*
Most threshholds you can't even feel -- take the equator, you feel the same on either side. Long term something definitely changes, with a small fruit on top that signifies your eventual or sudden awareness that something has changed. There is not an objective "moment" of change, because change always includes subjectivity either within it or wrapped around it. There is a quasi-physical occurrence, and then there is the awareness of it. One of them may be sudden while the other takes centuries. Sometimes awareness is so quick that it comes like lightning before the "physical" thing it is aware of has even quite happened. Sometimes the other way around -- a split-second change wrapped in long years of response.
Take being well, being ill. A well person stops to ask himself how he feels and discovers he is ill. Too bad! And at the same moment an ill person, a person who has been ill for years, recovers and heals but the healing is not instantaneous. The crossing over is so subtle, so gradual. You cannot analyze this, you can only stand in it -- on one side or the other.
I would rather *be* well than *feel* well any day. Awareness is wonderful but what I really want is what it is aware of.
Idle thoughts? As my thoughts continue and give way to each other, suddenly, imperceptibly, August becomes September. But those who were ill in August are probably not suddenly well in September. God has tons of patience, and even the hour hand on a watch moves in a feverish hurry by comparison to this patience. I believe I will be well the day (or decade) when I am able to accept God's concept of time and live within it obediently. Things just don't move quickly -- except in those terrible "moments" when they do. And those tend to be "moments" that last forever.
What a ridiculously ornate way this is of saying that September will continue August's theme of "getting well". Speaking for myself, I have more recovery to do and maybe a little more time to do it in. How about you?
*
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Story: The ex-con (Part 3). Playing the role of a Christian
*
"Playing the role". But what would it mean *not* to play the role?
Tattoos are of the skin and forever but you can still take them off. It costs money but what is money after all? Just something people pass around. Tattoos are of the skin. But Christianity is more, it is more inward. It is thus more bodily still. It is imprinted so deep that you can't peel it off.
Nor do you just pass it around to other humans as though it were fungible, moveable, a mere thing like money. It is worth too much to bandy around.
"True knights of faith can never teach but only witness." (Grafitti found in the head at Soren's cafe.)
*
Christianity is so deep that even if you sin (which may God prevent -- but then you are only a human, and sin is what humans do, by coercion, by choice, at work at play) okay, even if you sin somehow your sin is done as a Christian, which means among other things that it isn't all that much fun. That's another story, "the ex-con part 75". But meanwhile the need to sin goes very deep. But after all, Christianity goes even deeper than that. If it survives in you, it survives in your most molten core, a substance not an attribute. It cannot be peeled away, it is not a skin or of skin. You must remember this during sleepless nights when you thrash like a fish.
So what does it mean to "play the rol"e? It means anything else besides actually being a Christian. For instance, when your faith touches your core but you yourself do not. It consists of the slightest lie. Even maybe the white lie, where you say you're fine when you're not. Dave, the truth is that you are practically never "fine".
*
As the weeks passed, Dave watched Mary Louise lead "the prayers of the people", which were become the most spiritless part of their service. By this time he was virtually certain that she was a criminal, at least at church. She was robbing the till, embezzling without shame. And praying at the same time, in front of people, and he didn't see how.
Nor did he know how to respond to the sound of her voice at prayer. Of course, there was a large selection of Pharasaical responses available but as a broken person, an ex-con, a closeted queer, an aging friendless loser, he didn't feel righteousness was quite the thing, quite available, at least not for him. Not available, not appropriate. That would have been "playing the role" even more than he already was. When all he wanted was to be this thing -- "Christian" -- and not to play it like some actor on TV.
About the embezzlement, he had no right to speak and no right to be silent. So he had the choice between two different sins, which only meant that the way he'd lived up to now mus have been wrong, to have led him to this impasse. Sin had been a long term strategy, not just a single act. To become, not even a "good person" but simply passable and adequate, one saved through fire, well that was going to take more patience than he seemed to have. The first step was to stop playin the role.
*
So he said, Oh Elena, someone really ought to be double checking the church's books, don't you think, and she only answered: Oh don't worry, Mary Louise already does that. So we are safe, we don't have to worry. And he said, Oh Elena, and then she looked over at him with a certain discomfort, as they walked home together from some meeting. I bet she doesn't even want to be standing next to me, he thought.
It's not right, it's not a just thing, to put her or anybody in that role, Dave said. Think of the pressure. Then there is temptation. Even church money just reeks of wrongdoing, don't you think? Why, Elena, I never go near money unless I have a bodyguard with me to protect me, it's not even a friend, better yet to have someone who isn't even a friend. Someone upright and stiff like you.
You don't understand, Elena. Money stares at you and says, Go ahead and take me, I'm just money. I think a lot of thefts are initiated by the money itself, just sitting there being money, while some poor stupid robber stands over it and feels the influence.
*
Elise was a hard person to be with. She scrutinized him for some seconds. Looking into her eyes felt like looking into a mirror. Dave, babe, she finally said. Money has no power over a Christian. It buys things we're not even really supposed to want. Still, if you want to go over the account books yourself? And Dave said no no no. No no. Not that. As for that: no no no. I never said I wanted to do that
That was the night they ran into Don's cat, spine to navel, running around forlorn along the avenue.
*
"Playing the role". But what would it mean *not* to play the role?
Tattoos are of the skin and forever but you can still take them off. It costs money but what is money after all? Just something people pass around. Tattoos are of the skin. But Christianity is more, it is more inward. It is thus more bodily still. It is imprinted so deep that you can't peel it off.
Nor do you just pass it around to other humans as though it were fungible, moveable, a mere thing like money. It is worth too much to bandy around.
"True knights of faith can never teach but only witness." (Grafitti found in the head at Soren's cafe.)
*
Christianity is so deep that even if you sin (which may God prevent -- but then you are only a human, and sin is what humans do, by coercion, by choice, at work at play) okay, even if you sin somehow your sin is done as a Christian, which means among other things that it isn't all that much fun. That's another story, "the ex-con part 75". But meanwhile the need to sin goes very deep. But after all, Christianity goes even deeper than that. If it survives in you, it survives in your most molten core, a substance not an attribute. It cannot be peeled away, it is not a skin or of skin. You must remember this during sleepless nights when you thrash like a fish.
So what does it mean to "play the rol"e? It means anything else besides actually being a Christian. For instance, when your faith touches your core but you yourself do not. It consists of the slightest lie. Even maybe the white lie, where you say you're fine when you're not. Dave, the truth is that you are practically never "fine".
*
As the weeks passed, Dave watched Mary Louise lead "the prayers of the people", which were become the most spiritless part of their service. By this time he was virtually certain that she was a criminal, at least at church. She was robbing the till, embezzling without shame. And praying at the same time, in front of people, and he didn't see how.
Nor did he know how to respond to the sound of her voice at prayer. Of course, there was a large selection of Pharasaical responses available but as a broken person, an ex-con, a closeted queer, an aging friendless loser, he didn't feel righteousness was quite the thing, quite available, at least not for him. Not available, not appropriate. That would have been "playing the role" even more than he already was. When all he wanted was to be this thing -- "Christian" -- and not to play it like some actor on TV.
About the embezzlement, he had no right to speak and no right to be silent. So he had the choice between two different sins, which only meant that the way he'd lived up to now mus have been wrong, to have led him to this impasse. Sin had been a long term strategy, not just a single act. To become, not even a "good person" but simply passable and adequate, one saved through fire, well that was going to take more patience than he seemed to have. The first step was to stop playin the role.
*
So he said, Oh Elena, someone really ought to be double checking the church's books, don't you think, and she only answered: Oh don't worry, Mary Louise already does that. So we are safe, we don't have to worry. And he said, Oh Elena, and then she looked over at him with a certain discomfort, as they walked home together from some meeting. I bet she doesn't even want to be standing next to me, he thought.
It's not right, it's not a just thing, to put her or anybody in that role, Dave said. Think of the pressure. Then there is temptation. Even church money just reeks of wrongdoing, don't you think? Why, Elena, I never go near money unless I have a bodyguard with me to protect me, it's not even a friend, better yet to have someone who isn't even a friend. Someone upright and stiff like you.
You don't understand, Elena. Money stares at you and says, Go ahead and take me, I'm just money. I think a lot of thefts are initiated by the money itself, just sitting there being money, while some poor stupid robber stands over it and feels the influence.
*
Elise was a hard person to be with. She scrutinized him for some seconds. Looking into her eyes felt like looking into a mirror. Dave, babe, she finally said. Money has no power over a Christian. It buys things we're not even really supposed to want. Still, if you want to go over the account books yourself? And Dave said no no no. No no. Not that. As for that: no no no. I never said I wanted to do that
That was the night they ran into Don's cat, spine to navel, running around forlorn along the avenue.
*
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Her howl
*
And the dog who sits at the front window howling for the master... that dog is smarter, knows more than the ones who are sure they are fine.
*
And the dog who sits at the front window howling for the master... that dog is smarter, knows more than the ones who are sure they are fine.
*
Story: The Ex-Con (Part 2)
*
One of the tricks used by a good white collar criminal is to cover his tracks with a layer of boredom. If he is cooking the books (and there's no reason why he is necessarily a "he") then the transactions are broken down in countless futile baby steps, in the hope that anyone examining them will soon get a headache and just give up. Well, life depends on trust, the inspector will say, closing the books with a sigh. Or: only God would have the patience to scrutinize this fully.
When Dave took a small part in a small capital campaign for the church, he glanced at the account books, then looked a bit harder. Something in the back of his head began to tingle, as he spotted the unnecessary breakings down of simple payments. It wasn't really anything, just a style that he noticed. He felt he recognized it. An attack of accountant's nausea swept over him. He said nothing and was quieter than before.
*
The church's bookkeeper was an outgoing woman named Mary Louise. She had no enemies, no one ever criticized her. She'd had some domestic sorrow that no one directly talked about so it hung undismissed as part of every incomplete conversation concerning her. Now she was a single mother with 2 small unruly kids. She had a couple of part-time unstable jobs. Somehow she managed o survive from month to month in a community where most people drove expensive cars and traveled to Europe. In that one way, she and the ex-con were similar.
*
They tended to regard each other with suspicion. What are you doing in this church? each of them seemed to be asking the other. Why aren't you out there explicitly among the broken? Who *invited* you?
*
Drop this whole thing, babe, Dave's sister said, rubbing her little brother's temples. Matt her boyfriend sat in the corner and whistled to himself. Matt was of course uninvolved.
Dave, whatever is happening over there is none of your business, Dinah said. *Your* business is to keep your nose out of, that is, never ever ever again, nunca, jamas, even *touch* an account book, baby. Picture those numbers as surrounded by an electric field. Mushrooms in the meadow with evil drooping gills. Please. You don't need that stuff.
Baby, for you, opening account books is the same as me walking into a casino.
Just
don't -- and then
that's solved.
*
One of the tricks used by a good white collar criminal is to cover his tracks with a layer of boredom. If he is cooking the books (and there's no reason why he is necessarily a "he") then the transactions are broken down in countless futile baby steps, in the hope that anyone examining them will soon get a headache and just give up. Well, life depends on trust, the inspector will say, closing the books with a sigh. Or: only God would have the patience to scrutinize this fully.
When Dave took a small part in a small capital campaign for the church, he glanced at the account books, then looked a bit harder. Something in the back of his head began to tingle, as he spotted the unnecessary breakings down of simple payments. It wasn't really anything, just a style that he noticed. He felt he recognized it. An attack of accountant's nausea swept over him. He said nothing and was quieter than before.
*
The church's bookkeeper was an outgoing woman named Mary Louise. She had no enemies, no one ever criticized her. She'd had some domestic sorrow that no one directly talked about so it hung undismissed as part of every incomplete conversation concerning her. Now she was a single mother with 2 small unruly kids. She had a couple of part-time unstable jobs. Somehow she managed o survive from month to month in a community where most people drove expensive cars and traveled to Europe. In that one way, she and the ex-con were similar.
*
They tended to regard each other with suspicion. What are you doing in this church? each of them seemed to be asking the other. Why aren't you out there explicitly among the broken? Who *invited* you?
*
Drop this whole thing, babe, Dave's sister said, rubbing her little brother's temples. Matt her boyfriend sat in the corner and whistled to himself. Matt was of course uninvolved.
Dave, whatever is happening over there is none of your business, Dinah said. *Your* business is to keep your nose out of, that is, never ever ever again, nunca, jamas, even *touch* an account book, baby. Picture those numbers as surrounded by an electric field. Mushrooms in the meadow with evil drooping gills. Please. You don't need that stuff.
Baby, for you, opening account books is the same as me walking into a casino.
Just
don't -- and then
that's solved.
*
Friday, August 27, 2004
Parable of the Nazi Kommandant's Wife
*
So the 3 of them in a restaurant, Elise, Scott, Mary Louise, sat discussing the parable of the Nazi Kommandant's wife. Have you heard it?
She was born a Christian, raised a Christian and, sometime soon after her all but compulsory marriage -- imposed without appeal by a dominating father -- she suffered a Christian conversion. From Christianity to deeper Christianity, and it almost killed her. For weeks she didn't eat. She lost her first child. Her husband's patience vaporized. Hours praying and talking to herself. Growing weaker and stronger at the same time. When the war got underway her husband was assigned to run a certain camp.
Did she know about the camp? Her mystical tendencies were like a fog obscuring certain realities. She had never in her life met a Jew, that she knew of. She had no interest in German patriotism, in politics at well. The faces on the coins she never cared to look at.
Vigils, fasts, she became one of those Christians that cannot hide their faith even when they don't evangelize.
A child came who loved her. She protected the young one from its father. Without a word of criticism. Without ever a word.
*
And there was smoke from the building at the other side of town, where one didn't go or couldn't go. And she never asked her husband anything about his work.
In some ways she was what I'd like to be, Mary Louise said. Scott stared at her, not sure if she was joking or if this was one of those things women said and only women understood.
*
There was smoke, Elise said. What do you suppose was burning, Mary Louise?
What? Are you saying it was one of *those* camps?
*
Well like most parables this one wandered slightly off the track of ordinary realism. There was a day when some sort of explosion occurred or a bomb fell -- or God's thunder from heaven -- and a fair number of civilians fell down without rising afterwards. The Kommandant's wife was one of them.
When she found herself tangentially grazing the beautiful soft sphere of heaven, soft and comfy as a giant fitball, she couldn't help smiling. I have wanted to be here for a long time.
The problem was that it was people that entered heaven -- that is, people, not individuals but entities with culture and a worship that bound them together. You didn't get in as a celebrity or as a localized believer.
So the guardians asked her not just about herself but about the place she'd occupied and changed or failed to change. I am not a Nazi, she said, I barely even know who they are.
*
Was this answer good enough? We can't answer, Elise said. Not only because we don't happen to have the answer but also because we don't have the right -- I mean, even to speculate from outside.
How many African babies do you suppose have starved to death since the time we sat down to this dinner?
*
So the 3 of them in a restaurant, Elise, Scott, Mary Louise, sat discussing the parable of the Nazi Kommandant's wife. Have you heard it?
She was born a Christian, raised a Christian and, sometime soon after her all but compulsory marriage -- imposed without appeal by a dominating father -- she suffered a Christian conversion. From Christianity to deeper Christianity, and it almost killed her. For weeks she didn't eat. She lost her first child. Her husband's patience vaporized. Hours praying and talking to herself. Growing weaker and stronger at the same time. When the war got underway her husband was assigned to run a certain camp.
Did she know about the camp? Her mystical tendencies were like a fog obscuring certain realities. She had never in her life met a Jew, that she knew of. She had no interest in German patriotism, in politics at well. The faces on the coins she never cared to look at.
Vigils, fasts, she became one of those Christians that cannot hide their faith even when they don't evangelize.
A child came who loved her. She protected the young one from its father. Without a word of criticism. Without ever a word.
*
And there was smoke from the building at the other side of town, where one didn't go or couldn't go. And she never asked her husband anything about his work.
In some ways she was what I'd like to be, Mary Louise said. Scott stared at her, not sure if she was joking or if this was one of those things women said and only women understood.
*
There was smoke, Elise said. What do you suppose was burning, Mary Louise?
What? Are you saying it was one of *those* camps?
*
Well like most parables this one wandered slightly off the track of ordinary realism. There was a day when some sort of explosion occurred or a bomb fell -- or God's thunder from heaven -- and a fair number of civilians fell down without rising afterwards. The Kommandant's wife was one of them.
When she found herself tangentially grazing the beautiful soft sphere of heaven, soft and comfy as a giant fitball, she couldn't help smiling. I have wanted to be here for a long time.
The problem was that it was people that entered heaven -- that is, people, not individuals but entities with culture and a worship that bound them together. You didn't get in as a celebrity or as a localized believer.
So the guardians asked her not just about herself but about the place she'd occupied and changed or failed to change. I am not a Nazi, she said, I barely even know who they are.
*
Was this answer good enough? We can't answer, Elise said. Not only because we don't happen to have the answer but also because we don't have the right -- I mean, even to speculate from outside.
How many African babies do you suppose have starved to death since the time we sat down to this dinner?
*
Story: The ex-con (Part 1)
*
There was an ex-con in the church membership. Only a few people in the congregation, a very few, knew about the man's past in prison. Father Sam had been one of the few to know and he hadn't discussed it with anyone else. Nevertheless, when the man looked around at the other members he always had the feeling that they knew. And this was maybe just part of the man, part of his nature, part of what your nature becomes when you've been through that. On the other hand, maybe they did all somehow know.
*
During a desperate part of his first marriage, he had embezzled money from his employer, someone he loved, someone who trusted him. There had been an illness and absence on his part, then a check of the books, and then there had been the prison time. That was a time for abuse and reflection. That was a time when one tried to look at what happened from a distance and realized that any distance was unreal, unsustainable. Because I did do those things. They happened. What I am now is the effect of a cause I don't dare try to shake off. the story is about me, I am not just watching it. You are the man.
For anyone who has this kind of experience, what happens next is very strange: suddenly every story is about you, you hear yourself in them. The paragraphs point at you. You don't like at all what you hear but this "don't like" is very important because it is the key to your recovery.
*
The ex-con's name was Dave but not many people called him by his name. That was the kind of person he was. If you needed his help and he was standing in the next room you didn't call him, although he would have come. He would have come but this was never tested. He just wasn't a person you would call.
If he had wanted to be called, that would have had to be one of those wants and desires to be given up like a Lenten sweet. Because a person calls only what is somehow already his own, what somehow belongs to him. But if darkness surrounds you, you do not try to call it, unless you are already so fully in it that the darkness is all there is to call.
[END OF PART 1]
*
There was an ex-con in the church membership. Only a few people in the congregation, a very few, knew about the man's past in prison. Father Sam had been one of the few to know and he hadn't discussed it with anyone else. Nevertheless, when the man looked around at the other members he always had the feeling that they knew. And this was maybe just part of the man, part of his nature, part of what your nature becomes when you've been through that. On the other hand, maybe they did all somehow know.
*
During a desperate part of his first marriage, he had embezzled money from his employer, someone he loved, someone who trusted him. There had been an illness and absence on his part, then a check of the books, and then there had been the prison time. That was a time for abuse and reflection. That was a time when one tried to look at what happened from a distance and realized that any distance was unreal, unsustainable. Because I did do those things. They happened. What I am now is the effect of a cause I don't dare try to shake off. the story is about me, I am not just watching it. You are the man.
For anyone who has this kind of experience, what happens next is very strange: suddenly every story is about you, you hear yourself in them. The paragraphs point at you. You don't like at all what you hear but this "don't like" is very important because it is the key to your recovery.
*
The ex-con's name was Dave but not many people called him by his name. That was the kind of person he was. If you needed his help and he was standing in the next room you didn't call him, although he would have come. He would have come but this was never tested. He just wasn't a person you would call.
If he had wanted to be called, that would have had to be one of those wants and desires to be given up like a Lenten sweet. Because a person calls only what is somehow already his own, what somehow belongs to him. But if darkness surrounds you, you do not try to call it, unless you are already so fully in it that the darkness is all there is to call.
[END OF PART 1]
*
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Myth of wellness
*
Today the Pharisee is the person who is well. He (perhaps she) looks over at her mentally ill neighbor and says, Thank God I'm not like that person over there (while all the mentally ill person can manage is the scriptural plea: Jesus, please rescue me).
The well person, the Pharisee, looks over at his ill brother and sees no resemblance, missing the fact that the ill person's condition is also his own.
*
Today the Pharisee is the person who is well. He (perhaps she) looks over at her mentally ill neighbor and says, Thank God I'm not like that person over there (while all the mentally ill person can manage is the scriptural plea: Jesus, please rescue me).
The well person, the Pharisee, looks over at his ill brother and sees no resemblance, missing the fact that the ill person's condition is also his own.
*
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Story: The 2 churches
*
An “inward anthropologist” – one lost in study of her sect and self – might have discerned 2 churches co-existing in one building, one time and space, even one creed more or less, yet the 2 churches clearly had little in common.
There was first of all the church that was functioning properly and that met for a short period every Sunday. Well dressed families would drive up to the building, socialize quietly, worship in due order, socialize a bit more then drive away. All was well both with them and the institution that served them. The moms who were the driving force in this effort definitely saw themselves (and I am in no position to say “saw themselves wrongly”) as good Christians whose lives in general harmonized with the hour they gave to the gospel every week. There was no conflict there. The rest of the week consisted in working and raising children. Church neither helped them nor hindered them in these other activities nor did they seem to expect it to help or hinder. It was simply church. They did not make a big deal of it, make a big deal of going, they didn’t pretend to be profoundly moved. But they did attend, as often as they could.
*
The other church was more ragtag. It was harder to see because its members tried to avoid any display, not out of humility, more as a matter of low self-esteem or shame or just the unwillingness to be "seen". This was the church of the broken. In some communities it consisted of one person, in some communities none at all. In some places it might be the broken who filled all the pews. there were even some communities in which the true congregation was the one that stood outside, afraid to come in, unsure if invited, unsure if welcome.
Some of this 2nd church's members had never in fact been inside the church. Or not for a very long time
Of the collection of the broken there were some who had tried to step outside but hadn't quite been able. Matt the carpenter had once been absurdly eager for communion. Tasting Jesus was more powerful than any form of sex, it was like the joy of unwrapping an endless present. It got him through the week. But one Sunday morning after he'd had to work on an emergency job, he got to church just as people were homing in on the rail, and plunged in without waiting. He was dirty and smelled like the worker he was. The children stared at him and a young matron took the trouble to speak with him after the sacrament. That was the day he discovered which church he was really a member of. And after that, the taste of God was filtered through a mixture of resentment and shame. You couldn't pretend it didn't matter who was standing next to you.
*
So that it turned out that for the church of the broken everything about the church was also broken. When hymns were intense the broken needed them to be more intense still. When the music was bland they twisted with pain. When the theology was strict they felt constricted, when beliefs grew loose they felt themselves cast loose. Nothing was allowed to just fit and be fitting. It was as though a God that was critical of them was the only God they could have. And there was no amount of God that could have possibly been enough for them. As things were, they seemed unable to be happy. Their incomes were low, their clothes rather out of date. Their presence tended to be ignored in capital campaigns. The kiss of peace somehow slipped off their faces. Even the most generous moms found themselves backing away. It's not personal, they insisted, yet were inwardly certain that it was.
*
In America, everywhere that you looked for the Body of Christ you would find it torn into several pieces, yet this couldn't be the final truth, or even the semi-final one. Nobody wished it to be this way. No Christian actively sought schism.
Yet things held in their dysfunctional patter as if indefinitely. People rarely crossed the aisle or straddled a doorway. If there was relief it was only that -- as Elise noticed -- now and then a mom would cross the room, drop to her knees, cross herself and quickly pray. Perhaps for an hour without stopping. Often it was a "newborn" single mom whose guy had just given into the urge not to be married anymore. He became as if dead to the community and the wife's eyes swollen with hectic tears. She had joined the church of the broken without a shiver of hesitation, while her children watched in astonishment. She would begin praying and doing good works as though there were no tomorrow. The flock of the abandoned would stand around her timidly, hoping to absorb from her proximity the secret of how to become this entity they had longed to be for ever so many years and with such limited success: an honest to God practicing Christian.
*
An “inward anthropologist” – one lost in study of her sect and self – might have discerned 2 churches co-existing in one building, one time and space, even one creed more or less, yet the 2 churches clearly had little in common.
There was first of all the church that was functioning properly and that met for a short period every Sunday. Well dressed families would drive up to the building, socialize quietly, worship in due order, socialize a bit more then drive away. All was well both with them and the institution that served them. The moms who were the driving force in this effort definitely saw themselves (and I am in no position to say “saw themselves wrongly”) as good Christians whose lives in general harmonized with the hour they gave to the gospel every week. There was no conflict there. The rest of the week consisted in working and raising children. Church neither helped them nor hindered them in these other activities nor did they seem to expect it to help or hinder. It was simply church. They did not make a big deal of it, make a big deal of going, they didn’t pretend to be profoundly moved. But they did attend, as often as they could.
*
The other church was more ragtag. It was harder to see because its members tried to avoid any display, not out of humility, more as a matter of low self-esteem or shame or just the unwillingness to be "seen". This was the church of the broken. In some communities it consisted of one person, in some communities none at all. In some places it might be the broken who filled all the pews. there were even some communities in which the true congregation was the one that stood outside, afraid to come in, unsure if invited, unsure if welcome.
Some of this 2nd church's members had never in fact been inside the church. Or not for a very long time
Of the collection of the broken there were some who had tried to step outside but hadn't quite been able. Matt the carpenter had once been absurdly eager for communion. Tasting Jesus was more powerful than any form of sex, it was like the joy of unwrapping an endless present. It got him through the week. But one Sunday morning after he'd had to work on an emergency job, he got to church just as people were homing in on the rail, and plunged in without waiting. He was dirty and smelled like the worker he was. The children stared at him and a young matron took the trouble to speak with him after the sacrament. That was the day he discovered which church he was really a member of. And after that, the taste of God was filtered through a mixture of resentment and shame. You couldn't pretend it didn't matter who was standing next to you.
*
So that it turned out that for the church of the broken everything about the church was also broken. When hymns were intense the broken needed them to be more intense still. When the music was bland they twisted with pain. When the theology was strict they felt constricted, when beliefs grew loose they felt themselves cast loose. Nothing was allowed to just fit and be fitting. It was as though a God that was critical of them was the only God they could have. And there was no amount of God that could have possibly been enough for them. As things were, they seemed unable to be happy. Their incomes were low, their clothes rather out of date. Their presence tended to be ignored in capital campaigns. The kiss of peace somehow slipped off their faces. Even the most generous moms found themselves backing away. It's not personal, they insisted, yet were inwardly certain that it was.
*
In America, everywhere that you looked for the Body of Christ you would find it torn into several pieces, yet this couldn't be the final truth, or even the semi-final one. Nobody wished it to be this way. No Christian actively sought schism.
Yet things held in their dysfunctional patter as if indefinitely. People rarely crossed the aisle or straddled a doorway. If there was relief it was only that -- as Elise noticed -- now and then a mom would cross the room, drop to her knees, cross herself and quickly pray. Perhaps for an hour without stopping. Often it was a "newborn" single mom whose guy had just given into the urge not to be married anymore. He became as if dead to the community and the wife's eyes swollen with hectic tears. She had joined the church of the broken without a shiver of hesitation, while her children watched in astonishment. She would begin praying and doing good works as though there were no tomorrow. The flock of the abandoned would stand around her timidly, hoping to absorb from her proximity the secret of how to become this entity they had longed to be for ever so many years and with such limited success: an honest to God practicing Christian.
*
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Story: The rabbit hole
*
So she was sick, but she was cranky and impossible to be with. When they passed a secluded chapel she asked her husband to stop the car. How efficient and precise, how athletic, how staccato each step she made. She pulled the door open and disappeared as into a rabbit hole. He sat in the car and felt terrible.
Be brief, my love. Get the job done and then say: that's that. Let us not get bogged down.
In the chapel was nothing. No seat, no altar, no decorations but the ghosts of decorations. She saw a spot on the wall where there had been a cross -- there was now a sort of fungal outline. In the center there was a piece of rusted iron sticking out like a hazard. She touched it and her hand buzzed. Later she found blood on the ball of her thumb, but not now.
What do I want? Why am I here? She closed her eyes and moved in a circle -- her posture became more malleable. You could hear a tiny snap. That was the initial resistance breaking.
I have no purpose being here. I would like just for once to have no plan. No structure, no furtive intent.
Make me available.
The chapel was vaguely circular and when she opened her eyes she wasn't sure which door was the one she'd used before. And she liked not being sure. She leaned on one of them -- not the same one, it couldn't have been -- and tried to wedge it open. Why did it resist so much?
There was a gravel path and many dying trees. The ground was curved and yet it went on forever. Her shoes were totally wrong for the ground.
She found herself further advanced on the path without having the memory of walking. That wasn't fair, wasn't right. She wanted to do the walking properly, that is, consciously -- otherwise how could she be positive she had really arrived?
There was no place to sit anywhere. She felt certain that if she just kept walking she would find a place to sit. The ground simply repelled one but it wasn't clear why.
Why am I always trying to be the tough guy? Well in part because when I act otherwise it doesn't seem to be me. The person I would wish God to shower with mercy is not my worldly persona or my lookalike, proud of all her earnest striving, but instead is simply me. And who might that be really? She found that the path went continually uphill. When she reached the landmark of a stunted oak she was sure that the path would now curve back to the chapel. It would surely be downhill. But no. It continued to rise instead.
This was not like some teenage thrill ride where kids stepped onto the ride, got scared, and then returned to earth as exactly the people they had been before the ride.
Traveling this felt equivalent to changing, it was a form of change. Up ahead she heard the sound of trickling water. There was an old man holding an old green hose and watering a bare pot of ground. He was wasting all the water. His face showed considerable irritation at her presence.
You are supposed to be here, he said. But not now. Not yet.
Hearing him the woman felt an old panic rise from her bowels to her throat. First it was the panic of recognition or rather of being recognized but soon enough it changed into an even less acceptable form, a sort of panic made out of panic itself and therefore needing no cause. She turned to go back the way she came but it was uphill too!
When she turned to look at the old man his eyes had softened. Maybe you will remember at least some small piece of this later, he said.
As if without moving he stood next to her with his hand on her shoulder. Close your eyes. It was as if he spun her and then she found herself back in the chapel, more or less facing the two doors. When one of them resisted her pushing she gave up quickly (that was not like her!) and transferred her attention to the other door. It led her right back to the car where her partner sat waiting. How was it? he asked and she didn't know what to say.
Later she asked him how long she'd been in the chapel. Less than a minute, he answered.
*
So she was sick, but she was cranky and impossible to be with. When they passed a secluded chapel she asked her husband to stop the car. How efficient and precise, how athletic, how staccato each step she made. She pulled the door open and disappeared as into a rabbit hole. He sat in the car and felt terrible.
Be brief, my love. Get the job done and then say: that's that. Let us not get bogged down.
In the chapel was nothing. No seat, no altar, no decorations but the ghosts of decorations. She saw a spot on the wall where there had been a cross -- there was now a sort of fungal outline. In the center there was a piece of rusted iron sticking out like a hazard. She touched it and her hand buzzed. Later she found blood on the ball of her thumb, but not now.
What do I want? Why am I here? She closed her eyes and moved in a circle -- her posture became more malleable. You could hear a tiny snap. That was the initial resistance breaking.
I have no purpose being here. I would like just for once to have no plan. No structure, no furtive intent.
Make me available.
The chapel was vaguely circular and when she opened her eyes she wasn't sure which door was the one she'd used before. And she liked not being sure. She leaned on one of them -- not the same one, it couldn't have been -- and tried to wedge it open. Why did it resist so much?
There was a gravel path and many dying trees. The ground was curved and yet it went on forever. Her shoes were totally wrong for the ground.
She found herself further advanced on the path without having the memory of walking. That wasn't fair, wasn't right. She wanted to do the walking properly, that is, consciously -- otherwise how could she be positive she had really arrived?
There was no place to sit anywhere. She felt certain that if she just kept walking she would find a place to sit. The ground simply repelled one but it wasn't clear why.
Why am I always trying to be the tough guy? Well in part because when I act otherwise it doesn't seem to be me. The person I would wish God to shower with mercy is not my worldly persona or my lookalike, proud of all her earnest striving, but instead is simply me. And who might that be really? She found that the path went continually uphill. When she reached the landmark of a stunted oak she was sure that the path would now curve back to the chapel. It would surely be downhill. But no. It continued to rise instead.
This was not like some teenage thrill ride where kids stepped onto the ride, got scared, and then returned to earth as exactly the people they had been before the ride.
Traveling this felt equivalent to changing, it was a form of change. Up ahead she heard the sound of trickling water. There was an old man holding an old green hose and watering a bare pot of ground. He was wasting all the water. His face showed considerable irritation at her presence.
You are supposed to be here, he said. But not now. Not yet.
Hearing him the woman felt an old panic rise from her bowels to her throat. First it was the panic of recognition or rather of being recognized but soon enough it changed into an even less acceptable form, a sort of panic made out of panic itself and therefore needing no cause. She turned to go back the way she came but it was uphill too!
When she turned to look at the old man his eyes had softened. Maybe you will remember at least some small piece of this later, he said.
As if without moving he stood next to her with his hand on her shoulder. Close your eyes. It was as if he spun her and then she found herself back in the chapel, more or less facing the two doors. When one of them resisted her pushing she gave up quickly (that was not like her!) and transferred her attention to the other door. It led her right back to the car where her partner sat waiting. How was it? he asked and she didn't know what to say.
Later she asked him how long she'd been in the chapel. Less than a minute, he answered.
*
Sonnet: A faithful lover
*
He betrayed those he loved, he always had.
And God was one of those
whom he "adored" and "treated bad".
God was like an abused and trampled rose.
I didn't mean to do it, so he said,
not once but several times -- repetitive,
mechanical, and then would plead
sheer weakness and of course God would forgive,
again, again. God didn't seem to learn
how hollow this man was, and what a sham
this man's impassioned promise to return
to the last faithful one who'd stuck with him,
when all the others (and that would include
the man himself) had given up and fled.
*
He betrayed those he loved, he always had.
And God was one of those
whom he "adored" and "treated bad".
God was like an abused and trampled rose.
I didn't mean to do it, so he said,
not once but several times -- repetitive,
mechanical, and then would plead
sheer weakness and of course God would forgive,
again, again. God didn't seem to learn
how hollow this man was, and what a sham
this man's impassioned promise to return
to the last faithful one who'd stuck with him,
when all the others (and that would include
the man himself) had given up and fled.
*
A story that is nothing but questions
*
Don? Are you still there? Don? Are you still listening for God? Don? Is there a person stirring inside there still? Are you lost in yourself, lying there on your bed, flooding the couch with lachrymose fluids? Are your ears still open, puppy dog? Those 2 foolish flaps of flesh that don't know how to keep sound out, are they still functioning the way they used to? Don? Don? Do you still hear?
*
Have you pondered this, little Christian? Have you stopped and thought about your brokenness, or are you just groveling in it? And how long will that go on? When do you stop and think about what being broken might be *for*?
Were you better before you were broken? Don? Are you pondering this with honesty? Were you really better, imagining yourself as a strong Christian, a hairy-chested Pelagian guiding others like some sort of mini-God of sanctity? That was better???? Oh honey, wasn't that just a fantasy? Weren't you always a great deal weaker than you pretended to be?
Remember the time when..... and how she cried?
Isn't it better to know you are weak when the fact is that you are? Isn't brokenness more than the crack in a teacup? Doesn't it lead somewhere? Doesn't the fissure make an avenue of its own like a path to hike, isn't there a lane leading through there, don't people travel through here? Haven't you watched them pass, haven't you looked down on them?
*
Isn't there a possibility that this is good? And if it is good, or might be good, why do you flinch and refuse to go the way your own weakness points you to go? Are you acting wisely or refusing to be wise? Is a young girl helped by your breaking down?
Don? Are you listening? Or is your refusal to listen somehow secretly listening? Are you going to just let time, with its undiscriminating destructive power, take care of this for you? Are you not going to look for the truth that is everywhere so also must be here? Are you never going to listen? Does never mean never?
*
Is it some macho thing of yours then to roll around in your own sickness, to feed upon it, to refuse to study it and learn? Is this an important part of your manhood, to refuse to get well? Is refusal a part of you? An intimate part? And if you refuse to listen -- if you ultimately refuse -- ask yourself then, just who is it that you are refusing?
*
Don? Are you still there? Don? Are you still listening for God? Don? Is there a person stirring inside there still? Are you lost in yourself, lying there on your bed, flooding the couch with lachrymose fluids? Are your ears still open, puppy dog? Those 2 foolish flaps of flesh that don't know how to keep sound out, are they still functioning the way they used to? Don? Don? Do you still hear?
*
Have you pondered this, little Christian? Have you stopped and thought about your brokenness, or are you just groveling in it? And how long will that go on? When do you stop and think about what being broken might be *for*?
Were you better before you were broken? Don? Are you pondering this with honesty? Were you really better, imagining yourself as a strong Christian, a hairy-chested Pelagian guiding others like some sort of mini-God of sanctity? That was better???? Oh honey, wasn't that just a fantasy? Weren't you always a great deal weaker than you pretended to be?
Remember the time when..... and how she cried?
Isn't it better to know you are weak when the fact is that you are? Isn't brokenness more than the crack in a teacup? Doesn't it lead somewhere? Doesn't the fissure make an avenue of its own like a path to hike, isn't there a lane leading through there, don't people travel through here? Haven't you watched them pass, haven't you looked down on them?
*
Isn't there a possibility that this is good? And if it is good, or might be good, why do you flinch and refuse to go the way your own weakness points you to go? Are you acting wisely or refusing to be wise? Is a young girl helped by your breaking down?
Don? Are you listening? Or is your refusal to listen somehow secretly listening? Are you going to just let time, with its undiscriminating destructive power, take care of this for you? Are you not going to look for the truth that is everywhere so also must be here? Are you never going to listen? Does never mean never?
*
Is it some macho thing of yours then to roll around in your own sickness, to feed upon it, to refuse to study it and learn? Is this an important part of your manhood, to refuse to get well? Is refusal a part of you? An intimate part? And if you refuse to listen -- if you ultimately refuse -- ask yourself then, just who is it that you are refusing?
*
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Story frag: Role model
*
Oh you crazy guy, why do you leave church at exactly the moment when you need church the most??? Is it because because because the church can only take your joy (which you don't have) and has no use for your sorrow?
Has it rejected you and spit you out?
*
The congregation said, Oh where is Don? And Mary Louise (the bookkeeper, whom you will meet soon) said: He really elevated the spiritual tone, you know. And Dave the hardened criminal (you will meet him too) felt a big hole in his heart, a hole that oddly had exactly the shape of... Don. It was as though a brother had run away.
*
"Create in me a clean heart -- renew me...." The choir sang Psalm 51 but sounded all wrong because Don was missing. The music director fumed. That guy should feel terrible for ruining our harmony.
*
And Dave the criminal brooded in his apartment. Not being great with doctrine, he had been looking for an actual model of the Christian walk, a man whose steps he could follow in his clumsy way. And now that model had just about skulked away and this was the same as not to model anything at all.
*
Oh you crazy guy, why do you leave church at exactly the moment when you need church the most??? Is it because because because the church can only take your joy (which you don't have) and has no use for your sorrow?
Has it rejected you and spit you out?
*
The congregation said, Oh where is Don? And Mary Louise (the bookkeeper, whom you will meet soon) said: He really elevated the spiritual tone, you know. And Dave the hardened criminal (you will meet him too) felt a big hole in his heart, a hole that oddly had exactly the shape of... Don. It was as though a brother had run away.
*
"Create in me a clean heart -- renew me...." The choir sang Psalm 51 but sounded all wrong because Don was missing. The music director fumed. That guy should feel terrible for ruining our harmony.
*
And Dave the criminal brooded in his apartment. Not being great with doctrine, he had been looking for an actual model of the Christian walk, a man whose steps he could follow in his clumsy way. And now that model had just about skulked away and this was the same as not to model anything at all.
*
Monday, August 09, 2004
The Art of Getting Well
*
As for the art of getting well, they say Step 1 is recognizing the sickness, *really* recognizing it, so that your recognition is like a competent person performing diagnosis. Be careful that the recognition is itself not part of the sickness, do not let the recognition get sick or else it will miss an important symptom and even become an important symptom. Step 2? What is Step 2? Step 2 is not letting go of Step 1 when self-loathing detonates like a home-made explosive. So Step 2 is Step 1 en serio. Si, hablo en serio. This is the real thing and the hardest part. Step 3, they say, is to take care that when you explode, as you will, you make sure it is in God's hands that this happens. Do not ever trust a mere human to make you well. Do not ever be alone with another human without God also being in that room.
*
Step 4 is a piece of advice that cannot be given to you as you are now but only to you as you will become: the pulsing body in God's hands that you now fear to become yet cannot honestly avoid being. And being and being.
So the steps are roughly these: first recognize, second do not flinch, third take shelter and then fourth -- Step 4, which you will recognize at the time that it comes.
*
Don, we are praying for you.
*
As for the art of getting well, they say Step 1 is recognizing the sickness, *really* recognizing it, so that your recognition is like a competent person performing diagnosis. Be careful that the recognition is itself not part of the sickness, do not let the recognition get sick or else it will miss an important symptom and even become an important symptom. Step 2? What is Step 2? Step 2 is not letting go of Step 1 when self-loathing detonates like a home-made explosive. So Step 2 is Step 1 en serio. Si, hablo en serio. This is the real thing and the hardest part. Step 3, they say, is to take care that when you explode, as you will, you make sure it is in God's hands that this happens. Do not ever trust a mere human to make you well. Do not ever be alone with another human without God also being in that room.
*
Step 4 is a piece of advice that cannot be given to you as you are now but only to you as you will become: the pulsing body in God's hands that you now fear to become yet cannot honestly avoid being. And being and being.
So the steps are roughly these: first recognize, second do not flinch, third take shelter and then fourth -- Step 4, which you will recognize at the time that it comes.
*
Don, we are praying for you.
*
Sunday, August 08, 2004
The Story of the Lamb (Part 2)
*
He lay in his apartment at night, knowing that his life as a teacher was over. Not because of anything physical that had happened (because indeed nothing had). What had happened was in that wider, supposedly "mythical" space where things were truer than true and events that hadn't happened were still written down in the record books merely because they had been thought about.
The space that had separated his arm and her breast had turned out to be nothing but denial. He was in love with someone he was not allowed to love and this love was nothing new. The only new part was the large eraser slash down the middle of the negation. Denial had been denied. He was not a spectator, "he was the man".
*
You pass through a story like a tourist and discover its power is such that you are going to have to reside there for the rest of your life! Here is your new home.
*
In their sister church, one that belonged to the same denomination and city but (through some quirk) was part of a different diocese, there had recently been a scandal. One of the youth workers had been investigated for something or other, and the authorities had found child porn on his home computer. The story made the papers, the children were interviewed, the land of story began to bleed into the world of verifiable truth, and meanwhile the sister church next door tried not to watch but couldn't take its eyes away. This is horrible, the mothers said. This is horrible, the youth workers said. This is so horrible that -- it is too horrible for words and too horrible to think about, Don said. I can't believe it happened, I can't believe that there are no controls, that just where you are sure there are controls, you suddenly find --. Yet you could see them, you felt safe before.
*
And he went on and on.. And when even the parents turned to other thoughts, he continued to brood, had no choice. Because the lamb he had stolen -- had not really stolen -- had stolen in the land of "truer than true" where stories resided -- that lamb walked through all of his dreams and now lay down, heavy mournful thing, in the very center of his bed.
End of Part 2 of "The Story of the Lamb"
*
He lay in his apartment at night, knowing that his life as a teacher was over. Not because of anything physical that had happened (because indeed nothing had). What had happened was in that wider, supposedly "mythical" space where things were truer than true and events that hadn't happened were still written down in the record books merely because they had been thought about.
The space that had separated his arm and her breast had turned out to be nothing but denial. He was in love with someone he was not allowed to love and this love was nothing new. The only new part was the large eraser slash down the middle of the negation. Denial had been denied. He was not a spectator, "he was the man".
*
You pass through a story like a tourist and discover its power is such that you are going to have to reside there for the rest of your life! Here is your new home.
*
In their sister church, one that belonged to the same denomination and city but (through some quirk) was part of a different diocese, there had recently been a scandal. One of the youth workers had been investigated for something or other, and the authorities had found child porn on his home computer. The story made the papers, the children were interviewed, the land of story began to bleed into the world of verifiable truth, and meanwhile the sister church next door tried not to watch but couldn't take its eyes away. This is horrible, the mothers said. This is horrible, the youth workers said. This is so horrible that -- it is too horrible for words and too horrible to think about, Don said. I can't believe it happened, I can't believe that there are no controls, that just where you are sure there are controls, you suddenly find --. Yet you could see them, you felt safe before.
*
And he went on and on.. And when even the parents turned to other thoughts, he continued to brood, had no choice. Because the lamb he had stolen -- had not really stolen -- had stolen in the land of "truer than true" where stories resided -- that lamb walked through all of his dreams and now lay down, heavy mournful thing, in the very center of his bed.
End of Part 2 of "The Story of the Lamb"
*
The Story of the Lamb (Part 1)
*
The story of the lamb -- of the man who stole a lamb -- is about the man named Don, but it will take me a long while to get there. I hope you will be patient.
*
I have to tell you that I don't understand reality enough to describe it to my own satisfaction. But I do have a sense that our little domain of true and false -- of the verified and the refuted -- makes a very small sub-domain inside the much more vital domain of what's fully real. By which I only mean that most of what surrounds us, though very clear to God's eyes, is mere speculation for our own eyes. As for what surrounds our little human world of "true" and "false", the rationalists and cogitators can call it a land of myth or of hypothesis -- my only point is how far it extends, not merely around us but within us as well. We don't know much aside from this one immense thing.
*
In the wide domain of mythology (?) that surrounds us, we ourselves, without God's help, could never figure out what is true and what is false. We are like that poor monkey typing Shakespeare. Scientific trials seem to have the same feeling of blindness as that animal typing.
*
As for the story, the use of the story. Whenever pain destabilizes me, I panic and reach for the pain relief that is the spirit gazing over the pain at something else more edifying. What I mean is that when my soul hurts, I need a story, quickly. Entering the story releases some small part of the pressure on me of forever inhabiting this one particular self with its pain and panic. Sometimes the otherness of the story looks back from a place without pain. Now does the story have to be true in order to work this magic? Well, the characters do not need to have entries in the phone book. But there is a certain kind of truth that the story must have or else it is useless and relieves nothing. I am so tired of hearing literary critics and Sunday school teachers tell me that the truth of a story is irrelevant. When I need it, the story's truth matters immensely and persistently. When it is not literally true then sometimes it becomes truer than true. When you need a story, you will feel this too. You will be glad that the story becomes as true as it can.
*
Take the famous story from Second Samuel of the man who stole the lamb. He was a rich man but he stole his poor neighbor's lamb, his only lamb. Did this man, this thief, exist and does he exist now? Did this crime happen, did it perhaps happen many times? Today. people don't own animals in that way, they don't depend for their life on its ownership, not in America anyway. Yet oddly enough, the story seems even more deeply true without its original locale. It does seem truer than true, if I'm allowed to say that. It is like the bare outline of a person that had been drawn upon a transparency but that you step into without warning and then suddenly it's really you. In its current state it can be lain over anyone (and oddly seems to fit nearly anyone). You say this thing is like a decal, then you try to take it off. But it won't come off. "You are the man!" Now its truth can be seen to be true for you too. Yet they said it was only a story. Only.
*
Who has stolen what lamb from whom? Oh, there are so many crimes! In the novel Lolita, the molester narrator hears the sound of children playing and realizes that his crime has been to steal a little girl from the space where that sound is made. But in a way that space doesn't have a locale. We have all heard that sound at many different times in many different places. It is hyper-localized, its place is bigger than place (the delimited one that we know) and it lives in a wider place than our physical space, where it becomes truer than true. Not less true but more. So that is what I mean about my difficulty in placing a reality, in pinning it down. The truth is that I neither can nor ever would describe reality "to my own satisfaction" because in the end reality isn't mine, after all. But that is still not enough to say.
*
But now to move on to Don, the protagonist of this story, the man who (almost) stole a lamb.
*
To Don the other teachers had seemed so indifferent to the people they taught, so involved were they in their own intermural games of precedence (always in the context of the general unhappiness that came from the low pay and low respect they received). The big issue was always who got the copier first and who was the poor soul who had to replace the paper. Don, on the other hand, was proud of his "good works", of how dedicated he felt and was, of how much good he did for la communidad in general. People at church on Sundays would stand near him as if to bask in the warmth of his good feeling. He felt he had finally learned how to walk the Christian walk.
*
Then one day as he reached forward to correct some homework submitted by Luisa, his best student, his hand accidentally grazed her breast. It was a very slight contact, it hardly happened, and he didn't talk about it, she didn't talk about it, it seemed not to have happened at all, really; nevertheless, the movement of his arm had been like someone wiping the condensation from a window so that you could suddenly see what was on the far side. You could see whether you wanted to or not, you could see things that really you didn't want to see at all.
Nothing had happened and yet the whole notion of "good works" had disappeared in an instant and could not be retrieved.
It turned out that "he was the man!"
*
The story of the lamb -- of the man who stole a lamb -- is about the man named Don, but it will take me a long while to get there. I hope you will be patient.
*
I have to tell you that I don't understand reality enough to describe it to my own satisfaction. But I do have a sense that our little domain of true and false -- of the verified and the refuted -- makes a very small sub-domain inside the much more vital domain of what's fully real. By which I only mean that most of what surrounds us, though very clear to God's eyes, is mere speculation for our own eyes. As for what surrounds our little human world of "true" and "false", the rationalists and cogitators can call it a land of myth or of hypothesis -- my only point is how far it extends, not merely around us but within us as well. We don't know much aside from this one immense thing.
*
In the wide domain of mythology (?) that surrounds us, we ourselves, without God's help, could never figure out what is true and what is false. We are like that poor monkey typing Shakespeare. Scientific trials seem to have the same feeling of blindness as that animal typing.
*
As for the story, the use of the story. Whenever pain destabilizes me, I panic and reach for the pain relief that is the spirit gazing over the pain at something else more edifying. What I mean is that when my soul hurts, I need a story, quickly. Entering the story releases some small part of the pressure on me of forever inhabiting this one particular self with its pain and panic. Sometimes the otherness of the story looks back from a place without pain. Now does the story have to be true in order to work this magic? Well, the characters do not need to have entries in the phone book. But there is a certain kind of truth that the story must have or else it is useless and relieves nothing. I am so tired of hearing literary critics and Sunday school teachers tell me that the truth of a story is irrelevant. When I need it, the story's truth matters immensely and persistently. When it is not literally true then sometimes it becomes truer than true. When you need a story, you will feel this too. You will be glad that the story becomes as true as it can.
*
Take the famous story from Second Samuel of the man who stole the lamb. He was a rich man but he stole his poor neighbor's lamb, his only lamb. Did this man, this thief, exist and does he exist now? Did this crime happen, did it perhaps happen many times? Today. people don't own animals in that way, they don't depend for their life on its ownership, not in America anyway. Yet oddly enough, the story seems even more deeply true without its original locale. It does seem truer than true, if I'm allowed to say that. It is like the bare outline of a person that had been drawn upon a transparency but that you step into without warning and then suddenly it's really you. In its current state it can be lain over anyone (and oddly seems to fit nearly anyone). You say this thing is like a decal, then you try to take it off. But it won't come off. "You are the man!" Now its truth can be seen to be true for you too. Yet they said it was only a story. Only.
*
Who has stolen what lamb from whom? Oh, there are so many crimes! In the novel Lolita, the molester narrator hears the sound of children playing and realizes that his crime has been to steal a little girl from the space where that sound is made. But in a way that space doesn't have a locale. We have all heard that sound at many different times in many different places. It is hyper-localized, its place is bigger than place (the delimited one that we know) and it lives in a wider place than our physical space, where it becomes truer than true. Not less true but more. So that is what I mean about my difficulty in placing a reality, in pinning it down. The truth is that I neither can nor ever would describe reality "to my own satisfaction" because in the end reality isn't mine, after all. But that is still not enough to say.
*
But now to move on to Don, the protagonist of this story, the man who (almost) stole a lamb.
*
To Don the other teachers had seemed so indifferent to the people they taught, so involved were they in their own intermural games of precedence (always in the context of the general unhappiness that came from the low pay and low respect they received). The big issue was always who got the copier first and who was the poor soul who had to replace the paper. Don, on the other hand, was proud of his "good works", of how dedicated he felt and was, of how much good he did for la communidad in general. People at church on Sundays would stand near him as if to bask in the warmth of his good feeling. He felt he had finally learned how to walk the Christian walk.
*
Then one day as he reached forward to correct some homework submitted by Luisa, his best student, his hand accidentally grazed her breast. It was a very slight contact, it hardly happened, and he didn't talk about it, she didn't talk about it, it seemed not to have happened at all, really; nevertheless, the movement of his arm had been like someone wiping the condensation from a window so that you could suddenly see what was on the far side. You could see whether you wanted to or not, you could see things that really you didn't want to see at all.
Nothing had happened and yet the whole notion of "good works" had disappeared in an instant and could not be retrieved.
It turned out that "he was the man!"
*
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Story fragment: The bottles
*
Don, a much loved local teacher, was in bad shape, serious trouble. There were empty beer bottles all over his apartment, an indicator of distress but of what aspect was this indicator: that the bottles made a mess? no, that didn't matter. That the bottles had contained beer? No. But that there were so many of them, that was the indicator of distress.
*
They made the outline of a state of mind. They were the shape of a problem that wasn't being faced but you couldn't just look at them and know what the problem was.
Scott looked around the tiny living room and thought to himself: My best friend has a drinking problem but at least he's not hiding it, he's leaving it exposed. But is there something else he's hiding?
*
Then Don came back from the bathroom, opened the refrigerator and took out 2 beers. No thank you, Scott said. I'm feeling too unhappy to have a beer, whatever that means.
To change the subject Scott asked: How is that student of yours doing? The Latino girl that was learning English so quickly....
Aghast he watched as the expression on his friend's face fell onto the floor and tried, pushed hard, but was simply unable to pick itself back up.
*
There are some things you don't want to see even once in your life -- but if you see them once, then you say to yourself: I never want to see that a second time.
*
Don, a much loved local teacher, was in bad shape, serious trouble. There were empty beer bottles all over his apartment, an indicator of distress but of what aspect was this indicator: that the bottles made a mess? no, that didn't matter. That the bottles had contained beer? No. But that there were so many of them, that was the indicator of distress.
*
They made the outline of a state of mind. They were the shape of a problem that wasn't being faced but you couldn't just look at them and know what the problem was.
Scott looked around the tiny living room and thought to himself: My best friend has a drinking problem but at least he's not hiding it, he's leaving it exposed. But is there something else he's hiding?
*
Then Don came back from the bathroom, opened the refrigerator and took out 2 beers. No thank you, Scott said. I'm feeling too unhappy to have a beer, whatever that means.
To change the subject Scott asked: How is that student of yours doing? The Latino girl that was learning English so quickly....
Aghast he watched as the expression on his friend's face fell onto the floor and tried, pushed hard, but was simply unable to pick itself back up.
*
There are some things you don't want to see even once in your life -- but if you see them once, then you say to yourself: I never want to see that a second time.
*
Elise and Don
*
When Elise went to talk to Don, one of the "pillars" of their church -- well, it was their attempt at a church -- well, the sort of church to which everyone brought their joy but no one ever brought their sorrow -- or dared to consider it -- well, the sort of church which its own members considered largely powerless for helping a person get well (since that was a task for clinics and counselors and cocaine) -- well, then, when Elise went to talk to Don, he took one quick look at her and turned white as a glass of milk.
*
Sick? Sick? O Elise, you really think of me as sick???
*
And Elise thought to herself: I didn't before but now I certainly do.
*
When Elise went to talk to Don, one of the "pillars" of their church -- well, it was their attempt at a church -- well, the sort of church to which everyone brought their joy but no one ever brought their sorrow -- or dared to consider it -- well, the sort of church which its own members considered largely powerless for helping a person get well (since that was a task for clinics and counselors and cocaine) -- well, then, when Elise went to talk to Don, he took one quick look at her and turned white as a glass of milk.
*
Sick? Sick? O Elise, you really think of me as sick???
*
And Elise thought to herself: I didn't before but now I certainly do.
*
The basic task of getting well
*
Elise thought of the month of August as the month of getting well.
It seemed to her that all the other months were too busy for this core topic. Everyone had work to do -- gaining a living, resting from the gaining, bringing up kids who would go on to raise more kids, meanwhile teaching skills to them that they would spend the rest of their days teaching to others, in one huge etc.... everyone lives like this without reflecting on what their skills were ultimately for -- or against -- in other words, everybody was busy pursuing the means to the means to the means to the means to some end that they had meanwhile forgotten, if only because they were so tired! But let August be different! Let us get out of this "eternal recurrence" and its endless wash-cycle, let us reflect on what we are doing all of this *for*.
Scott listened to her patiently, then said: Oh Elise, you need a vacation badly! That's what *you* need.
*
Need? need? O reason not the need, white boy.
*
Elise thought of the month of August as the month of getting well.
It seemed to her that all the other months were too busy for this core topic. Everyone had work to do -- gaining a living, resting from the gaining, bringing up kids who would go on to raise more kids, meanwhile teaching skills to them that they would spend the rest of their days teaching to others, in one huge etc.... everyone lives like this without reflecting on what their skills were ultimately for -- or against -- in other words, everybody was busy pursuing the means to the means to the means to the means to some end that they had meanwhile forgotten, if only because they were so tired! But let August be different! Let us get out of this "eternal recurrence" and its endless wash-cycle, let us reflect on what we are doing all of this *for*.
Scott listened to her patiently, then said: Oh Elise, you need a vacation badly! That's what *you* need.
*
Need? need? O reason not the need, white boy.
*
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Story: Compulsion
*
On the subject of compulsion Father Sam, our beloved Father Sam, talked to us just a week or 2 before his departure from our church.
*
On the subject of compulsion I am painfully well informed (he said). Most compulsions are private and even secret, now why is that? Is it that even as children we feel ashamed to be in the grip of such a thing? How do we decide to be ashamed? And do we think we can hide it, even though probably everyone, except most likely ourselves, can see it plainly?
*
And then when we do see it, we maybe talk about it to our dearest friend and that friend says: Just step out of it. The friend doesn’t understand that if we could just step out, it wouldn’t be compulsion. In that case we would have shucked it off a long time ago.
*
On the subject of compulsion. On the subject of compulsion. The urge to break out (until perhaps you finally do) can feel like just one extra step in the endless cycle that compulsion follows. And this is your nightmare.
*
There was once a would-be believer who asked his buddy: how do I take the final step and believe? And the buddy said: just trust Jesus. So the would-be believer said, Yes but how do I learn to do that? And the buddy said: well, first of all, you just trust Jesus. In the same way the compulsive one, during his darkest days, sees the breaking into freedom as itself a small enclosed circle that he can’t seem to penetrate. But faith is not like that and neither is freedom.
The break is a miracle, right? One that we hope to repeat every day after it first happens.
*
On this subject that compels me.... I remember walking the sidewalk as a little child. It seemed to me so important to balance everything out. I don’t know why but I had to equalize the most trivial things. If I stepped on a crack with my left foot, I had to hurry and step on one with my right foot as well, in order that the number in heaven would be equal.
As to what divine tragedy my feet were averting, I didn’t have time to think about that, I had to focus all my energy on walking. This was not a fun disease.
If I trapped a shadow under my right foot, I had to hurry hurry, find a “rhyme” with it using my left foot. Every shadow had to balance. And when I disturbed the equilibrium I would be in absurd pain. I sought to relieve this pain, to lessen it somehow.
To lessen, to relieve, I was compelled and felt compelled. I would say to myself: if only I can find a shadow quickly with my other foot, I will be all right. And these thoughts excluded everything else until one day I asked myself: wouldn’t the true relief of the pain be to stop playing this miserable game? The relief would be not to step on the shadow but not to care whether I did or not.
From that day I was cured. Well, sort of. But you all know how that is.
*
You all know how the cure is relentless and how you can never let it go.
You all know how the disease continues to reside in its timeless space, ready at any moment to become embodied in one’s life once again. It is never vanquished in a way that lets us boast and rest. Our weakness is always latent. And God has give us this mysterious gift: that we can never quite relax.
So that every moment in our life is like a step upon that dangerous sidewalk, filled with cracks and shadows. In other words, our compulsions do represent, to our terror, something that in its way is true.
*
You all know that the Internet porn or the bright smiling casino or the opened bottle – they all remain waiting for us in the outer demonspace we have renounced. We can’t destroy that space on our own. We just pray to be protected from ever going there again.
How? Just pray. How? Just pray. How? Just pray. And the poor person says: oh, there must be something more I can do to protect the world from me.
*
After that week, Father Sam left us to go dry out and get well again, even though (as he did know though pretended not to) his presence and perhaps even his sickness had been for us like a gift from God. manna from heaven, quails, water, honey.
Our recovery group never recovered from his leaving and now why is that? If healing comes from God, why were we so dependent on a single given person? Was it that we’d fallen in love with him? And had our recovery been a form of sin?
*
On the subject of compulsion Father Sam, our beloved Father Sam, talked to us just a week or 2 before his departure from our church.
*
On the subject of compulsion I am painfully well informed (he said). Most compulsions are private and even secret, now why is that? Is it that even as children we feel ashamed to be in the grip of such a thing? How do we decide to be ashamed? And do we think we can hide it, even though probably everyone, except most likely ourselves, can see it plainly?
*
And then when we do see it, we maybe talk about it to our dearest friend and that friend says: Just step out of it. The friend doesn’t understand that if we could just step out, it wouldn’t be compulsion. In that case we would have shucked it off a long time ago.
*
On the subject of compulsion. On the subject of compulsion. The urge to break out (until perhaps you finally do) can feel like just one extra step in the endless cycle that compulsion follows. And this is your nightmare.
*
There was once a would-be believer who asked his buddy: how do I take the final step and believe? And the buddy said: just trust Jesus. So the would-be believer said, Yes but how do I learn to do that? And the buddy said: well, first of all, you just trust Jesus. In the same way the compulsive one, during his darkest days, sees the breaking into freedom as itself a small enclosed circle that he can’t seem to penetrate. But faith is not like that and neither is freedom.
The break is a miracle, right? One that we hope to repeat every day after it first happens.
*
On this subject that compels me.... I remember walking the sidewalk as a little child. It seemed to me so important to balance everything out. I don’t know why but I had to equalize the most trivial things. If I stepped on a crack with my left foot, I had to hurry and step on one with my right foot as well, in order that the number in heaven would be equal.
As to what divine tragedy my feet were averting, I didn’t have time to think about that, I had to focus all my energy on walking. This was not a fun disease.
If I trapped a shadow under my right foot, I had to hurry hurry, find a “rhyme” with it using my left foot. Every shadow had to balance. And when I disturbed the equilibrium I would be in absurd pain. I sought to relieve this pain, to lessen it somehow.
To lessen, to relieve, I was compelled and felt compelled. I would say to myself: if only I can find a shadow quickly with my other foot, I will be all right. And these thoughts excluded everything else until one day I asked myself: wouldn’t the true relief of the pain be to stop playing this miserable game? The relief would be not to step on the shadow but not to care whether I did or not.
From that day I was cured. Well, sort of. But you all know how that is.
*
You all know how the cure is relentless and how you can never let it go.
You all know how the disease continues to reside in its timeless space, ready at any moment to become embodied in one’s life once again. It is never vanquished in a way that lets us boast and rest. Our weakness is always latent. And God has give us this mysterious gift: that we can never quite relax.
So that every moment in our life is like a step upon that dangerous sidewalk, filled with cracks and shadows. In other words, our compulsions do represent, to our terror, something that in its way is true.
*
You all know that the Internet porn or the bright smiling casino or the opened bottle – they all remain waiting for us in the outer demonspace we have renounced. We can’t destroy that space on our own. We just pray to be protected from ever going there again.
How? Just pray. How? Just pray. How? Just pray. And the poor person says: oh, there must be something more I can do to protect the world from me.
*
After that week, Father Sam left us to go dry out and get well again, even though (as he did know though pretended not to) his presence and perhaps even his sickness had been for us like a gift from God. manna from heaven, quails, water, honey.
Our recovery group never recovered from his leaving and now why is that? If healing comes from God, why were we so dependent on a single given person? Was it that we’d fallen in love with him? And had our recovery been a form of sin?
*
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
*
I can tell this is going to be agony -- the mere topic of "getting well", which is no topic without the reality of health behind it, like blood held just barely from flowing behind the scab. Can I write about something I don't yet have??? And who will bother to cut through the dense mat of words that will be necessary, in order to get one second's glimpse of the beautiful clearing behind?
The issue here is that getting well requires God's intervention. What to say to an atheist? I guess I would say that the God an atheist is fleeing is really some devil in disguise, and not God at all -- remembering that a devil's "existence" or "non-existence" is something like a virus that can only come to life when it infests a human will. (I say this so that people don't waste their time disputing about the existence of the devil.) In this spirit the pseudo-God that an atheist attacks is, God help us, most likely a demonic non-existence that only thrashes within human delusion like a giant parasite. That is not God. God is other and real and wholly worth one's love and worship.
Some rabbi (I think his name was Lawrence Hoffman?) said that he used to talk to atheistic Jews he knew by asking them to describe the God they didn't believe in. When they were finished he would say to them "I don't believe in *that* God either." It really matters that you first get a glimpse of the God you reject -- that is, the real God, not the demon who tries to impersonate him -- before you reject the one whom, if you really *do* glimpse him, you will not be able to reject. The God of reason who is kicked around in the debating halls of humans is not the God who heals, unless only insofar as being kicked around is a sort of pathway into his utter kindness and splendor.
What a huge digression! I only wanted to say that if healing is into God's safe place it can only be done by God, ultimately. (And if ultimately, then also immediately.) Otherwise, you have this picture of let's say a rapist being cured of cancer so that he is able to go out and rape again, which is as far from health as it is possible to go. What are you healed into? What are you healed to do?
Is an addict "healed" of his withdrawal agony by being given the drug? What is health, what is it truly? Where is health? This simple person, a disgusting creature, a sinner, wants to know where it is, how to find it.
I haven't even gotten near my August subject, which was to be the story of a church's search for its own healing. Perhaps my inability to get to my own topic is another indication that I am unwell. Or maybe the digression pulls me into its space for a reason. A good reason, as good as the Maker of reasons.
*
I can tell this is going to be agony -- the mere topic of "getting well", which is no topic without the reality of health behind it, like blood held just barely from flowing behind the scab. Can I write about something I don't yet have??? And who will bother to cut through the dense mat of words that will be necessary, in order to get one second's glimpse of the beautiful clearing behind?
The issue here is that getting well requires God's intervention. What to say to an atheist? I guess I would say that the God an atheist is fleeing is really some devil in disguise, and not God at all -- remembering that a devil's "existence" or "non-existence" is something like a virus that can only come to life when it infests a human will. (I say this so that people don't waste their time disputing about the existence of the devil.) In this spirit the pseudo-God that an atheist attacks is, God help us, most likely a demonic non-existence that only thrashes within human delusion like a giant parasite. That is not God. God is other and real and wholly worth one's love and worship.
Some rabbi (I think his name was Lawrence Hoffman?) said that he used to talk to atheistic Jews he knew by asking them to describe the God they didn't believe in. When they were finished he would say to them "I don't believe in *that* God either." It really matters that you first get a glimpse of the God you reject -- that is, the real God, not the demon who tries to impersonate him -- before you reject the one whom, if you really *do* glimpse him, you will not be able to reject. The God of reason who is kicked around in the debating halls of humans is not the God who heals, unless only insofar as being kicked around is a sort of pathway into his utter kindness and splendor.
What a huge digression! I only wanted to say that if healing is into God's safe place it can only be done by God, ultimately. (And if ultimately, then also immediately.) Otherwise, you have this picture of let's say a rapist being cured of cancer so that he is able to go out and rape again, which is as far from health as it is possible to go. What are you healed into? What are you healed to do?
Is an addict "healed" of his withdrawal agony by being given the drug? What is health, what is it truly? Where is health? This simple person, a disgusting creature, a sinner, wants to know where it is, how to find it.
I haven't even gotten near my August subject, which was to be the story of a church's search for its own healing. Perhaps my inability to get to my own topic is another indication that I am unwell. Or maybe the digression pulls me into its space for a reason. A good reason, as good as the Maker of reasons.
*
Getting well: back to the Body
*
The great Hamann said that original sin had/has to do not w/sex but w/reason. You know, the sick kind. He describes it, he felt it.
*
On the other hand, some great scholars let their own reason devour them alive and not because they didn't feel it. When Thucydides described the decay of his "country" into calculated self-interest and hardness of heart, he found the world that he looked at looking back at him and that look infected him. So that his own spirit seems almost unwillingly cold and hard, as though the subject matter gave him no choice, as though it gave him no place else to go. This is what I fear too -- that in describing a hardened world, my own writing will become hard and cynical. Whenever you look at the world you see it looking back at you and its looking wants to change you into itself, unless you can look *from* some vantage point that makes you secure -- such as "the rock that is higher than I" in the psalm. Thucydides didn't have a second "country" to flee into. There was no safe place for his reason to hide. Likewise Tacitus was wedged into the evil he so wittily retails. Many others too.
*
What the hell am I talking about here? This isn't what I set out to say.
*
I wanted to talk about health. All I know is that words about health have to embody in themselves what health is seeking to be, where it wants to go. The words look at sickness across a plain whose emptiness pulls like electromagnetism or like gravity -- with a curing force if the words pull in the right direction, but the words die if they themselves get pulled. Every sentence becomes a battleground littered with bodies. I think I still don't know fully what I'm talking about. I am not pretending to be well myself. I know that I am profoundly sick, so sick that the word "know" is also sick.
God can only heal the person I am, never the person I pretend to be, even if the pretend person is "better". You first have to be real before you can be helped, because the unreal person you are pretending to be may be helped and healed but only in that unreal world where it exists in the first place. So watch out re turning faith into nothing but a story, be careful, watch your language, get well, get real.
*
The great Hamann said that original sin had/has to do not w/sex but w/reason. You know, the sick kind. He describes it, he felt it.
*
On the other hand, some great scholars let their own reason devour them alive and not because they didn't feel it. When Thucydides described the decay of his "country" into calculated self-interest and hardness of heart, he found the world that he looked at looking back at him and that look infected him. So that his own spirit seems almost unwillingly cold and hard, as though the subject matter gave him no choice, as though it gave him no place else to go. This is what I fear too -- that in describing a hardened world, my own writing will become hard and cynical. Whenever you look at the world you see it looking back at you and its looking wants to change you into itself, unless you can look *from* some vantage point that makes you secure -- such as "the rock that is higher than I" in the psalm. Thucydides didn't have a second "country" to flee into. There was no safe place for his reason to hide. Likewise Tacitus was wedged into the evil he so wittily retails. Many others too.
*
What the hell am I talking about here? This isn't what I set out to say.
*
I wanted to talk about health. All I know is that words about health have to embody in themselves what health is seeking to be, where it wants to go. The words look at sickness across a plain whose emptiness pulls like electromagnetism or like gravity -- with a curing force if the words pull in the right direction, but the words die if they themselves get pulled. Every sentence becomes a battleground littered with bodies. I think I still don't know fully what I'm talking about. I am not pretending to be well myself. I know that I am profoundly sick, so sick that the word "know" is also sick.
God can only heal the person I am, never the person I pretend to be, even if the pretend person is "better". You first have to be real before you can be helped, because the unreal person you are pretending to be may be helped and healed but only in that unreal world where it exists in the first place. So watch out re turning faith into nothing but a story, be careful, watch your language, get well, get real.
*
Monday, August 02, 2004
"More than just okay"
*
Getting well. How does God help you get well? Your want, your want is desperate, you desperately want to get well, so that there is “you” and there is this want, like a piece of wood you cling to. Or a giant worm of sorrow burrowing inside you. How is God helping? Well, he has given you this want, this desperate want like a gracious gift. You didn’t think it was yours, did you?
Your want is going to save you (if you let it), your want will bring you to health. Where do you imagine it came from?
The important part is not so much the “you” that is wanting but what the want itself is and is itself wanting – the far side of the want, the place where want is satisfied. Do you feel that as well? What want itself wants you can feel pulsing and breathing like a new birth inside you. The exercise, the incantation imposed on you is to want it. Then want it more. Think health, something like that. No one ever said it wouldn't involve pain.
Health –- green field of joy -- you are so much more than simply feeling okay. “More than just okay”.
Now once you have imagined it, can you bring other people there too?
*
Getting well. How does God help you get well? Your want, your want is desperate, you desperately want to get well, so that there is “you” and there is this want, like a piece of wood you cling to. Or a giant worm of sorrow burrowing inside you. How is God helping? Well, he has given you this want, this desperate want like a gracious gift. You didn’t think it was yours, did you?
Your want is going to save you (if you let it), your want will bring you to health. Where do you imagine it came from?
The important part is not so much the “you” that is wanting but what the want itself is and is itself wanting – the far side of the want, the place where want is satisfied. Do you feel that as well? What want itself wants you can feel pulsing and breathing like a new birth inside you. The exercise, the incantation imposed on you is to want it. Then want it more. Think health, something like that. No one ever said it wouldn't involve pain.
Health –- green field of joy -- you are so much more than simply feeling okay. “More than just okay”.
Now once you have imagined it, can you bring other people there too?
*
Sunday, August 01, 2004
The Philosophy of getting well
*
“Getting well” and “telling the truth” have much in common, which is to hazard the faith that health and truth are both members of God’s family, brother and sister. They “get along”. They play together quietly.
Pilate asks Jesus: “What is truth?” The question for him seems to be more a form of chitchat than honest aporia. That was his choice. The word “truth” can appear in a sentence devoid of truth. But how do you tell?
An analytical philospher might offer the idea of a carefully constructed logical sentence with attributes as if organically expressed in the form of its construction. For instance, the attribute of being true. But this is a backward idea of truth. We know truth is not a meagre attribute that clings to a sentence because that gets the relative scale backwards. Truth is immense, unimaginably large, it pulls into its orbit everything that is true. It is a complete world from which anything even slightly untrue has been banished. It is not a tiny thing applied to a sentence but an immense, incomprehensible “thing” to which the sentence is helplessly drawn or in which the sentence (if untrue) is chewed up, swallowed and destroyed.
Comprising awareness as well, truth is not really a “thing”. There is intention (which I am scared to describe, as though one could even do so in these clinical antiseptic terms).
You can make a factually correct statement but if it does not survive the encounter with the hugeness that is truth, then that sentence is somehow fundamentally untrue, its role within experience to become untruth – and what’s more people do not realize how many of their factual statements unroll in isolation from truth and can hardly count as true. E.g., a putdown of some person (true as far as it goes) that doesn’t envision what that person could or should become. It is also the case that a person whose tongue is untrue becomes himself untrue.
And now for “getting well”. People chat about this without being able to imagine a convincing health, a health of conviction, which is not the single heartbeat, not the being able to walk around the block or have sex in middle age – but something a judgment can look at and recognize as health without changing its mind a second later. What would this health be outside God’s hands? What could it be, separated from truth?
Picture a person in grave denial about a grave illness – let the illness be partly of the spirit, with denial a symptom of that part. As this person grows in recognition her sudden sense of being sick is a step toward getting well. She feels infinitely worse than before – is that health? Was the denial health? It depends on whether there actually is a context for her that is called “health”, whether it truly still exists – which is about truth, not just health. If the context – God’s hands – does not hold her own recognition and denial, then there was no point in her recognizing what can’t be cured. But if those hands are there, then her former comfort wasn’t health but delusion. What her health consists in depends completely on what kind of world ultimately holds her. The underlying hands (there or not) are not a passing detail but the key to every detail.
Without a God to get well for, why get well? What would getting well even be?
So that’s the context that lets you admit and confront your pain, your dread, the rest of it. A context of safety, a pair of hands. Truth needs a safe place in order to *be* true.
*
“Getting well” and “telling the truth” have much in common, which is to hazard the faith that health and truth are both members of God’s family, brother and sister. They “get along”. They play together quietly.
Pilate asks Jesus: “What is truth?” The question for him seems to be more a form of chitchat than honest aporia. That was his choice. The word “truth” can appear in a sentence devoid of truth. But how do you tell?
An analytical philospher might offer the idea of a carefully constructed logical sentence with attributes as if organically expressed in the form of its construction. For instance, the attribute of being true. But this is a backward idea of truth. We know truth is not a meagre attribute that clings to a sentence because that gets the relative scale backwards. Truth is immense, unimaginably large, it pulls into its orbit everything that is true. It is a complete world from which anything even slightly untrue has been banished. It is not a tiny thing applied to a sentence but an immense, incomprehensible “thing” to which the sentence is helplessly drawn or in which the sentence (if untrue) is chewed up, swallowed and destroyed.
Comprising awareness as well, truth is not really a “thing”. There is intention (which I am scared to describe, as though one could even do so in these clinical antiseptic terms).
You can make a factually correct statement but if it does not survive the encounter with the hugeness that is truth, then that sentence is somehow fundamentally untrue, its role within experience to become untruth – and what’s more people do not realize how many of their factual statements unroll in isolation from truth and can hardly count as true. E.g., a putdown of some person (true as far as it goes) that doesn’t envision what that person could or should become. It is also the case that a person whose tongue is untrue becomes himself untrue.
And now for “getting well”. People chat about this without being able to imagine a convincing health, a health of conviction, which is not the single heartbeat, not the being able to walk around the block or have sex in middle age – but something a judgment can look at and recognize as health without changing its mind a second later. What would this health be outside God’s hands? What could it be, separated from truth?
Picture a person in grave denial about a grave illness – let the illness be partly of the spirit, with denial a symptom of that part. As this person grows in recognition her sudden sense of being sick is a step toward getting well. She feels infinitely worse than before – is that health? Was the denial health? It depends on whether there actually is a context for her that is called “health”, whether it truly still exists – which is about truth, not just health. If the context – God’s hands – does not hold her own recognition and denial, then there was no point in her recognizing what can’t be cured. But if those hands are there, then her former comfort wasn’t health but delusion. What her health consists in depends completely on what kind of world ultimately holds her. The underlying hands (there or not) are not a passing detail but the key to every detail.
Without a God to get well for, why get well? What would getting well even be?
So that’s the context that lets you admit and confront your pain, your dread, the rest of it. A context of safety, a pair of hands. Truth needs a safe place in order to *be* true.
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