Soliloquy of a so-so priest

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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."

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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.)

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