide show in the front of the auditorium, while one's real life was a whispering in the back of the room.
*
When he began to imagine that he was all right -- whenever he stopped the routine of prayer -- then the bad things happened. Prostitutes would come up to him in his car to ogle his tattoos. Passersby made outlandish offers in the local park. And his eyes would start to measure the swelling of a stranger's wallet, the ugly bulge of credit cards. Avert thine eyes! The purses of the women at church would practically caress his fingers. He stayed clean, he stayed clean. But casual acquaintances found his fervent piety to be disquieting. You're going to go nuts without some more diversion, his sister told him. You can't just pray all day. It isn't right, it isn't healthy.
*
Yes but you could see the temptations only came when he was off prayer duty. It was as though the world could sense when he was susceptible and weak. So he had no choice. He was bound like a slave to his own begging.
*
Dreams struck him in his foolish tender parts. He dreamed he was stealing his own church blind, taking crisp bills that were secreted (such is our dream security) in the white paunch of a teddy bear. You took a bill and the bear sang to you. The bear watched his own being despoiled and made no other comment. His sadness was the only witness. During stormy nights, robbers would tear themselves off crosses to shake their fingers at him. Morning dawned at the church picnic as the parish's poorest child, who was somehow also Dave, was cruelly singled out and given Rupert for a prize. Where is the bear's stomach? the child wailed. For the poor creature had nothing but a hole in his belly. All his assets had been stolen!
Dave, you have robbed our children, one of the matrons cried. Of course, her voice was really his voice when he woke up.
In the morning he read psalms with desperation. "Must I then return what I never stole?" But once a thief -- well, no matter what, you always will still feel like one. God pardons you, yes but as a thief and it is as a thief that you receive the pardon. You are innocent but you retain your identity, whatever you still have. Because the self God had laid his hand upon was this one and not some imaginary other.
So each morning Dave climbed back onto the blessed treadmill of prayer. And the kneading of salvation rebegan. And he was very glad.
*
Dave's movement through time was endless kneading, as he backed away from the world (or maybe from his own sleazy impulses to rob that world for his own benefit), as he backed into God's hands, which shaped and were warm sides of prayerspace. Alone in prayerspace, the ex-con would beg God to change his heart. Then God would knead his heart like the stiff dough that it was. The man would emerge from God's hands renewed, re-energized, and find himself in a new place, one that prayer itself had opened.
There it was possible to breathe and exist (and even hold down a job) for a few minutes or days, until his impulses (only they weren't truly his) took control again and he was forced to call out to God: take me back into your hands! Then the kneading began again.
It was not a way of life in which you could make plans, build a career, do the things other people did. Dave lived from moment to moment, except that the units of this life were not really temporal "moments". The rule that measured them was God's, of God. God measured out the units of one's comings and goings. Secular life felt like little more than a slide show in the front of the auditorium, while one's real life was a whispering in the back of the room.
*
When he began to imagine that he was all right -- whenever he stopped the routine of prayer -- then the bad things happened. Prostitutes would come up to him in his car to ogle his tattoos. Passersby made outlandish offers in the local park. And his eyes would start to measure the swelling of a stranger's wallet, the ugly bulge of credit cards. Avert thine eyes! The purses of the women at church would practically caress his fingers. He stayed clean, he stayed clean. But casual acquaintances found his fervent piety to be disquieting. You're going to go nuts without some more diversion, his sister told him. You can't just pray all day. It isn't right, it isn't healthy.
*
Yes but you could see the temptations only came when he was off prayer duty. It was as though the world could sense when he was susceptible and weak. So he had no choice. He was bound like a slave to his own begging.
*
Dreams struck him in his foolish tender parts. He dreamed he was stealing his own church blind, taking crisp bills that were secreted (such is our dream security) in the white paunch of a teddy bear. You took a bill and the bear sang to you. The bear watched his own being despoiled and made no other comment. His sadness was the only witness. During stormy nights, robbers would tear themselves off crosses to shake their fingers at him. Morning dawned at the church picnic as the parish's poorest child, who was somehow also Dave, was cruelly singled out and given Rupert for a prize. Where is the bear's stomach? the child wailed. For the poor creature had nothing but a hole in his belly. All his assets had been stolen!
Dave, you have robbed our children, one of the matrons cried. Of course, her voice was really his voice when he woke up.
In the morning he read psalms with desperation. "Must I then return what I never stole?" But once a thief -- well, no matter what, you always will still feel like one. God pardons you, yes but as a thief and it is as a thief that you receive the pardon. You are innocent but you retain your identity, whatever you still have. Because the self God had laid his hand upon was this one and not some imaginary other.
So each morning Dave climbed back onto the blessed treadmill of prayer. And the kneading of salvation rebegan. And he was very glad.
*
Friday, September 10, 2004
Interlude: The circle
*
I believe my little dog has a language of his own, powerful and expressive and full of redundancies that I enjoy.
When he is hungry and knows I am moving to the bucket of kibbles -- or maybe I am about to pull like a band-aid the plastic lid off the dogfood can using my magical powers to produce the wonder of *food* -- and all the time he knows absolutely that this is going to happen -- all during this time he runs in little circles on the rug and the kitchen tiles. These circles are a language. I read them with great ease. They express an idea and transmit it to me, and I am in no doubt whatsoever what the transmission is about. I know what my doggie is saying.
Sometimes I may misunderstand the words of an actor on television. But I never ever misunderstand the words used by my dog.
Each circle is perfect and elegant. It is like the loop underneath a "g", ornate, almost baroque. The excessive nature of the loop, its extravagance, is part of what it communicates. Dachshund language is anything but ambiguous.
And I hurry to the bucket, no doubt making a loop of my own that he in turn perfectly understands. Bless the little lad.
*
I believe my little dog has a language of his own, powerful and expressive and full of redundancies that I enjoy.
When he is hungry and knows I am moving to the bucket of kibbles -- or maybe I am about to pull like a band-aid the plastic lid off the dogfood can using my magical powers to produce the wonder of *food* -- and all the time he knows absolutely that this is going to happen -- all during this time he runs in little circles on the rug and the kitchen tiles. These circles are a language. I read them with great ease. They express an idea and transmit it to me, and I am in no doubt whatsoever what the transmission is about. I know what my doggie is saying.
Sometimes I may misunderstand the words of an actor on television. But I never ever misunderstand the words used by my dog.
Each circle is perfect and elegant. It is like the loop underneath a "g", ornate, almost baroque. The excessive nature of the loop, its extravagance, is part of what it communicates. Dachshund language is anything but ambiguous.
And I hurry to the bucket, no doubt making a loop of my own that he in turn perfectly understands. Bless the little lad.
*
Story: The house church and the parable of the "bad" Christian (Part 2)
*
THE PARABLE OF THE "BAD" CHRISTIAN
As Elise told it, there was a church in a downtown area that was losing parishioners and needed restoring. Some people say it was a megachurch in the suburbs that had lost its charismatic pastor and was now suffering budget shortfalls. Others say it was in the middle of a city from which all the wealthy people had fled. In any case it was a church that people pitied or criticized more than they respected. And the more energetic members felt it needed a lot of work.
There was a "bad" Christian who belonged to this church. Well, no doubt there was more than one, but in this parable there only needs to be one. The trouble with this "bad" Christian was that people didn't find her interesting or useful. She wasn't good looking or young. She wasn't eloquent. For some reason, she did not socialize well with other members -- when she tried she was always a bit awkward. Her jokes were too hectic. Whenever she was asked to a house she wasn't asked back. There was no deep fault anyone could identify, just a sense of someone whose clumsiness seemed out of step with the grace and beauty that was still a cherished part of the worship service. She simply didn't fit in.
The "bad" Christian could easily have volunteered to perform some chore that others appreciated. She could have picked up the loose bulletins after the service. She could have tried to greet newcomers. She might have brought some cookies to hospitality. Nothing stopped her from giving a ride to a senior citizen. Something, anything. She could have tried to be "good".
But all she did was to come week after week. And though her spiritual aura was drab and uninspiring, you couldn't deny that she came. She apparently found something in the church that nourished her. So she was a "bad" Christian but a Christian all the same. You couldn't really say otherwise
The better Christians grew more and more frustrated and dissatisfied with their church, and some of them even stopped going. They took a sabbatical or began shopping around. Others just moved away. What do we do about this sorry place? the leaders asked. They would quote the old Ladies Home Journal cover: Can this marriage be saved? Then they would laugh self-consciously, uneasily. Because a church really was like a marriage -- changing a church was like undergoing a divorce. So you tried to stay as long as you could.
And the better Christians -- the ones that didn't move away -- prayed over their uneasiness, sought discernment, hesitated to make a move. But finally some of them decided to secede and form a house church. We will not compromise, we will not spend all our time on asking for money, we won't focus on building a building instead of serving our sisters and brothers, we will be a true church. We will be new. We will be available to the community as this sorrowful place no longer is.
What in the world is a house church? asked the "bad" Christian. She had never heard about this.
And being the person she was she didn't understand what it was when they told her. She didn't get the point.
So she was left behind. And the house church went on to have some experiences that were as filled with the very spirit they had worried was lost. There was movement in the hearts of members and movement in the community surrounding them. What they'd done was in general a good thing.
Yes it was, but there was the "bad" Christian sitting in the church they'd left. Soon that church sank even further and further without their inspiration and finally began experiencing perpetual budget crises, the scary kind that lead people to wonder whether it isn't just time to close down. Perhaps everyone should move on to a house church. But there was always the "bad" Christian who didn't understand house churches, didn't get the emerging stuff that was happening, always seemed a step or two behind whatever was new and interesting. There was the Christian left behind.
If people had decided to take her church away from her, it was because the church wasn't interesting and neither was she. But if that meant removing the wafer from her mouth -- removing the presence that kept her "badness" from imploding -- then someone was going to have to answer for this change. And they would have to answer to the same person they were trying so hard to draw nearer to!
*
THE PARABLE OF THE "BAD" CHRISTIAN
As Elise told it, there was a church in a downtown area that was losing parishioners and needed restoring. Some people say it was a megachurch in the suburbs that had lost its charismatic pastor and was now suffering budget shortfalls. Others say it was in the middle of a city from which all the wealthy people had fled. In any case it was a church that people pitied or criticized more than they respected. And the more energetic members felt it needed a lot of work.
There was a "bad" Christian who belonged to this church. Well, no doubt there was more than one, but in this parable there only needs to be one. The trouble with this "bad" Christian was that people didn't find her interesting or useful. She wasn't good looking or young. She wasn't eloquent. For some reason, she did not socialize well with other members -- when she tried she was always a bit awkward. Her jokes were too hectic. Whenever she was asked to a house she wasn't asked back. There was no deep fault anyone could identify, just a sense of someone whose clumsiness seemed out of step with the grace and beauty that was still a cherished part of the worship service. She simply didn't fit in.
The "bad" Christian could easily have volunteered to perform some chore that others appreciated. She could have picked up the loose bulletins after the service. She could have tried to greet newcomers. She might have brought some cookies to hospitality. Nothing stopped her from giving a ride to a senior citizen. Something, anything. She could have tried to be "good".
But all she did was to come week after week. And though her spiritual aura was drab and uninspiring, you couldn't deny that she came. She apparently found something in the church that nourished her. So she was a "bad" Christian but a Christian all the same. You couldn't really say otherwise
The better Christians grew more and more frustrated and dissatisfied with their church, and some of them even stopped going. They took a sabbatical or began shopping around. Others just moved away. What do we do about this sorry place? the leaders asked. They would quote the old Ladies Home Journal cover: Can this marriage be saved? Then they would laugh self-consciously, uneasily. Because a church really was like a marriage -- changing a church was like undergoing a divorce. So you tried to stay as long as you could.
And the better Christians -- the ones that didn't move away -- prayed over their uneasiness, sought discernment, hesitated to make a move. But finally some of them decided to secede and form a house church. We will not compromise, we will not spend all our time on asking for money, we won't focus on building a building instead of serving our sisters and brothers, we will be a true church. We will be new. We will be available to the community as this sorrowful place no longer is.
What in the world is a house church? asked the "bad" Christian. She had never heard about this.
And being the person she was she didn't understand what it was when they told her. She didn't get the point.
So she was left behind. And the house church went on to have some experiences that were as filled with the very spirit they had worried was lost. There was movement in the hearts of members and movement in the community surrounding them. What they'd done was in general a good thing.
Yes it was, but there was the "bad" Christian sitting in the church they'd left. Soon that church sank even further and further without their inspiration and finally began experiencing perpetual budget crises, the scary kind that lead people to wonder whether it isn't just time to close down. Perhaps everyone should move on to a house church. But there was always the "bad" Christian who didn't understand house churches, didn't get the emerging stuff that was happening, always seemed a step or two behind whatever was new and interesting. There was the Christian left behind.
If people had decided to take her church away from her, it was because the church wasn't interesting and neither was she. But if that meant removing the wafer from her mouth -- removing the presence that kept her "badness" from imploding -- then someone was going to have to answer for this change. And they would have to answer to the same person they were trying so hard to draw nearer to!
*
Thursday, September 09, 2004
(Interlude: Search for a new minister)
*
Meanwhile the parish was in the midst of its search for a new minister. It was a time of anxiety, of live spirits but anxiety. Some people said: what we need is a duplicate of Father Sam so we can retain our community, our vibrancy and... but others insisted that it was time for someone or something new.
What should he even look like? Sharlene asked. Are we even saying “he”? (Because there are talented women in ministry now). In any case, I will go out on a limb and say I go for someone as homely as possible. Downright ugly if we can only achieve it.
And the others cried: Sharlene!!! Why????
Not that a priest should be pretty? But why ugly, what’s the use of “the face that no one wants to look at”?
Well....
Well we as a society have had our fill and more so of the people who are good to look at. We have had so many ministers who look like newscasters and whose message seems somehow... oh, I’d say sweetened and made crisp by their newscaster looks. By their constant poise. By their never getting shaken up by anything anyone ever says. Insurance people, when what I want is not insurance but **risk**.
Oh, Sharlene.
I would like someone like Lincoln, only of course I don’t mean a politician. Someone whose pants roll up to his shins when he rides a horse, someone covered with dust, awkward and too tall or else heavy and squat with sweat going diagonal on his forehead. Someone not only easy to laugh at but who finds being laughed at easy also. Who are we not to be laughed at? I want to see the spirit move not so much in his Sunday words but in the way he moves through the other days, when the rest of us sit here biting each other’s heads off. Oh Sharlene.
Someone who doesn’t break a bruised reed, someone you don’t care about for the obvious reasons, someone who can take what is dished out by people like, well, like me. Oh Sharlene. Someone who knows what he wants and doesn’t get shaken off the one tree where he sees it growing. Someone I can follow, not just look at like I’m looking at you.
I want someone whose market value is nil and who doesn’t even care that much about raising money. He doesn’t have to worry about that, because if he exists, I’ll do the money raising for him. I want him to do the things I **can’t** do.
At that point the others laughed at her, shook the pool of resumes in front of her face and said: That’s all very well, dreamy girl. But this here pool is what we’ve got.
*
Meanwhile the parish was in the midst of its search for a new minister. It was a time of anxiety, of live spirits but anxiety. Some people said: what we need is a duplicate of Father Sam so we can retain our community, our vibrancy and... but others insisted that it was time for someone or something new.
What should he even look like? Sharlene asked. Are we even saying “he”? (Because there are talented women in ministry now). In any case, I will go out on a limb and say I go for someone as homely as possible. Downright ugly if we can only achieve it.
And the others cried: Sharlene!!! Why????
Not that a priest should be pretty? But why ugly, what’s the use of “the face that no one wants to look at”?
Well....
Well we as a society have had our fill and more so of the people who are good to look at. We have had so many ministers who look like newscasters and whose message seems somehow... oh, I’d say sweetened and made crisp by their newscaster looks. By their constant poise. By their never getting shaken up by anything anyone ever says. Insurance people, when what I want is not insurance but **risk**.
Oh, Sharlene.
I would like someone like Lincoln, only of course I don’t mean a politician. Someone whose pants roll up to his shins when he rides a horse, someone covered with dust, awkward and too tall or else heavy and squat with sweat going diagonal on his forehead. Someone not only easy to laugh at but who finds being laughed at easy also. Who are we not to be laughed at? I want to see the spirit move not so much in his Sunday words but in the way he moves through the other days, when the rest of us sit here biting each other’s heads off. Oh Sharlene.
Someone who doesn’t break a bruised reed, someone you don’t care about for the obvious reasons, someone who can take what is dished out by people like, well, like me. Oh Sharlene. Someone who knows what he wants and doesn’t get shaken off the one tree where he sees it growing. Someone I can follow, not just look at like I’m looking at you.
I want someone whose market value is nil and who doesn’t even care that much about raising money. He doesn’t have to worry about that, because if he exists, I’ll do the money raising for him. I want him to do the things I **can’t** do.
At that point the others laughed at her, shook the pool of resumes in front of her face and said: That’s all very well, dreamy girl. But this here pool is what we’ve got.
*
Story: The house church and the parable of the "bad" Christian (Part 1)
*
Part 1: The house church
Maria: What bothers me is the way they talk about us as though we were witches.
Sharlene: Right. Anyone who isn't beautiful and sort of soft, like melting ice cream. Compliant. Probably blond. Soft of voice. Very few of us.
Maria: I feel I can't move when they are around. They're watching, judging, expecting favors, never helping. I don't care for them.
Mary Louise: Of course we have to forgive them. I guess this is forgive and forget.
But just imagine life without them.
*
It can be nice to have an aggressive macho gung ho guy around, when you need to be defended.
Yes but who do you need to be defended from? An aggressive macho gung ho guy. An assailant.
If the one wasn't around you wouldn't need the other. What if you didn't have either one?
*
The women began imagining a house church. The worship would be pure because those who sully its purity wouldn't be there in the first place.
The door would be locked but on the inside of the lock, one could call on God safely. In peace. In true Christian peace.
*
No more sermons that are disguised pleas for money.
Mary Louise: I could regain the peace I seem to have lost.
Elise: Girls, this is a very bad idea.
Picking your community. That's not how it's done. That's like being the kind of missionary Oswald Chambers says not to be. Running out and choosing your field instead of letting the Master "engineer your circumstances".
Yes but we're not missionaries. We're just girls trying to purify our lives a little bit.
Lots of people do house churches all over the country. It's part of, you know, the "emergence". It's connected to tomorrow. I think God wants us to do this.
That's when Elise tried to improvise The Parable of the Bad Christian, in a big hurry, a story that convinced nobody but nevertheless needs to be shared as a portion of Part 2.
*
Part 1: The house church
Maria: What bothers me is the way they talk about us as though we were witches.
Sharlene: Right. Anyone who isn't beautiful and sort of soft, like melting ice cream. Compliant. Probably blond. Soft of voice. Very few of us.
Maria: I feel I can't move when they are around. They're watching, judging, expecting favors, never helping. I don't care for them.
Mary Louise: Of course we have to forgive them. I guess this is forgive and forget.
But just imagine life without them.
*
It can be nice to have an aggressive macho gung ho guy around, when you need to be defended.
Yes but who do you need to be defended from? An aggressive macho gung ho guy. An assailant.
If the one wasn't around you wouldn't need the other. What if you didn't have either one?
*
The women began imagining a house church. The worship would be pure because those who sully its purity wouldn't be there in the first place.
The door would be locked but on the inside of the lock, one could call on God safely. In peace. In true Christian peace.
*
No more sermons that are disguised pleas for money.
Mary Louise: I could regain the peace I seem to have lost.
Elise: Girls, this is a very bad idea.
Picking your community. That's not how it's done. That's like being the kind of missionary Oswald Chambers says not to be. Running out and choosing your field instead of letting the Master "engineer your circumstances".
Yes but we're not missionaries. We're just girls trying to purify our lives a little bit.
Lots of people do house churches all over the country. It's part of, you know, the "emergence". It's connected to tomorrow. I think God wants us to do this.
That's when Elise tried to improvise The Parable of the Bad Christian, in a big hurry, a story that convinced nobody but nevertheless needs to be shared as a portion of Part 2.
*
Monday, September 06, 2004
Story: Like Meryl Streep's bad acting
*
Is bad luck that brings you to God really so bad? If it breaks your spirit, is it bad? Are you sure?
Is the guy who loses all his money and learns not to rely on it someone you would pity? Has the badness brought him to a better place? Is that new mountaintop good?
Is the pain such a terrible thing?
If life considered in cold blood would be a chutes and ladders game, with lots of small climbs and lots of sudden falls, then whad would your own cold blood tell you? Weren't falls often more beautiful than climbs? In God's judgment was it the case that down was up and upward down?
SPIRITUAL TEMPTATION TO SUICIDE?
When a guy stood looking down at Douglas Island -- suddenly created out of fog -- his soul leaped down the side of the mountain, sensing that God was there to receive him with open arms. But fortunately, as one hopes, his body had more sense and held him gripped onto the lookout high on the mountaintop, having forbidden him to jump but leaving him in fear. And this fear was in fact a gift.
*
Matt laughed at the height but Dave was afraid.
Dave's stepfather, an acrophobiac like himself, pinpointed the source of the fear: when you look down, you actually want to jump. A part of you does. The fear is a piece of you that you can't just tear off and discard.
It feels as though God is more there than here. the fear brings salvation present. The possibility, the reality. Then you feel God's love within your fear. Bless God for all creation including my sick racing heart. I will fall but I will also climb.
The lichen clung to the spruce and refused to look around. Something powerful was here. The fog only doubled whatever it was. The boats and refineries at the bottom of the vista looked like toys.
*
Over and over, Dave received evidence of what a bad Christian he was, or that he was not a Christian at all. Whereas his new buddy Matt just rested in his faith and didn't prod it much. After alll, brother, it's all about God, not about me, right?
There was an ambiance of trust around Matt that was too happy to move or change. Obese and alluring, he fit like a puzzle piece into the rich and heavy air of Alaska. But for Dave, happiness itself was problematic and difficult to identify or seize. Faith backed away from it. If he were to feel it, his first response would be to prod it and push it until it was no longer itself. No longer happy.
When he walked along he sidewalk and a stranger jostled him, his first impulse was always to haul off and punch the guy. Only a second later he remembered not only not to do it but not want to -- because you're walking with God, remember? But there was always that second filled with rage, to remind him of who he was. His decency was something hastily applied, on top, not really him.
*
It was like Meryl Streep's horrible acting. In a turkey like The Hours you could watch her react to the other character, you could see the wheels lifting the tram. She was saying: Now how shall I play the next line? Everything voulu, everything willed in isolation. You could watch the decision being made, you could see it form. Then came the vibrant and sincere acting, but it was too late, it came after a hesitation that told you how artificial the feeling was.
And Dave's Christianity was like that. There was a forced quality to his goodness that he himself couldn't stand. He would fall down the chute of anger or lust or greed, then pick himself up, climb up again to the distant regions blessed by God, but always wondering if the blessing could really be meant for him. Well, the climbing was painful and the pain was real. There was something to that. There was no bad acting there.
*
Is bad luck that brings you to God really so bad? If it breaks your spirit, is it bad? Are you sure?
Is the guy who loses all his money and learns not to rely on it someone you would pity? Has the badness brought him to a better place? Is that new mountaintop good?
Is the pain such a terrible thing?
If life considered in cold blood would be a chutes and ladders game, with lots of small climbs and lots of sudden falls, then whad would your own cold blood tell you? Weren't falls often more beautiful than climbs? In God's judgment was it the case that down was up and upward down?
SPIRITUAL TEMPTATION TO SUICIDE?
When a guy stood looking down at Douglas Island -- suddenly created out of fog -- his soul leaped down the side of the mountain, sensing that God was there to receive him with open arms. But fortunately, as one hopes, his body had more sense and held him gripped onto the lookout high on the mountaintop, having forbidden him to jump but leaving him in fear. And this fear was in fact a gift.
*
Matt laughed at the height but Dave was afraid.
Dave's stepfather, an acrophobiac like himself, pinpointed the source of the fear: when you look down, you actually want to jump. A part of you does. The fear is a piece of you that you can't just tear off and discard.
It feels as though God is more there than here. the fear brings salvation present. The possibility, the reality. Then you feel God's love within your fear. Bless God for all creation including my sick racing heart. I will fall but I will also climb.
The lichen clung to the spruce and refused to look around. Something powerful was here. The fog only doubled whatever it was. The boats and refineries at the bottom of the vista looked like toys.
*
Over and over, Dave received evidence of what a bad Christian he was, or that he was not a Christian at all. Whereas his new buddy Matt just rested in his faith and didn't prod it much. After alll, brother, it's all about God, not about me, right?
There was an ambiance of trust around Matt that was too happy to move or change. Obese and alluring, he fit like a puzzle piece into the rich and heavy air of Alaska. But for Dave, happiness itself was problematic and difficult to identify or seize. Faith backed away from it. If he were to feel it, his first response would be to prod it and push it until it was no longer itself. No longer happy.
When he walked along he sidewalk and a stranger jostled him, his first impulse was always to haul off and punch the guy. Only a second later he remembered not only not to do it but not want to -- because you're walking with God, remember? But there was always that second filled with rage, to remind him of who he was. His decency was something hastily applied, on top, not really him.
*
It was like Meryl Streep's horrible acting. In a turkey like The Hours you could watch her react to the other character, you could see the wheels lifting the tram. She was saying: Now how shall I play the next line? Everything voulu, everything willed in isolation. You could watch the decision being made, you could see it form. Then came the vibrant and sincere acting, but it was too late, it came after a hesitation that told you how artificial the feeling was.
And Dave's Christianity was like that. There was a forced quality to his goodness that he himself couldn't stand. He would fall down the chute of anger or lust or greed, then pick himself up, climb up again to the distant regions blessed by God, but always wondering if the blessing could really be meant for him. Well, the climbing was painful and the pain was real. There was something to that. There was no bad acting there.
*
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