*
She ran without thinking. She left her job without notice, left her belongings without looking back. Her community, that was now history.
She begged God to take her in. Yes but God acted on earth through humans and humans were always twisting God's will for their personal ends. So that actually facing God, finding God was harder than anyone would admit. Her own church had stood in the way.
The garden receded from her.
She was the devil's daughter. Why would God bother with her?
In the roadhouses every television had been twisted off station. Every TV showed endless loops and arabesques of the devil.
On one station they were playing "Babes in the Woods". In this episode Elf and her dead brother were sent outside to "play" -- or just rot -- while their mother entertained a gentleman caller. Above the children the trees bent like hoops and the paths were clammy, there was even a stagnant pond with tadpoles, the 2 of them were entranced. But when Elf crossed the water, she felt something or more candidly someone pulling her into the woods. It was not a question of "something vs nothing" but of "nothing vs someone". The garden had someone in it and this was her first taste of God, an experience not to be trivialized; nevertheless, her bossy brother pulled her back into the sunlight. We're not supposed to go there. Momma doesn't 'low it. And then they stumbled onto the well and looked into it, it was full of human bones. That's where Momma's boyfriends go, her brother said. Look away. Look away. And on another channel a chic blonde announcer, Duessa again, was cheerfully pushing some low carb diet while a circle of women, all of them as thin as skeletons, nodded their heads in anxious agreement.
END OF PART 1
*
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
The feet (Part 2)
*
The next is terrible but has to be told. The next is terrible. Are all the spiders crawled into the sanctuary? Why are my ankles so spidery all of a sudden? Who has planted all these carnivorous plants in the entryway? Why is everything so chilly of an unexpected and somber sudden? The next part will hardly go onto the page. It took me months to write it down -- I don't handle evil well, don't know how to describe it without facing the ghastly invitation to partake and die. The next part I don't like. The ink shrinks into itself and closes up its hands. Now when Elf went into the sanctuary the organ was playing, not music but the sort of scrolling or scribbling sound that an organ would make talking to itself. A hollow sound. This was the night of vigil, the night of prayer. My love walks into the blackness -- voluntarily! Pushed into the voluntary. All through the room people hung over the backs of their pews, praying and shivering. There were so many strangers, people drawn into the orbit of the holy week, almost the last sacred space left in America. At the far side a bony woman hung down with her blond hair over her eyes. Why had Don run away?
Elf huddled at the back of the church where seekers usually hovered. On this Thursday, however, people did not seek but were only found. The sweat of the Lord fell like a mound of blood. Indrawn breath grew harsh with the sense of divinity near.
The interim rector spoke words of simulated humility while the organ played. It played -- and yet there was no music for this service. Then people started filing forward to have their feet washed. Elf folded her damp socks and walked along the wet feeling upward-tilted cement. Then the first foot washer slipped away and another person down at the tub who, when she looked up, had Duessa's eyes -- mother's eyes -- blue spring water with ice prickles floating as in air. It was Duessa, smiling and shaking her blonde mane that was thousands of years old. The devil incarnate. A horror in the holy place. A sacrilege as quiet as a prayer.
Oh my darling daughter. I've caught up with you at last.
But no! Elf cried. You're not allowed in church! Go away! Leave me!
END OF PART 2
*
The next is terrible but has to be told. The next is terrible. Are all the spiders crawled into the sanctuary? Why are my ankles so spidery all of a sudden? Who has planted all these carnivorous plants in the entryway? Why is everything so chilly of an unexpected and somber sudden? The next part will hardly go onto the page. It took me months to write it down -- I don't handle evil well, don't know how to describe it without facing the ghastly invitation to partake and die. The next part I don't like. The ink shrinks into itself and closes up its hands. Now when Elf went into the sanctuary the organ was playing, not music but the sort of scrolling or scribbling sound that an organ would make talking to itself. A hollow sound. This was the night of vigil, the night of prayer. My love walks into the blackness -- voluntarily! Pushed into the voluntary. All through the room people hung over the backs of their pews, praying and shivering. There were so many strangers, people drawn into the orbit of the holy week, almost the last sacred space left in America. At the far side a bony woman hung down with her blond hair over her eyes. Why had Don run away?
Elf huddled at the back of the church where seekers usually hovered. On this Thursday, however, people did not seek but were only found. The sweat of the Lord fell like a mound of blood. Indrawn breath grew harsh with the sense of divinity near.
The interim rector spoke words of simulated humility while the organ played. It played -- and yet there was no music for this service. Then people started filing forward to have their feet washed. Elf folded her damp socks and walked along the wet feeling upward-tilted cement. Then the first foot washer slipped away and another person down at the tub who, when she looked up, had Duessa's eyes -- mother's eyes -- blue spring water with ice prickles floating as in air. It was Duessa, smiling and shaking her blonde mane that was thousands of years old. The devil incarnate. A horror in the holy place. A sacrilege as quiet as a prayer.
Oh my darling daughter. I've caught up with you at last.
But no! Elf cried. You're not allowed in church! Go away! Leave me!
END OF PART 2
*
Monday, May 16, 2005
The feet that stood still (Part 1)
*
The afternoon of Maundy Thursday. Mr and Mrs Hypostasis in the gym. She was Body. He was Soul. This day she was anxious to get to church and pray. She felt uneasy but he as usual took the antagonistic role, flexing his moral muscle, so to speak, pushing her to improve herself in the way that he chose. He was quite adverse to pain -- in himself -- but welcomed its powerful effect on his mate. She sat miserable at the 10th station, lifting blackish blocks of metal. He supervised.
Shouldn't we wash and get ready for church? she asked.
One more set, darling. One more set.
Oh it's time. Oh it's time.
And when there no longer really was enough time, he brushed his hands and said: Come on, let's make tracks. Not be late. Rude to be late. And the 2 of them went off to their separate ablutions. Driving to church, quarreling of course, they passed the gym instructor, another member, and offered her a ride. It would be so nice to have you in the car with us. No thanks, you are so kind but no, Elf said. I love to walk.
Passing with head high through any questionable blocks. Above her the sun lost confidence and its butterscotch candy melted away. Elf walked through the beautiful garden, its darkness and protection, and entered the church.
To find Don in the entryway, white as a coat of paint, unable to speak. What's wrong? What's wrong?
And he dashed out of church without saying a word.
END OF PART 1
The afternoon of Maundy Thursday. Mr and Mrs Hypostasis in the gym. She was Body. He was Soul. This day she was anxious to get to church and pray. She felt uneasy but he as usual took the antagonistic role, flexing his moral muscle, so to speak, pushing her to improve herself in the way that he chose. He was quite adverse to pain -- in himself -- but welcomed its powerful effect on his mate. She sat miserable at the 10th station, lifting blackish blocks of metal. He supervised.
Shouldn't we wash and get ready for church? she asked.
One more set, darling. One more set.
Oh it's time. Oh it's time.
And when there no longer really was enough time, he brushed his hands and said: Come on, let's make tracks. Not be late. Rude to be late. And the 2 of them went off to their separate ablutions. Driving to church, quarreling of course, they passed the gym instructor, another member, and offered her a ride. It would be so nice to have you in the car with us. No thanks, you are so kind but no, Elf said. I love to walk.
Passing with head high through any questionable blocks. Above her the sun lost confidence and its butterscotch candy melted away. Elf walked through the beautiful garden, its darkness and protection, and entered the church.
To find Don in the entryway, white as a coat of paint, unable to speak. What's wrong? What's wrong?
And he dashed out of church without saying a word.
END OF PART 1
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Elf (Part 15): That presence...
*
After Elf suffered the devastating shock to be described soon -- soon, very soon, all too soon -- she ran to Elise for comfort and wrote frantic letters to Father Sam, not all of which were answered or could be.
*
Elise did not try to calm a person down but *was* calm -- a comforting distinction.
For some lucky persons, faith was of the whole body, not an outcome of the head. It grew out of the presence of God -- not of arguments. As to arguments, she felt it was not essential to spend *all* your time evaluating their internal consistency, but simply to ask: Does this bring me closer to the presence of God? Or separate me?
If it separates you, it can't be sound.
If the doubts and fears are going to occur, let them occur within the presence. So that when they leave you totally bereaved there is a relief nearby.
Elf felt no separation from God as long as another Christian was near. She was one of those Christians who needs other Christians around to model the life that sometimes falters in oneself alone. It was abstract unless you acted it out.
People have a massive power over us. A high-school dropout can kill the president if he wants to. But there is no one on earth who can separate you from the presence of God, if you don't want to leave.
*
After Elf suffered the devastating shock to be described soon -- soon, very soon, all too soon -- she ran to Elise for comfort and wrote frantic letters to Father Sam, not all of which were answered or could be.
*
Elise did not try to calm a person down but *was* calm -- a comforting distinction.
For some lucky persons, faith was of the whole body, not an outcome of the head. It grew out of the presence of God -- not of arguments. As to arguments, she felt it was not essential to spend *all* your time evaluating their internal consistency, but simply to ask: Does this bring me closer to the presence of God? Or separate me?
If it separates you, it can't be sound.
If the doubts and fears are going to occur, let them occur within the presence. So that when they leave you totally bereaved there is a relief nearby.
Elf felt no separation from God as long as another Christian was near. She was one of those Christians who needs other Christians around to model the life that sometimes falters in oneself alone. It was abstract unless you acted it out.
People have a massive power over us. A high-school dropout can kill the president if he wants to. But there is no one on earth who can separate you from the presence of God, if you don't want to leave.
*
Friday, May 13, 2005
Soliloquy of a so-so priest
*
Kierkegaard: "If you do not have faith, then at least believe that you will indeed come to have faith -- and then you do have faith."
*
ACTING "AS THOUGH". People think of the acting profession as a lie -- as a way of generating fake emotion about a fake person -- making people cry about a selfish aristocrat like Dido -- but wait a moment.
What if the acting were true?
Look at yourself. (Oh no, I don't want to.)
Here you are sitting in your chair praying but that is not really prayer, only the beginning of the prayer. The prayer actually occurs when you get out of your chair and move through the world. It is bound to your conduct, a piece of your behavior, and that is how to "pray without ceasing" but do you? Look at yourself. (I just can't.)
You believe, you do believe but your actions don't believe. Your actions look the same as a non-believer's. He lives within a basic worldly ethics and so do you. He lives in selfishness with a slight tinge or savor of goodness. So do you. So what has gone wrong?
Look at yourself. You need to behave "as though" you believed, since you do. This "as though" is no faking but the truth. You do believe. You do believe but your actions waver. You need to bring them into true, into alignment with truth. You need to fill them with the one who fills you and this is the acting challenge of a lifetime: to be true and to walk in the truth. It is the "as though" of reality. Can you do it? Look at yourself. (Please no.)
*
Kierkegaard: "If you do not have faith, then at least believe that you will indeed come to have faith -- and then you do have faith."
*
ACTING "AS THOUGH". People think of the acting profession as a lie -- as a way of generating fake emotion about a fake person -- making people cry about a selfish aristocrat like Dido -- but wait a moment.
What if the acting were true?
Look at yourself. (Oh no, I don't want to.)
Here you are sitting in your chair praying but that is not really prayer, only the beginning of the prayer. The prayer actually occurs when you get out of your chair and move through the world. It is bound to your conduct, a piece of your behavior, and that is how to "pray without ceasing" but do you? Look at yourself. (I just can't.)
You believe, you do believe but your actions don't believe. Your actions look the same as a non-believer's. He lives within a basic worldly ethics and so do you. He lives in selfishness with a slight tinge or savor of goodness. So do you. So what has gone wrong?
Look at yourself. You need to behave "as though" you believed, since you do. This "as though" is no faking but the truth. You do believe. You do believe but your actions waver. You need to bring them into true, into alignment with truth. You need to fill them with the one who fills you and this is the acting challenge of a lifetime: to be true and to walk in the truth. It is the "as though" of reality. Can you do it? Look at yourself. (Please no.)
*
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Faith like a dial
*
If faith was a place why did one spend all one's time wandering from that place?
Was it impossible to stand still?
*
Faith like a voice of comfort came from the station. Like songs of praise that a grieving daughter played as she drove. God's voice was not doubtful at all, inherently it was free of doubt. The problem was the medium -- it was the dial that was the problem. It kept going off station. One had to hold it on station.
And this was hard!
*
If faith was a place why did one spend all one's time wandering from that place?
Was it impossible to stand still?
*
Faith like a voice of comfort came from the station. Like songs of praise that a grieving daughter played as she drove. God's voice was not doubtful at all, inherently it was free of doubt. The problem was the medium -- it was the dial that was the problem. It kept going off station. One had to hold it on station.
And this was hard!
*
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Under the swamp
*
On some days you would walk to the back of the gym through the doubtful mirror -- the one that stubbed your face when you thought it wasn't there but sometimes also mysteriously disappeared, letting athletes step into the murky back room whose silvered walls somehow conveyed the impression of being underneath a swamp -- so that was the gym's back room where you rarely went. Young men sweat there and picked up impossibly heavy weights. In the corner the Nazi Kommindant's Wife lay on her back neglected underneath a bar of weight. She rarely succeeded in lifting it and that was part of her torment.
She had learned many years ago that you could *not* live a holy life in the midst of evil while knowing the evil was there -- even vaguely and subcutaneously, even if you didn't know much -- and yet doing nothing about it. It was not that works could justify you but that the faith that did justify you blossomed with works as if involuntarily, naturally -- always -- or else it was somehow hollow. The works had to be there and they had to come second, be derived, and this she had learned -- and shehad even profited from the learning. She was as far from being a Nazi as anyone could be. The weight was something else.
*
What do I know about heaven? I know that it is not an entitlement. Heaven is not an entitlement and let me say it again: it is by nature not something of which one will ever be able to say: this I am entitled to.
Even the righteous never speak of entitlement because no true happiness will ever have anything to do with being entitled. Every happiness contains the work of being happy. the work is a form of happiness, it is being *involved* in happiness. If I manage to hold it up for even a second I am strangely elated, like a room lit from below.
*
God is good. He will not provide a coma on a platter. You will have no servants in heaven.
This is unimaginable happiness. It is not an entitlement, the ones who love God will never be a new upper class, nor could even want to be.
*
Will I be admitted to heaven? the kommandant's wife wondered. That I still do not know.
She felt she had a chance if only because the demons still tormented her, an act that seemed to suggest she was, even after all these years of suffering, still in play. The roulette ball dashing for its cover. I have not served you well at all, Lord. But today I can begin.
*
Duessa would go by and press the bar down into the wife's emaciated chest. Curse God and die, you bad woman. The kommandant's wife would feel strangely cheered by the abuse because it meant that she was still worth taunting and thus still worth saving -- still savable. Heaven is not an entitlement.
And the people exercising on the other side of the mirror -- on top of the swamp, so to speak -- would see a witch abusing a helpless old lady but they wouldn't understand what they saw. Their eyes were bewitched, half-closed. they reacted as though they were simply watching a television as they worked out.
*
On some days you would walk to the back of the gym through the doubtful mirror -- the one that stubbed your face when you thought it wasn't there but sometimes also mysteriously disappeared, letting athletes step into the murky back room whose silvered walls somehow conveyed the impression of being underneath a swamp -- so that was the gym's back room where you rarely went. Young men sweat there and picked up impossibly heavy weights. In the corner the Nazi Kommindant's Wife lay on her back neglected underneath a bar of weight. She rarely succeeded in lifting it and that was part of her torment.
She had learned many years ago that you could *not* live a holy life in the midst of evil while knowing the evil was there -- even vaguely and subcutaneously, even if you didn't know much -- and yet doing nothing about it. It was not that works could justify you but that the faith that did justify you blossomed with works as if involuntarily, naturally -- always -- or else it was somehow hollow. The works had to be there and they had to come second, be derived, and this she had learned -- and shehad even profited from the learning. She was as far from being a Nazi as anyone could be. The weight was something else.
*
What do I know about heaven? I know that it is not an entitlement. Heaven is not an entitlement and let me say it again: it is by nature not something of which one will ever be able to say: this I am entitled to.
Even the righteous never speak of entitlement because no true happiness will ever have anything to do with being entitled. Every happiness contains the work of being happy. the work is a form of happiness, it is being *involved* in happiness. If I manage to hold it up for even a second I am strangely elated, like a room lit from below.
*
God is good. He will not provide a coma on a platter. You will have no servants in heaven.
This is unimaginable happiness. It is not an entitlement, the ones who love God will never be a new upper class, nor could even want to be.
*
Will I be admitted to heaven? the kommandant's wife wondered. That I still do not know.
She felt she had a chance if only because the demons still tormented her, an act that seemed to suggest she was, even after all these years of suffering, still in play. The roulette ball dashing for its cover. I have not served you well at all, Lord. But today I can begin.
*
Duessa would go by and press the bar down into the wife's emaciated chest. Curse God and die, you bad woman. The kommandant's wife would feel strangely cheered by the abuse because it meant that she was still worth taunting and thus still worth saving -- still savable. Heaven is not an entitlement.
And the people exercising on the other side of the mirror -- on top of the swamp, so to speak -- would see a witch abusing a helpless old lady but they wouldn't understand what they saw. Their eyes were bewitched, half-closed. they reacted as though they were simply watching a television as they worked out.
*
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