*
She wants to be a Christian, wants to pray
doesn't pray, wants to, tries or tries to try
to be the thing she says she is, she tries
to speak with God, to be with God, to say
to him the things a Christian says
and live the Sabbath on the other days,
to rest within his presence, just
to rest not moving, not wanting to move
nor wanting not to, simply being there,
then doing all the other things she does
as one who is continually seen,
and acts as if God sees, because
the truth is that he does.
So she wants to be his because she is.
*
Monday, August 29, 2005
Monday, August 01, 2005
The Death of the Devil
*
The one that finally broke her was the prostitute. She was dying, Duessa was "ministering" to her. Her stiffish hospital garb was raising rashes on her ill-fitting flesh and then she noted that the prostitute had stopped listening to the scientific crap she was reciting to her and soon enough Duessa stopped listening herself. So nobody was listening. And at the end when the hooker started clutching a little cross around her neck, the devil (usually one to berate that particular symbol) found herself nodding off, and she hadn't bothered to do anything about it. She had failed to mock, failed to belittle, failed to reduce. She found herself withering like a dried pea inside her role. She didn't even feel hostile to that cross -- or at least not hostile enough.
*
Her desire -- to gnaw everything and make it bleed -- was dying.
*
And at the burial she had felt it only numbly when 2 or 3 of the woman's friends had begun to heat up, actually heat up at the sight of the remains, their souls had actually begun to heat up, move their particles more urgently in the "void" that surrounded them and become more interesting. With one pass their souls had grown tastier, worth the energy of destruction, of temptation. And yet she felt it happen but did nothing. She let them go! It was as though she'd reached the point where she could relish a taste but refrain from eating. It was as though their potential salvation left her unmoved. They blushed and cried at the touch of a hymn, and yet she did nothing! And the people left the service and went away unharmed.
And in the parking lot she felt dry sobs of self pity twist her body, as all the people rushed past her to their cars, scarcely registering her ill will for them, scarcely giving her a thought. So in this terrible new era -- filled with a faith without substance, shut up in styrofoam like cold pasta -- she found herself beginning to twist with self-pity, paralyzed, her faith in herself fallen to a new low. The evil seemed to have nothing real to live on.
*
Throughout the country, as differences between people began to decay, so did her memory of her own role in the decay, so did that memory itself, so did it decay. Those she had turned away from goodness had no particular badness to achieve. It was their reality and hers that had been gnawed away. People bored her and their collapse was beginning to flatten out, it wasn't interesting. And she was the one who had made it uninteresting, and this realization was quite terrible. Or rather this too had become old and flat. She was dying, she was dying.
*
Once people had been like pocks in stone, ready to hold rainwater or gather up the passing filth of their world. They had been like characters in fiction, blank and promising, they had not been so closed, so wised-up and hard. They had been more like vessels, open to receiving things from the world. And it had been her joy to fill them with her profoundly bad offerings. Centuries had accumulated with the brittle joy of people's destruction. But now the people simply filled themselves. There was no space left for herself or for the others whom she was careful not to think about. Her daughter, her darling daughter, lost forever....!
Oh such woe. It was as though people had simply become denial. And not only denial of the others, her kindly rivals, no, not only of them, but there was a new unpleasant flavor to the world, a new denial of herself. She too had become denied, her interest and her relevance. And though this too was a form of demonic nutrition -- though she ate people together with what they denied and though their denial was like a spice that helped her to consume them utterly -- still it had come to have the flat taste that she now recognized all too well. She was continually tempted to spit them out. They provided no satisfaction.
How contagious the feeling of flatness was!
There for eternity they lay stupefied, unable to feel, unable to suffer in a satisfying way. The change had eaten them up from the inside. There was no longer anything for her to enjoy.
*
And the others, her brothers and sisters, were so boring in their unawareness that she couldn't bear to spend time with them. And so it seemed that the end had come to some unmarked era but an end with no distinguishing marks, no character of its own, and almost no existence of its own. It didn't even feel evil! It didn't even offer that temporary relief.
*
The graduate student was hanging from a bar inside the freeway underpass. The cars pounded indifferently overhead, that was a satisfying sound. But where was the dead one's soul? What had happened to it? The devil fell to her hands and knees, pawing the ground.
There was a condom flattened against a twig in the mud. A broken beer bottle whose label was completely washed out. A scum of froth clinging to the bottle. Further down, there was a weed near the bent bottom of the slope, and this weed bore a single flower. It breathed heavily and ingested a mucousy substance, thinner than a wet tissue. The film on the weed -- that was the vagabond soul. The rest of it, of the soul, lay like a little wisp of foam on the ground. It wasn't even strong enough to hold itself together and *be* a soul.
The devil tasted it, gagged, and quickly spit it out. And she had never done that before!
Then this craven being suffered her deepest breakdown. For 39 days -- she was too wicked to be allowed the forty of her enemy -- she sat motionless, lower back slumped like trash, resting in the wild like a piece of eroding wood or stone. She was -- not pitiful, no one so wicked could be pitiful -- but almost fragile, propped in space like any piece of nature that a passerby might despoil. What seemed to have imploded was that iron core of will.
Even naughty runaway kids were afraid to approach where the devil rested. It was impossible to believe that what was seen could be other than a trap. At the same time the expression in her eyes was too much like the expression on a failed parent, an authority figure whose authority had dwindled to nothing. Also there was that terrible skeleton rattling by her side, the spectre of the dead man floating in the air.
So when the devil died no one much noticed.
*
But before that happened, she was visited by a homeless or "unhoused" man and caught a brief glimpse of the underkingdom, of her own kingdom. And then they say that she passed out her spirit, or as they say: gave up the ghost. That was the thirty-fifth night. Toward the end she opened her eyes to find the homeless man sitting next to her. Ah, I knew there was someone still at home in there, the man said. Greetings. The skeleton shivered and clicked his teeth.
The devil lay crumpled in a position that would destroy her own bones if she didn't move. But she didn't move. And then the other one said:
Look, do you feel it? Everything is softening now. The people up there, you can't hear it from her, but they're getting soft now. They are preparing for something. Do you know what I mean?
*
It seemed that a couple of days passed.
The man cut a slice of bread with an army knife. When the devil slumped even further, the stranger raised it to the edge of the other's mouth.
Like a beast, the dying creature snarled. Go ahead and bite me if you want, the homeless man said. Of course I know it's no longer fun when you're given permission. So go ahead but of course you won't. You were built on contraries and that's a house that can't ultimately stand.
You are a garment that God has shucked off and tossed away.
*
The homeless man had taken on an aura of holiness. The softening had begun. The things of the future began to happen, not before their "time" -- because "time" was a thing that God held as if in tongs.
The bread lay, a hideous tasteless mass on the thick part of her tongue. She was on her back now. I don't eat bread, she said. I can't, I don't know how.
The rest of the days passed, as many as there were. One day the graduate student's skeleton just got up and walked away to join its soul.
*
You know you are softening too, the homeless man said. His voice had the gentle tone that people use with pets. The devil was appalled, disgusted, nauseated -- its morality of evil lay profoundly offended. But she, now just an it, seemed to have less will to move than the ooze that lay on the mud. Even physiological decay could embody a kind of justice.
The devil sank -- and this was by far the most horrible part -- through its own kingdom and found there was nobody there anymore. The caves and warrens were empty like a broken ant-farm. The sinners all were gone or flattened. And the place wasn't cold and wasn't hot, wasn't high and wasn't low, wasn't terrifying or even trivial, it wasn't even nonexistent, but give it one kick and it would crumble. And the floor was the muddy clammy texture of the underpass. It *was* the underpass. There wasn't anything else, not for it, not anymore. Little cheerful worms were making tunnels under the road. That's all there was, except for the noisy place -- was it over the head or under the ground? -- where you heard the commuters, they were ferocious and grim, hurling at the speed of light on their urgent errands.
Yes but the goodness that the devil fed upon, that stilil existed of course, if not here. But the devil found itself unable to touch goodness and still *be* the devil. A great transition was about to occur!
*
The one that finally broke her was the prostitute. She was dying, Duessa was "ministering" to her. Her stiffish hospital garb was raising rashes on her ill-fitting flesh and then she noted that the prostitute had stopped listening to the scientific crap she was reciting to her and soon enough Duessa stopped listening herself. So nobody was listening. And at the end when the hooker started clutching a little cross around her neck, the devil (usually one to berate that particular symbol) found herself nodding off, and she hadn't bothered to do anything about it. She had failed to mock, failed to belittle, failed to reduce. She found herself withering like a dried pea inside her role. She didn't even feel hostile to that cross -- or at least not hostile enough.
*
Her desire -- to gnaw everything and make it bleed -- was dying.
*
And at the burial she had felt it only numbly when 2 or 3 of the woman's friends had begun to heat up, actually heat up at the sight of the remains, their souls had actually begun to heat up, move their particles more urgently in the "void" that surrounded them and become more interesting. With one pass their souls had grown tastier, worth the energy of destruction, of temptation. And yet she felt it happen but did nothing. She let them go! It was as though she'd reached the point where she could relish a taste but refrain from eating. It was as though their potential salvation left her unmoved. They blushed and cried at the touch of a hymn, and yet she did nothing! And the people left the service and went away unharmed.
And in the parking lot she felt dry sobs of self pity twist her body, as all the people rushed past her to their cars, scarcely registering her ill will for them, scarcely giving her a thought. So in this terrible new era -- filled with a faith without substance, shut up in styrofoam like cold pasta -- she found herself beginning to twist with self-pity, paralyzed, her faith in herself fallen to a new low. The evil seemed to have nothing real to live on.
*
Throughout the country, as differences between people began to decay, so did her memory of her own role in the decay, so did that memory itself, so did it decay. Those she had turned away from goodness had no particular badness to achieve. It was their reality and hers that had been gnawed away. People bored her and their collapse was beginning to flatten out, it wasn't interesting. And she was the one who had made it uninteresting, and this realization was quite terrible. Or rather this too had become old and flat. She was dying, she was dying.
*
Once people had been like pocks in stone, ready to hold rainwater or gather up the passing filth of their world. They had been like characters in fiction, blank and promising, they had not been so closed, so wised-up and hard. They had been more like vessels, open to receiving things from the world. And it had been her joy to fill them with her profoundly bad offerings. Centuries had accumulated with the brittle joy of people's destruction. But now the people simply filled themselves. There was no space left for herself or for the others whom she was careful not to think about. Her daughter, her darling daughter, lost forever....!
Oh such woe. It was as though people had simply become denial. And not only denial of the others, her kindly rivals, no, not only of them, but there was a new unpleasant flavor to the world, a new denial of herself. She too had become denied, her interest and her relevance. And though this too was a form of demonic nutrition -- though she ate people together with what they denied and though their denial was like a spice that helped her to consume them utterly -- still it had come to have the flat taste that she now recognized all too well. She was continually tempted to spit them out. They provided no satisfaction.
How contagious the feeling of flatness was!
There for eternity they lay stupefied, unable to feel, unable to suffer in a satisfying way. The change had eaten them up from the inside. There was no longer anything for her to enjoy.
*
And the others, her brothers and sisters, were so boring in their unawareness that she couldn't bear to spend time with them. And so it seemed that the end had come to some unmarked era but an end with no distinguishing marks, no character of its own, and almost no existence of its own. It didn't even feel evil! It didn't even offer that temporary relief.
*
The graduate student was hanging from a bar inside the freeway underpass. The cars pounded indifferently overhead, that was a satisfying sound. But where was the dead one's soul? What had happened to it? The devil fell to her hands and knees, pawing the ground.
There was a condom flattened against a twig in the mud. A broken beer bottle whose label was completely washed out. A scum of froth clinging to the bottle. Further down, there was a weed near the bent bottom of the slope, and this weed bore a single flower. It breathed heavily and ingested a mucousy substance, thinner than a wet tissue. The film on the weed -- that was the vagabond soul. The rest of it, of the soul, lay like a little wisp of foam on the ground. It wasn't even strong enough to hold itself together and *be* a soul.
The devil tasted it, gagged, and quickly spit it out. And she had never done that before!
Then this craven being suffered her deepest breakdown. For 39 days -- she was too wicked to be allowed the forty of her enemy -- she sat motionless, lower back slumped like trash, resting in the wild like a piece of eroding wood or stone. She was -- not pitiful, no one so wicked could be pitiful -- but almost fragile, propped in space like any piece of nature that a passerby might despoil. What seemed to have imploded was that iron core of will.
Even naughty runaway kids were afraid to approach where the devil rested. It was impossible to believe that what was seen could be other than a trap. At the same time the expression in her eyes was too much like the expression on a failed parent, an authority figure whose authority had dwindled to nothing. Also there was that terrible skeleton rattling by her side, the spectre of the dead man floating in the air.
So when the devil died no one much noticed.
*
But before that happened, she was visited by a homeless or "unhoused" man and caught a brief glimpse of the underkingdom, of her own kingdom. And then they say that she passed out her spirit, or as they say: gave up the ghost. That was the thirty-fifth night. Toward the end she opened her eyes to find the homeless man sitting next to her. Ah, I knew there was someone still at home in there, the man said. Greetings. The skeleton shivered and clicked his teeth.
The devil lay crumpled in a position that would destroy her own bones if she didn't move. But she didn't move. And then the other one said:
Look, do you feel it? Everything is softening now. The people up there, you can't hear it from her, but they're getting soft now. They are preparing for something. Do you know what I mean?
*
It seemed that a couple of days passed.
The man cut a slice of bread with an army knife. When the devil slumped even further, the stranger raised it to the edge of the other's mouth.
Like a beast, the dying creature snarled. Go ahead and bite me if you want, the homeless man said. Of course I know it's no longer fun when you're given permission. So go ahead but of course you won't. You were built on contraries and that's a house that can't ultimately stand.
You are a garment that God has shucked off and tossed away.
*
The homeless man had taken on an aura of holiness. The softening had begun. The things of the future began to happen, not before their "time" -- because "time" was a thing that God held as if in tongs.
The bread lay, a hideous tasteless mass on the thick part of her tongue. She was on her back now. I don't eat bread, she said. I can't, I don't know how.
The rest of the days passed, as many as there were. One day the graduate student's skeleton just got up and walked away to join its soul.
*
You know you are softening too, the homeless man said. His voice had the gentle tone that people use with pets. The devil was appalled, disgusted, nauseated -- its morality of evil lay profoundly offended. But she, now just an it, seemed to have less will to move than the ooze that lay on the mud. Even physiological decay could embody a kind of justice.
The devil sank -- and this was by far the most horrible part -- through its own kingdom and found there was nobody there anymore. The caves and warrens were empty like a broken ant-farm. The sinners all were gone or flattened. And the place wasn't cold and wasn't hot, wasn't high and wasn't low, wasn't terrifying or even trivial, it wasn't even nonexistent, but give it one kick and it would crumble. And the floor was the muddy clammy texture of the underpass. It *was* the underpass. There wasn't anything else, not for it, not anymore. Little cheerful worms were making tunnels under the road. That's all there was, except for the noisy place -- was it over the head or under the ground? -- where you heard the commuters, they were ferocious and grim, hurling at the speed of light on their urgent errands.
Yes but the goodness that the devil fed upon, that stilil existed of course, if not here. But the devil found itself unable to touch goodness and still *be* the devil. A great transition was about to occur!
*
Sunday, July 31, 2005
The migraine
*
The paradox that struck this wretched creature was the fusion of the need to pray and the inability to pray.
The devil opened the door of her condo and was greeted by a migraine of stupendous width and depth and emptiness. It was not a creation of the bright sun. It was not the wheeling configuration of planets in her head. It was not something she had eaten. It was a thing wedged inside her, it was definitional, intrinsic, basic. It was *her*.
When she managed to open her eyes again, she saw the Zen warrior, a different person now, zooming past her on his bike. From the boom box slung behind him came the sound of praise songs. they said the name over and over.
She was nauseated and unable to vomit.
Make this a dream, please, she said. But who was she speaking to?
The door handle moved. The world was real. She was not dreaming -- at least not more than usual.
The plight was that she knew the name. She knew the one from whom she might have begged relief. But to beg she would have had to release this person she held, this person full of pain, this self. She would have had to cease to be herself.
Thus there was a redemption offered but it was offered to another person. And this other person she flatly refused to become. Or simply could not become.
*
She heard it like music through a closed door. Redemption through a closed door. The sound of a person taking heart and opening a door. The fact of it, the fact that the change was there and was on offer. All through that muffled door, the ear itself muffled. And she could not, would not, open the door.
*
The paradox that struck this wretched creature was the fusion of the need to pray and the inability to pray.
The devil opened the door of her condo and was greeted by a migraine of stupendous width and depth and emptiness. It was not a creation of the bright sun. It was not the wheeling configuration of planets in her head. It was not something she had eaten. It was a thing wedged inside her, it was definitional, intrinsic, basic. It was *her*.
When she managed to open her eyes again, she saw the Zen warrior, a different person now, zooming past her on his bike. From the boom box slung behind him came the sound of praise songs. they said the name over and over.
She was nauseated and unable to vomit.
Make this a dream, please, she said. But who was she speaking to?
The door handle moved. The world was real. She was not dreaming -- at least not more than usual.
The plight was that she knew the name. She knew the one from whom she might have begged relief. But to beg she would have had to release this person she held, this person full of pain, this self. She would have had to cease to be herself.
Thus there was a redemption offered but it was offered to another person. And this other person she flatly refused to become. Or simply could not become.
*
She heard it like music through a closed door. Redemption through a closed door. The sound of a person taking heart and opening a door. The fact of it, the fact that the change was there and was on offer. All through that muffled door, the ear itself muffled. And she could not, would not, open the door.
*
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Death's feet
*
Her decline continued. One night Duessa dreamed that her bedroom was a thing falling on her head. It was not a space open for a soul to occupy, not a carved space with an openness. It was like a block of wood. Duessa's pillow was a damp and lumpy heap, it did not give to the head. The light-fixtures were inert, the light itself was nothing but a thing. One stubbed one's toe against the wall and discovered that toe and wall were of a single texture bereft of all life. The light was a thing, the chair was a thing, the air lying loose on the chair was just a thing. The ache in her toe was a dead thing, just like her toe. All the bones were torpid. The skin was a used-up cloth. The face repelled the fingers, the cranium was a dead item and what was inside the cranium, only another thing. Her soul was a thing, not worth thinking about or being inside. And everything about her was just used up. Such was her dream.
She woke with a mixed feeling of relief and dread. But no, the feelings were there but they did not mix. And the dread dominated everything. When she went to the window there was no view otside, neither air nor no air. There wasn't gray, there wasn't blue. There wasn't not-gray either. There wasn't anything. Nor was there nothing.
She placed her dead feet on the matty edge of the rug and slid over to the door but the handle wouldn't turn. It had no grip on anything. The sound of panic in her throat died for lack of a medium to carry it. The room began to fold upon her like a cardboard box. And then she woke up for a second time, lying there for some hours, unable to move. There was no thought to move to that would be different.
*
Her decline continued. One night Duessa dreamed that her bedroom was a thing falling on her head. It was not a space open for a soul to occupy, not a carved space with an openness. It was like a block of wood. Duessa's pillow was a damp and lumpy heap, it did not give to the head. The light-fixtures were inert, the light itself was nothing but a thing. One stubbed one's toe against the wall and discovered that toe and wall were of a single texture bereft of all life. The light was a thing, the chair was a thing, the air lying loose on the chair was just a thing. The ache in her toe was a dead thing, just like her toe. All the bones were torpid. The skin was a used-up cloth. The face repelled the fingers, the cranium was a dead item and what was inside the cranium, only another thing. Her soul was a thing, not worth thinking about or being inside. And everything about her was just used up. Such was her dream.
She woke with a mixed feeling of relief and dread. But no, the feelings were there but they did not mix. And the dread dominated everything. When she went to the window there was no view otside, neither air nor no air. There wasn't gray, there wasn't blue. There wasn't not-gray either. There wasn't anything. Nor was there nothing.
She placed her dead feet on the matty edge of the rug and slid over to the door but the handle wouldn't turn. It had no grip on anything. The sound of panic in her throat died for lack of a medium to carry it. The room began to fold upon her like a cardboard box. And then she woke up for a second time, lying there for some hours, unable to move. There was no thought to move to that would be different.
*
Sunstroke continued
*
So Dave lay down his burden, lay it down, that heavy burden -- took the armor off. One nudge and it clattered down to the ground.
Duessa lay like a fossil embedded in the ground, pterodactyl boneship, unutterably pitiful, so wedged in that she could hardly move. She somehow managed to shift into supine mode. Dave, Dave.
Dave, my good man, dig me out of the ground so that I can die with a little dignity.
Reaching toward light she bent herself into one of those impossible yoga position that her daughter would toss off almost apologetically in class. With the mother it looked innate, natural. Dave shook his ugly bald head but the vision didn't clear.
If they'd just left me with my old sunstroke I could tell whether you were lying to me. I would not guess, I would know. But they shot me with these drugs that have restored my common sense and taken away my discernment. God's voice is but a whisper.
Dave, that's what they did to me too, Duessa said. That's why I was so bad, she said.
Our bad deeds are imposed on us by something we don't even know.
Dave knew she was lying, really, he knew, he absolutely knew. She was at just the point of depravity where one not only cannot play innocent but can't remember why another simpler being might want to. In a word she was lost. This he knew, this he caught even from her words; nevertheless, there he was already reaching forward to loosen the dirt around her. Of course she took him by the neck, of course she fastened her teeth on his lips. And era obvio, it was obvious, that she didn't even want to! She was like the dog who found himself lungeing before he'd even decided to do so. Her thrashing tore the man like a piece of paper. His lips bled as she pulled him bodily into cast off dirt and took away his ability to breathe, and now he wasn't even surprised. He'd known what she was going to do because this was just her -- the way of her -- what her definition entailed. And as he began sinking into rocks, swallowing them and assimilating himself to them, he heard a sort of discontinuous pop that released him from her power. Elf had crushed her mother's head in with a rock. She hadn't killed her but at least she had knocked her, like a croquet ball, into some other continuum.
So the devil sank into the earth, not to die -- not yet -- but to flutter and expand into some other part of the planet that was ready for her.
*
So Dave lay down his burden, lay it down, that heavy burden -- took the armor off. One nudge and it clattered down to the ground.
Duessa lay like a fossil embedded in the ground, pterodactyl boneship, unutterably pitiful, so wedged in that she could hardly move. She somehow managed to shift into supine mode. Dave, Dave.
Dave, my good man, dig me out of the ground so that I can die with a little dignity.
Reaching toward light she bent herself into one of those impossible yoga position that her daughter would toss off almost apologetically in class. With the mother it looked innate, natural. Dave shook his ugly bald head but the vision didn't clear.
If they'd just left me with my old sunstroke I could tell whether you were lying to me. I would not guess, I would know. But they shot me with these drugs that have restored my common sense and taken away my discernment. God's voice is but a whisper.
Dave, that's what they did to me too, Duessa said. That's why I was so bad, she said.
Our bad deeds are imposed on us by something we don't even know.
Dave knew she was lying, really, he knew, he absolutely knew. She was at just the point of depravity where one not only cannot play innocent but can't remember why another simpler being might want to. In a word she was lost. This he knew, this he caught even from her words; nevertheless, there he was already reaching forward to loosen the dirt around her. Of course she took him by the neck, of course she fastened her teeth on his lips. And era obvio, it was obvious, that she didn't even want to! She was like the dog who found himself lungeing before he'd even decided to do so. Her thrashing tore the man like a piece of paper. His lips bled as she pulled him bodily into cast off dirt and took away his ability to breathe, and now he wasn't even surprised. He'd known what she was going to do because this was just her -- the way of her -- what her definition entailed. And as he began sinking into rocks, swallowing them and assimilating himself to them, he heard a sort of discontinuous pop that released him from her power. Elf had crushed her mother's head in with a rock. She hadn't killed her but at least she had knocked her, like a croquet ball, into some other continuum.
So the devil sank into the earth, not to die -- not yet -- but to flutter and expand into some other part of the planet that was ready for her.
*
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Sunstroke in the garden
*
The warrior only met God via sunstroke.
If given water and shade, the warrior recovered, became an ordinary human, lost contact with God.
Sometimes the warrior refused food and water and shade.
Foolish person, they said. Foolish person, they said.
Yes but sustenance had a cost. Food masked his own true nature as a creature dying and almost dead, almost alive again.
I would like to be alive, not just fed. Foolish person, they said and shook their heads, blurry in his no longer functioning vision. Foolish -- the word swishing like a weak whip.
Why would anyone wear a mask? Why would anyone want to be anything other than what he was?
If you craved salvation, and that he did, if you craved, how could you expect your craving to be, no, how could you ever expect a creature with your name to gain it, to gain salvation, any creature other than the one single creature that you actually were? The creature that your one name called? How would you expect a mask or fantasy to win what only a naked creature could have?
Why then mask that same nakedness and pain?
At least that was one argument.
So the warrior turned down water and hallucinated, or that was what the onlookers said. The word foolish lay coiled and waiting upon their tongues.
No, this vision is real, he said, but the onlookers laughed. That is just exactly what he *would* say.
*
But isn't this your true self? Calm and washed, sober, able to speak about what you see? You aren't saying that this is a mask?
*
The warrior said that he walked with God but the world saw his thrashing on the park bench, acting up. So they took him to the hospital and medicated him and he complained about the flatness.
The drug is like a door that has closed between me and God.
No, Elf said. It's more like the door to a room with other people.
Solitude won't do. God is meant to be worshipped with other people. He is God of the living, not of the dead.
The man named Dave became a human again, most reluctantly. He talked earnestly to the priest and to Elf in the eating room while the others -- "addicts" people called them -- huddled in a line to get their own cross. When they got their own cross they found a corner and huddled, holding it close to them, risking of course ridicule, no no, braving ridicule, enjoying it -- such were the ones we called "addicts". The one they called the knight of the Red Cross babbled to himself by the altar and, I don't know, made sense in a way, but people looked at his furry-shouldered girth and took care not to come too close. Foolish person, foolish person. But Elf, Dave said, won't you at least let me tell you what I saw?
To ease this rapture from my craw -- like a little dachsund spitting up the Snickers wrapper, slowly.
Let me tell you what I saw when I wandered alone. I saw the witch, I saw the devil. Her body lay disorganized like a decayed landfill, cans strewn everywhere, a piece of junk in the garden. Rejected recycling. When I gave her water she wouldn't swallow. Foolish body, lacking reason.
Whose body was it? Elf asked. Whose body?
It's so hard to remember -- you've medicated me and now I don't see so well -- you've made me human again. Now I don't see that other place as I did. I no longer quite know when I am reporting as opposed to making up what I say.
I think that body was your mother's -- it was the devil or at least like the devil -- but what is the devil's shape without a body to feed on? Isn't the devil qua diabolus nothing but a virus without a host? What is evil when it has to live on itself? What if not short term? Nothing to speak of, right? I wouldn't think destruction has much of an independent essence to describe.
But it seemed to me that she was giving up and dying, the man said.
She was shriveling and ceasing to take much notice.
If only that were true, it would mean that the new time that has been coming and coming might finally just come.
*
The broken ones -- the ones who could not call themselves Christians but only would-be Christians -- they could not stop pondering the meaning of orthodoxy, this structure that contained them and that they themselves could not contain. What for you is orthodoxy? A set of decreed beliefs? Dead beliefs? Are you sure that's what it is?
People object to being ordered what to think. Yet the spell is very strong. It needs to be defined a different way.
For the warrior, orthodoxy was not a code but a place. To this place he brought his considerable doubts, which is just to say that he brought himself. He did not bring a mask of someone else, behind which one might hide from whatever was to come. It couldn't just be the tongue that walked this aisle. The whole body had to follow.
Name this place. I cannot, will not. Not yet.
In the safety that was this place -- both garden and hallowed building and still but the precinct of a building -- hanging like the shadow of a raised shield -- doubt itself became protected and so faith flourished, beyond all expectation. The warrior rested. People walked here together, awkwardly, like cripples approaching their Sunday cup.
Name this place. Name this place. Say the name.
After the meal with his friends, Dave walked unsteadily to the stable behind the garden. His armor clanked against his thigh. There was a bruise that led to a wound that led to a pool of blood beneath his belly where the soul lay, face up, mouth open, desperately hungry. The metal clanked, it was foolish to wear.
There was a compost heap by the garden and, some feet further away, a dried-up place filled with things that were unable even to be treated as compost. There she lay, breathing but only barely.
Dave turned to cry out to his companions but his head -- only half sticking out from the cotton wadding of the drugs -- felt too dizzy even to judge its position and his throat was too dry to speak.
He felt alone. But alone with God. Orthodoxy extended even here. That is, if you wished it to. If you acknowledged its scope and its power.
Salute the sun in the name of the one you are afraid to name.
*
Lord, save us from even the wickedness we have triumphed over. Save us from feeling triumph.
*
The warrior only met God via sunstroke.
If given water and shade, the warrior recovered, became an ordinary human, lost contact with God.
Sometimes the warrior refused food and water and shade.
Foolish person, they said. Foolish person, they said.
Yes but sustenance had a cost. Food masked his own true nature as a creature dying and almost dead, almost alive again.
I would like to be alive, not just fed. Foolish person, they said and shook their heads, blurry in his no longer functioning vision. Foolish -- the word swishing like a weak whip.
Why would anyone wear a mask? Why would anyone want to be anything other than what he was?
If you craved salvation, and that he did, if you craved, how could you expect your craving to be, no, how could you ever expect a creature with your name to gain it, to gain salvation, any creature other than the one single creature that you actually were? The creature that your one name called? How would you expect a mask or fantasy to win what only a naked creature could have?
Why then mask that same nakedness and pain?
At least that was one argument.
So the warrior turned down water and hallucinated, or that was what the onlookers said. The word foolish lay coiled and waiting upon their tongues.
No, this vision is real, he said, but the onlookers laughed. That is just exactly what he *would* say.
*
But isn't this your true self? Calm and washed, sober, able to speak about what you see? You aren't saying that this is a mask?
*
The warrior said that he walked with God but the world saw his thrashing on the park bench, acting up. So they took him to the hospital and medicated him and he complained about the flatness.
The drug is like a door that has closed between me and God.
No, Elf said. It's more like the door to a room with other people.
Solitude won't do. God is meant to be worshipped with other people. He is God of the living, not of the dead.
The man named Dave became a human again, most reluctantly. He talked earnestly to the priest and to Elf in the eating room while the others -- "addicts" people called them -- huddled in a line to get their own cross. When they got their own cross they found a corner and huddled, holding it close to them, risking of course ridicule, no no, braving ridicule, enjoying it -- such were the ones we called "addicts". The one they called the knight of the Red Cross babbled to himself by the altar and, I don't know, made sense in a way, but people looked at his furry-shouldered girth and took care not to come too close. Foolish person, foolish person. But Elf, Dave said, won't you at least let me tell you what I saw?
To ease this rapture from my craw -- like a little dachsund spitting up the Snickers wrapper, slowly.
Let me tell you what I saw when I wandered alone. I saw the witch, I saw the devil. Her body lay disorganized like a decayed landfill, cans strewn everywhere, a piece of junk in the garden. Rejected recycling. When I gave her water she wouldn't swallow. Foolish body, lacking reason.
Whose body was it? Elf asked. Whose body?
It's so hard to remember -- you've medicated me and now I don't see so well -- you've made me human again. Now I don't see that other place as I did. I no longer quite know when I am reporting as opposed to making up what I say.
I think that body was your mother's -- it was the devil or at least like the devil -- but what is the devil's shape without a body to feed on? Isn't the devil qua diabolus nothing but a virus without a host? What is evil when it has to live on itself? What if not short term? Nothing to speak of, right? I wouldn't think destruction has much of an independent essence to describe.
But it seemed to me that she was giving up and dying, the man said.
She was shriveling and ceasing to take much notice.
If only that were true, it would mean that the new time that has been coming and coming might finally just come.
*
The broken ones -- the ones who could not call themselves Christians but only would-be Christians -- they could not stop pondering the meaning of orthodoxy, this structure that contained them and that they themselves could not contain. What for you is orthodoxy? A set of decreed beliefs? Dead beliefs? Are you sure that's what it is?
People object to being ordered what to think. Yet the spell is very strong. It needs to be defined a different way.
For the warrior, orthodoxy was not a code but a place. To this place he brought his considerable doubts, which is just to say that he brought himself. He did not bring a mask of someone else, behind which one might hide from whatever was to come. It couldn't just be the tongue that walked this aisle. The whole body had to follow.
Name this place. I cannot, will not. Not yet.
In the safety that was this place -- both garden and hallowed building and still but the precinct of a building -- hanging like the shadow of a raised shield -- doubt itself became protected and so faith flourished, beyond all expectation. The warrior rested. People walked here together, awkwardly, like cripples approaching their Sunday cup.
Name this place. Name this place. Say the name.
After the meal with his friends, Dave walked unsteadily to the stable behind the garden. His armor clanked against his thigh. There was a bruise that led to a wound that led to a pool of blood beneath his belly where the soul lay, face up, mouth open, desperately hungry. The metal clanked, it was foolish to wear.
There was a compost heap by the garden and, some feet further away, a dried-up place filled with things that were unable even to be treated as compost. There she lay, breathing but only barely.
Dave turned to cry out to his companions but his head -- only half sticking out from the cotton wadding of the drugs -- felt too dizzy even to judge its position and his throat was too dry to speak.
He felt alone. But alone with God. Orthodoxy extended even here. That is, if you wished it to. If you acknowledged its scope and its power.
Salute the sun in the name of the one you are afraid to name.
*
Lord, save us from even the wickedness we have triumphed over. Save us from feeling triumph.
*
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Even the devil
*
Can the Devil be saved? Can even the Devil be saved? Origen the great and incautious theologian thought such a thing was possible, and Jerome attacked him for saying so.
The problem is not merely that this notion upgrades a parasitic virus into the status of an independent entity, a *being*. Because, after all, even a virus might evolve into something else with a definable will of its own. But the problem is deeper and worse.
The problem is that when a truly evil being -- Hitler, let's say, to make it easy -- is thought of as saved, then it follows that the most basic cord has been cut. The cord of things happening. Suddenly the evil was a phase, thus not quite real. And the life that the evil destroyed is now turned into a joke. What happened didn't really happen, after all.
Or say that Hitler, a mere human, after all, might repent and yet somehow remain himself (something I can't imagine but perhaps for God somehow imaginable). Then you must turn and go back to the example of the devil. Because evil is part of the devil's definition. If the devil were saved he would no longer be the devil. Were such an entity saved, would that turn all the evil into a joke? Would it all be a silly reversal out of Aristotle? If the evil were not a joke, then in what sense would the entity saved not be some limp skin of blessedness hanging in a void? In what sense could that saved one still be Hitler or whoever it was? Or Saddam Hussein? What real thing would have been saved? How would history itself not be scandalized and debased?
So, in this case at least, Origen's forgiveness sucks the soul, and its very meaning, out of the world.
The devil cannot be saved.
*
Can the Devil be saved? Can even the Devil be saved? Origen the great and incautious theologian thought such a thing was possible, and Jerome attacked him for saying so.
The problem is not merely that this notion upgrades a parasitic virus into the status of an independent entity, a *being*. Because, after all, even a virus might evolve into something else with a definable will of its own. But the problem is deeper and worse.
The problem is that when a truly evil being -- Hitler, let's say, to make it easy -- is thought of as saved, then it follows that the most basic cord has been cut. The cord of things happening. Suddenly the evil was a phase, thus not quite real. And the life that the evil destroyed is now turned into a joke. What happened didn't really happen, after all.
Or say that Hitler, a mere human, after all, might repent and yet somehow remain himself (something I can't imagine but perhaps for God somehow imaginable). Then you must turn and go back to the example of the devil. Because evil is part of the devil's definition. If the devil were saved he would no longer be the devil. Were such an entity saved, would that turn all the evil into a joke? Would it all be a silly reversal out of Aristotle? If the evil were not a joke, then in what sense would the entity saved not be some limp skin of blessedness hanging in a void? In what sense could that saved one still be Hitler or whoever it was? Or Saddam Hussein? What real thing would have been saved? How would history itself not be scandalized and debased?
So, in this case at least, Origen's forgiveness sucks the soul, and its very meaning, out of the world.
The devil cannot be saved.
*
Thursday, July 14, 2005
The Death of the Devil - begun
*
Did Duessa reconcile herself to the loss of her daughter? She did not.
Did she want her daughter as a husk to feed on? That is what she wanted.
Did she have millions of other souls in her grasp? Indeed she did.
Did she find a shortage of lost souls as she winged through the night, long past curfew? She never found a shortage.
Did the death of a stranger have the same satisfying taste as the death of one's own daughter? Oh, the witch moaned, how could it?
My darling, you are my own flesh. How I need you! The mother's lament floated through the night like a ballad -- echoed like the legendary ladies of the canyon in the old folk song, reverberated in sentimental ears and became heard and misinterpreted by singers all across the land: the cry of a mother for her child.
*
In the same way that, in cheap movies, a psychopathic killer is seen as all but invincible, breaking locks and entering private houses with ease, always creeping just behind the heroine, as if invulnerable in sheer badness -- never leaving tracks or prints, flowing this malice everywhere -- in the very same way, the common imagination will picture the devil as impossibly slick, impervious to all misfortune and unhappiness. People seem to think that every evil plot succeeds. And every plotter happy. But how could a life that is founded upon evil be so grounded in happiness? How could such a parasite -- feeding on goodness and happiness without even feeling them or having them -- how could such a thing summon your envy?
If you believe in God, why allot to the devil so much power? Why do you give the devil a happiness so inappropriate and impossible?
The parasitical figure is the weakest in the world.
She is a virus, she is not even alive. She only comes to life -- or pseudolife really -- when your own will is invaded and you let her drab capsid enter your own warm cell. She does not exist until you let her exist or make her exist.
*
Did Duessa reconcile herself to the loss of her daughter? She did not.
Did she want her daughter as a husk to feed on? That is what she wanted.
Did she have millions of other souls in her grasp? Indeed she did.
Did she find a shortage of lost souls as she winged through the night, long past curfew? She never found a shortage.
Did the death of a stranger have the same satisfying taste as the death of one's own daughter? Oh, the witch moaned, how could it?
My darling, you are my own flesh. How I need you! The mother's lament floated through the night like a ballad -- echoed like the legendary ladies of the canyon in the old folk song, reverberated in sentimental ears and became heard and misinterpreted by singers all across the land: the cry of a mother for her child.
*
In the same way that, in cheap movies, a psychopathic killer is seen as all but invincible, breaking locks and entering private houses with ease, always creeping just behind the heroine, as if invulnerable in sheer badness -- never leaving tracks or prints, flowing this malice everywhere -- in the very same way, the common imagination will picture the devil as impossibly slick, impervious to all misfortune and unhappiness. People seem to think that every evil plot succeeds. And every plotter happy. But how could a life that is founded upon evil be so grounded in happiness? How could such a parasite -- feeding on goodness and happiness without even feeling them or having them -- how could such a thing summon your envy?
If you believe in God, why allot to the devil so much power? Why do you give the devil a happiness so inappropriate and impossible?
The parasitical figure is the weakest in the world.
She is a virus, she is not even alive. She only comes to life -- or pseudolife really -- when your own will is invaded and you let her drab capsid enter your own warm cell. She does not exist until you let her exist or make her exist.
*
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
In the church forgiven
*
Why is it that I need the institutional church, the institution and not just a prayer book?
*
Well look, Elf said, sometimes I feel ready to explode. I feel so full of God's love I'm ready to explode. And then what? What follows?
What do I do when I feel this love?
Commit a crime in the name of Jesus? No, I don't think so!
*
When I take off all my blotters and my masks, when I feel God's power or some sliver of it, what keeps me from imploding with my joy and terror?
*
I need the church to hold me in and keep me human. In solidarity with other humans. Let's say that their own imploding tendency pulls me out of my own dangerous place. Okay. No prophet, thank you, no cult figure, no indeed. I don't want no human blocking my access to God. Let the institution -- laws not men -- sustain my walking into these arms I have.
Tradition keeps me honest. It holds me close. I hunger for orthodoxy as a place to walk and explore.
If you find a truth and then you want to sustain it and want it to *persist*, well, then you too want those walls. Why expect another broken person to sustain your brokenness.
You too are going to institutionalize, to walk inside. You too. Then maybe you will have to wait for your own Luther to free you from what you have done. But first, do it.
*
The van full of disciples became raucous with prayer. An upright rational onlooker would have been deeply offended, scandalized. The Zen warrior sat humbled in prayer, the queer sat with his eyes closed. The dancer stood arrested in mid step. The van slowed down, it stopped. The people lay down and feel asleep, ragged scripture clutched to their breast. Let be not be so haughty that I ever pretend not to need this. As for myself, I really don't know a thing.
Less each day.
Praise, thanksgiving, seal me off from my own silly penchant to wander in despair.
*
The devil knew they were there and longed to kill them off -- "one well placed bomb, really" -- but the wakeful ones wouldn't stop singing hymns -- those corny antiquated hymns. Duessa heard the hymns and her stomach turned. Commonplace thoughts, voices out of tune! Somehow she lost heart to pursue them and teach them new sorrows. She became depressed, disconsolate. And the people were all suddenly and provisionally free. They sat in a circle in the garden of prayer -- the place where a eucharist could happen for them and within them. A protected space -- at least for now.
*
Why is it that I need the institutional church, the institution and not just a prayer book?
*
Well look, Elf said, sometimes I feel ready to explode. I feel so full of God's love I'm ready to explode. And then what? What follows?
What do I do when I feel this love?
Commit a crime in the name of Jesus? No, I don't think so!
*
When I take off all my blotters and my masks, when I feel God's power or some sliver of it, what keeps me from imploding with my joy and terror?
*
I need the church to hold me in and keep me human. In solidarity with other humans. Let's say that their own imploding tendency pulls me out of my own dangerous place. Okay. No prophet, thank you, no cult figure, no indeed. I don't want no human blocking my access to God. Let the institution -- laws not men -- sustain my walking into these arms I have.
Tradition keeps me honest. It holds me close. I hunger for orthodoxy as a place to walk and explore.
If you find a truth and then you want to sustain it and want it to *persist*, well, then you too want those walls. Why expect another broken person to sustain your brokenness.
You too are going to institutionalize, to walk inside. You too. Then maybe you will have to wait for your own Luther to free you from what you have done. But first, do it.
*
The van full of disciples became raucous with prayer. An upright rational onlooker would have been deeply offended, scandalized. The Zen warrior sat humbled in prayer, the queer sat with his eyes closed. The dancer stood arrested in mid step. The van slowed down, it stopped. The people lay down and feel asleep, ragged scripture clutched to their breast. Let be not be so haughty that I ever pretend not to need this. As for myself, I really don't know a thing.
Less each day.
Praise, thanksgiving, seal me off from my own silly penchant to wander in despair.
*
The devil knew they were there and longed to kill them off -- "one well placed bomb, really" -- but the wakeful ones wouldn't stop singing hymns -- those corny antiquated hymns. Duessa heard the hymns and her stomach turned. Commonplace thoughts, voices out of tune! Somehow she lost heart to pursue them and teach them new sorrows. She became depressed, disconsolate. And the people were all suddenly and provisionally free. They sat in a circle in the garden of prayer -- the place where a eucharist could happen for them and within them. A protected space -- at least for now.
*
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Monday, July 11, 2005
The back of the van
*
And in the back of the van was none other than Balaam's ass, a demure creature. But Balaam himself was not there.
And in the back of the van sat the Nazi Kommandant's wife. But there was not much left of her.
Not far from her Don and Dave sat next to each other, not saying anything. In peace, although, my God! no one is ever really in peace, in a site such as earth, what in the world would peace be here? Here everything is turmoil but still there is such a thing as a peaceful turmoil. Where the tongue lies at rest and accepts the turmoil, as it were, as it can.
And in the back of the van....
*
In the back of the van sat Body and Soul, and the two of them weren't talking much anymore. Soul had not a bone that could be described as unbroken -- his ethereal carapace of thought was now one big bruise. Does that still need to be explained or do the soulful ones finally understand where the devastation comes from? Meanwhile Body propped her husband up and held him wherever it didn't hurt. If she was submissive, if Soul found her pathetic to be so submissive, nevertheless, when the moment of need came and came and came, he found himself welcoming her submission and feeding on it to keep himself alive. For indeed the fools of the world are a kind of medication and not the over the counter kind either, their foolishness is necessary and what you laugh about is what also keeps you in one piece, once the laughing has stopped.
Soul lay in the van as one enormous bruise. Soul had had his long fling with the devil, while friends had urged Body to leave him for good, to leave him for *her* good, but Body couldn't do it, she knew so very little and one of the many things she did *not* know was how to be unfaithful to the small bare pledge that she had made. So she stuck around and was branded as a fool -- not so different in nature from Balaam's sweet natured ass next to her -- they were sisters. Body and Soul did make a part of the van, took up space in it, but he was only suffered to be there because she was. Meanwhile the anchoress lay in the very back, cancer ridden, her inner passages knotted and congested by strokes and clots, but she was not ready to be counted out, after all.
There were families with kids but they were strangely subdued and quiet.
There were animals of various persuasions. There were broken items of every type, the rejected items of a spiritual garage sale, waiting to be -- waiting to be taken?
Teddy bears with bent ears and broken legs. Old dolls who'd served their time. Lots of faithful people, bruised and damaged.
Wherever we are going, Elf said, it will be a good place and I will be happy. Because *she* will not be there.
*
"The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."
*
And in the back of the van was none other than Balaam's ass, a demure creature. But Balaam himself was not there.
And in the back of the van sat the Nazi Kommandant's wife. But there was not much left of her.
Not far from her Don and Dave sat next to each other, not saying anything. In peace, although, my God! no one is ever really in peace, in a site such as earth, what in the world would peace be here? Here everything is turmoil but still there is such a thing as a peaceful turmoil. Where the tongue lies at rest and accepts the turmoil, as it were, as it can.
And in the back of the van....
*
In the back of the van sat Body and Soul, and the two of them weren't talking much anymore. Soul had not a bone that could be described as unbroken -- his ethereal carapace of thought was now one big bruise. Does that still need to be explained or do the soulful ones finally understand where the devastation comes from? Meanwhile Body propped her husband up and held him wherever it didn't hurt. If she was submissive, if Soul found her pathetic to be so submissive, nevertheless, when the moment of need came and came and came, he found himself welcoming her submission and feeding on it to keep himself alive. For indeed the fools of the world are a kind of medication and not the over the counter kind either, their foolishness is necessary and what you laugh about is what also keeps you in one piece, once the laughing has stopped.
Soul lay in the van as one enormous bruise. Soul had had his long fling with the devil, while friends had urged Body to leave him for good, to leave him for *her* good, but Body couldn't do it, she knew so very little and one of the many things she did *not* know was how to be unfaithful to the small bare pledge that she had made. So she stuck around and was branded as a fool -- not so different in nature from Balaam's sweet natured ass next to her -- they were sisters. Body and Soul did make a part of the van, took up space in it, but he was only suffered to be there because she was. Meanwhile the anchoress lay in the very back, cancer ridden, her inner passages knotted and congested by strokes and clots, but she was not ready to be counted out, after all.
There were families with kids but they were strangely subdued and quiet.
There were animals of various persuasions. There were broken items of every type, the rejected items of a spiritual garage sale, waiting to be -- waiting to be taken?
Teddy bears with bent ears and broken legs. Old dolls who'd served their time. Lots of faithful people, bruised and damaged.
Wherever we are going, Elf said, it will be a good place and I will be happy. Because *she* will not be there.
*
"The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."
*
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Running from a werewolf
*
One must hit bottom and go through the bottom to reach the place of peace, the garden one has always wanted. But first one must hit bottom.
*
Duessa leaped with her pads up some dark steps and her maw opened as if 360 degrees. A scream as big as the "world". One poor clerk had made the mistake of walking home that night. She seized the Christian's throat, tore it and fed on the person alive. This was the lady who was now senior warden of her church, a pillar of a community that was falling. Be sober, you just never know when the fiery words of Ezekiel will come alive again: "[They] are like wolves tearing [their] prey, shedding blood, and destroying lives in order to get unjust gain" (Ezekiel 22:27, HCSB).
There is a superfluity based on another's pain that is a weedpatch where the devil lives.
Now when the siren rang her shoulder blades began to tingle, a precision instrument, and she loped into the void.
*
Elf stood over her attacker and wailed: I didn't do it. I didn't intend, I didn't mean to. His shoulder was so dislocated that it was almost a separate object -- a sacrificial offering. The siren stopped, the door of the vehicle opened, and she stood quietly waiting to be arrested. Wolves hopped through the alley, no longer boys at all.
But it was it was the chubby priest Sam or Samuel driving the van -- a rescuer! -- and look, all her other friends are inside. Get in, they said. We're taking you away from here.
As though 40 days and 40 nights -- although she was not worth such a thought of comparison.
She got into the van and the strange man, Dave, her fellow worshipper, briefly hugged her and then let her sit in peace, a woman of violence, but no, ultimately no. There was corny Christian music playing on the radio, you offer me the aroma of God as filtered through static and thick red cloth. Elf collapsed and had her breakdown in a safe place, moving closer and closer into God's arms, the only safe place in the entire world -- those arms' invisible touch like something huge and warm and protective, because their "like" was reality. And her mother would never never never be allowed into this car.
*
One must hit bottom and go through the bottom to reach the place of peace, the garden one has always wanted. But first one must hit bottom.
*
Duessa leaped with her pads up some dark steps and her maw opened as if 360 degrees. A scream as big as the "world". One poor clerk had made the mistake of walking home that night. She seized the Christian's throat, tore it and fed on the person alive. This was the lady who was now senior warden of her church, a pillar of a community that was falling. Be sober, you just never know when the fiery words of Ezekiel will come alive again: "[They] are like wolves tearing [their] prey, shedding blood, and destroying lives in order to get unjust gain" (Ezekiel 22:27, HCSB).
There is a superfluity based on another's pain that is a weedpatch where the devil lives.
Now when the siren rang her shoulder blades began to tingle, a precision instrument, and she loped into the void.
*
Elf stood over her attacker and wailed: I didn't do it. I didn't intend, I didn't mean to. His shoulder was so dislocated that it was almost a separate object -- a sacrificial offering. The siren stopped, the door of the vehicle opened, and she stood quietly waiting to be arrested. Wolves hopped through the alley, no longer boys at all.
But it was it was the chubby priest Sam or Samuel driving the van -- a rescuer! -- and look, all her other friends are inside. Get in, they said. We're taking you away from here.
As though 40 days and 40 nights -- although she was not worth such a thought of comparison.
She got into the van and the strange man, Dave, her fellow worshipper, briefly hugged her and then let her sit in peace, a woman of violence, but no, ultimately no. There was corny Christian music playing on the radio, you offer me the aroma of God as filtered through static and thick red cloth. Elf collapsed and had her breakdown in a safe place, moving closer and closer into God's arms, the only safe place in the entire world -- those arms' invisible touch like something huge and warm and protective, because their "like" was reality. And her mother would never never never be allowed into this car.
*
Monday, June 27, 2005
The Story of Elf: Almost finished
*
Now when soldiers die, does that count as tragedy or not? Take the soldiers in their clean white underwear, sitting in their bunkers at Peal Harbor? If God has taken them into his nursing bosom -- if their death was a thin screen of asphyxia that dissolved like powder never to return -- was this not a good thing? Were they then lucky? Does it feel lucky to think of them?
*
God knows, we don't. "You take away their breath and they return to their dust" (Psalm 104). Going on: "They you send forth your spirit and they are born again." New creatures equivalent to the old, on the tired planet earth. Or are they born again for real, not someone like them but themselves for real?
*
Of course she was not a martyr, and when he reached to tear her clothes and stare at her bruised front, she flinched and she jerked. Her body protected her. And there the hoodlum stood with his shoulder hanging loose from himself. Like a slab of meat in a slaughterhouse! I didn't do that, Elf said. I didn't, I couldn't have done that.
So the demons stood in the darkness like giant hunks of melting wax, giving off the horrible smell of meat. And it was their very definition that smelled so bad that seemed so utterly incompatible with redemption of any kind. "You take away their breath and they return to their dust." As if wanting to be there. As if renewal were a universe away.
*
Now when soldiers die, does that count as tragedy or not? Take the soldiers in their clean white underwear, sitting in their bunkers at Peal Harbor? If God has taken them into his nursing bosom -- if their death was a thin screen of asphyxia that dissolved like powder never to return -- was this not a good thing? Were they then lucky? Does it feel lucky to think of them?
*
God knows, we don't. "You take away their breath and they return to their dust" (Psalm 104). Going on: "They you send forth your spirit and they are born again." New creatures equivalent to the old, on the tired planet earth. Or are they born again for real, not someone like them but themselves for real?
*
Of course she was not a martyr, and when he reached to tear her clothes and stare at her bruised front, she flinched and she jerked. Her body protected her. And there the hoodlum stood with his shoulder hanging loose from himself. Like a slab of meat in a slaughterhouse! I didn't do that, Elf said. I didn't, I couldn't have done that.
So the demons stood in the darkness like giant hunks of melting wax, giving off the horrible smell of meat. And it was their very definition that smelled so bad that seemed so utterly incompatible with redemption of any kind. "You take away their breath and they return to their dust." As if wanting to be there. As if renewal were a universe away.
*
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Running (Part 3)
*
It was possible to create and animate images of things that had never happened. These things moved along a flattish panel. If your eyes once locked into this panel, you first almost couldn't turn away and later the "almost" was taken away and you were hooked. According to the media experts -- and the prophets -- there were people all through the kingdom who had started as noble structures -- humans -- and had at one time taken responsibility for themselves -- but now spent their days gazing at flat pictures -- at pictures flatter than flat -- to the point where they too had taken on the flatness of unreality -- having no real past, no real future, just the reductive annihilation of zen, you couldn't even call them unhappy. Not even that. There "were" such people if you could say they still "were", if the word "were" could still be fastened to them. And this was the devil's realm.
They sat in bus stations watching. The bus had gone without them and there was nobody to rouse them, only others liewise afflicted, such as Ainsley, depicted on the everpresent screen, now nothing but bones, clutching a doll like a child. You need to lose a little more weight, just above your hips, you're so close to your target, dear, her trainer said, a familiar, a witch, omeone very well known. Duessa looked out of the screen into the sports bar and saw her daughter running, a speck. So there you are.
Let us step out of this telenovela.
The girl Ainsley, the affluent anarchist, was surrounded on the screen by raffish beaux, dressed in the cutesy pseudo-ruffian style that the top designers liked. Tattoos were sited according to the highest principles of feng shui, etc. They looked like pet poodles dressed as thugs but were not for that reason necessarily "safe", in fact not by any means. There were strategic rips in their expensive cloth and 2 day's growth of beard, no more, never less, trimmed every day by an expert to be exactly 2 days' and never more. And certainly never less. Nevermore ravens. Go get her and destroy her, Duessa said, and the pasty young men dispersed like hungry dark birds, white thugs, passing right through the TV screen and alighting on the bad block where they lived, forever overcast and grim, the contagious block of "hopeless" poverty. Where whatever you had was taken from another.
Now they flapped and shifted into the punks who had so often terrorized her walking home. The leader had a bandage on the finger Elf once tore, in the days of her violence. They surrounded her now.
I cannot be a pacifist -- it's just a theory. The world is other than the wishes one has.
Elf knew *well* from her mother how to hurt the young men, how to maim them and pluck their glossy feathers. But she was a -- well, almost was -- well, she was a Christian now, or trying to be, and she was going to kick over that "almost" and rise aloft, any day now. Almost was almost over. She wanted to be what she was born to be and she was resolved not to hurt anyone. She was not going to hurt anyone. She was through hurting people. She wanted to imitate Christ.
A difference sustained her spirit and paralyzed her attack reflexes. No one must be hurt.
*
Dear God! They could hurt her if they wanted to. If that was what they did. "Every day is a good day because God is good." I will not play this game of endless escalating violence. Christ set me free from that.
Moving forward she felt like a surfer riding a polluted set of waves, a stacked form of terror that would be banished from the kingdom of God, if she ever made it there. As her two feet balanced, her image darkened and blurred on screens around the world, where all the boozy demons and couch potatoes sat and watched. Breath and commercials lay suspended.
*
If they were going to kill her, that was okay. Death might be finality to one who did not believe in a kingdom of the -- well, the ones who were not dead. Sarah and Jacob, help me! As a dancer she had one foot in this death but the other foot in -- well, what was it in and where was it really? Where was this? What was this healing substance that one sank into? And where could the sound of that siren be coming from?
*
It was possible to create and animate images of things that had never happened. These things moved along a flattish panel. If your eyes once locked into this panel, you first almost couldn't turn away and later the "almost" was taken away and you were hooked. According to the media experts -- and the prophets -- there were people all through the kingdom who had started as noble structures -- humans -- and had at one time taken responsibility for themselves -- but now spent their days gazing at flat pictures -- at pictures flatter than flat -- to the point where they too had taken on the flatness of unreality -- having no real past, no real future, just the reductive annihilation of zen, you couldn't even call them unhappy. Not even that. There "were" such people if you could say they still "were", if the word "were" could still be fastened to them. And this was the devil's realm.
They sat in bus stations watching. The bus had gone without them and there was nobody to rouse them, only others liewise afflicted, such as Ainsley, depicted on the everpresent screen, now nothing but bones, clutching a doll like a child. You need to lose a little more weight, just above your hips, you're so close to your target, dear, her trainer said, a familiar, a witch, omeone very well known. Duessa looked out of the screen into the sports bar and saw her daughter running, a speck. So there you are.
Let us step out of this telenovela.
The girl Ainsley, the affluent anarchist, was surrounded on the screen by raffish beaux, dressed in the cutesy pseudo-ruffian style that the top designers liked. Tattoos were sited according to the highest principles of feng shui, etc. They looked like pet poodles dressed as thugs but were not for that reason necessarily "safe", in fact not by any means. There were strategic rips in their expensive cloth and 2 day's growth of beard, no more, never less, trimmed every day by an expert to be exactly 2 days' and never more. And certainly never less. Nevermore ravens. Go get her and destroy her, Duessa said, and the pasty young men dispersed like hungry dark birds, white thugs, passing right through the TV screen and alighting on the bad block where they lived, forever overcast and grim, the contagious block of "hopeless" poverty. Where whatever you had was taken from another.
Now they flapped and shifted into the punks who had so often terrorized her walking home. The leader had a bandage on the finger Elf once tore, in the days of her violence. They surrounded her now.
I cannot be a pacifist -- it's just a theory. The world is other than the wishes one has.
Elf knew *well* from her mother how to hurt the young men, how to maim them and pluck their glossy feathers. But she was a -- well, almost was -- well, she was a Christian now, or trying to be, and she was going to kick over that "almost" and rise aloft, any day now. Almost was almost over. She wanted to be what she was born to be and she was resolved not to hurt anyone. She was not going to hurt anyone. She was through hurting people. She wanted to imitate Christ.
A difference sustained her spirit and paralyzed her attack reflexes. No one must be hurt.
*
Dear God! They could hurt her if they wanted to. If that was what they did. "Every day is a good day because God is good." I will not play this game of endless escalating violence. Christ set me free from that.
Moving forward she felt like a surfer riding a polluted set of waves, a stacked form of terror that would be banished from the kingdom of God, if she ever made it there. As her two feet balanced, her image darkened and blurred on screens around the world, where all the boozy demons and couch potatoes sat and watched. Breath and commercials lay suspended.
*
If they were going to kill her, that was okay. Death might be finality to one who did not believe in a kingdom of the -- well, the ones who were not dead. Sarah and Jacob, help me! As a dancer she had one foot in this death but the other foot in -- well, what was it in and where was it really? Where was this? What was this healing substance that one sank into? And where could the sound of that siren be coming from?
*
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Digression: A Christian Koan
*
The warrior was used to solving problems quickly, with finality, and was not a one to doubt.
His adversary, before he died, taunted him with a question:
What is the one word, the enlightened single word, that the Buddhist monks will not say and cannot say it and yet they say it and say it and continually say?
Speak to me that word.
The warrior guffawed through the blood but was later taken aback. Could there really be such a word? Years later, when his physical and spiritual wounds had incapacitated him for living -- nor had in any way prepared him for dying -- he wandered his native land as best he could. He flipped though it hobbling. The teacher's monastery was nothing but a smelly cave and the teacher smelled too. The warrior sat in front of him and waited in silence, nursing his wounds in an elastic sensibility that would then turn on him, that would pierce his core and would not relent. Howling would not have made the wounds feel better. Nor was silence any salve. He just had to move through it.
The so-called Void has a name and is not void. But those who know it will only say it not saying it. All the same, in their silence, the name is said and can no longer be unsaid. Once said, the saying is final, irreversible, the name has been named.
What is this one word? the warrior asked.
Why do you say one? the teacher asked. Why not two? Why not no word at all? the teacher asked.
Are you so dependent on words? Can't anything be said without a word?
Yes but the warrior needed a word.
I could so easily kill you and who knows? I might feel no remorse for it.
But instead I am sitting here talking softly, even reasoning with you, the warrior said.
The teacher hit him savagely with his curved stick. Was that because of his presumption? His arrogance? Or was it only for the remorse?
You already know the word, the teacher said. Its name is Jesus. But I will never say it to you again.
You already knew it anyway.
Now the warrior -- long ago born a Quaker into a different world -- felt the old delicious sting of unasked-for transcendence, a knowledge unasked-for and perhaps not even wished. It was not that this one word salved his pain exactly, more that the pain was now reaching (through even more pain) as if to move into the salve. It was on the move finally.
In mere speech, there could be enough pain to render a person unconscious, speechless. Unable to walk away.
There is a word that the sages will not say and cannot say, and yet they say it and say it and continually say. Those who know it say it even not saying it. You know the word.
*
The warrior was used to solving problems quickly, with finality, and was not a one to doubt.
His adversary, before he died, taunted him with a question:
What is the one word, the enlightened single word, that the Buddhist monks will not say and cannot say it and yet they say it and say it and continually say?
Speak to me that word.
The warrior guffawed through the blood but was later taken aback. Could there really be such a word? Years later, when his physical and spiritual wounds had incapacitated him for living -- nor had in any way prepared him for dying -- he wandered his native land as best he could. He flipped though it hobbling. The teacher's monastery was nothing but a smelly cave and the teacher smelled too. The warrior sat in front of him and waited in silence, nursing his wounds in an elastic sensibility that would then turn on him, that would pierce his core and would not relent. Howling would not have made the wounds feel better. Nor was silence any salve. He just had to move through it.
The so-called Void has a name and is not void. But those who know it will only say it not saying it. All the same, in their silence, the name is said and can no longer be unsaid. Once said, the saying is final, irreversible, the name has been named.
What is this one word? the warrior asked.
Why do you say one? the teacher asked. Why not two? Why not no word at all? the teacher asked.
Are you so dependent on words? Can't anything be said without a word?
Yes but the warrior needed a word.
I could so easily kill you and who knows? I might feel no remorse for it.
But instead I am sitting here talking softly, even reasoning with you, the warrior said.
The teacher hit him savagely with his curved stick. Was that because of his presumption? His arrogance? Or was it only for the remorse?
You already know the word, the teacher said. Its name is Jesus. But I will never say it to you again.
You already knew it anyway.
Now the warrior -- long ago born a Quaker into a different world -- felt the old delicious sting of unasked-for transcendence, a knowledge unasked-for and perhaps not even wished. It was not that this one word salved his pain exactly, more that the pain was now reaching (through even more pain) as if to move into the salve. It was on the move finally.
In mere speech, there could be enough pain to render a person unconscious, speechless. Unable to walk away.
There is a word that the sages will not say and cannot say, and yet they say it and say it and continually say. Those who know it say it even not saying it. You know the word.
*
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Bad dreams and bereavement (Running, Part 2)
*
To know bereavement intimately, first there is the need to have. First you have. That way you come to know what withdrawal means.
Elf could no longer go to church -- to any church -- because her mother was there. It was a mother of many other things besides herself. She could not go near.
She wandered her own city, a lost thing. Although there were other church doors, the fact is that faith is not so promiscuous as that == because there is a kind of promiscuity involved in swinging through different doors, cruising for your faith, given that membership is so much like marriage. So she swung around outside the doors and dreamed her dreams.
*
In one dream, Esau ran forward to his brother and embraced him. Esau then ran forward. In her dream he moved as from right to left -- like Hebrew.
In her dream he fell upon his brother's neck and kissed him and wept. A family restored, although broken.
In her dream the hairy man rushed up to kiss the one with the wounded thigh.
Israel tried to run but was unsupported in the thigh, weak, with a thigh touched from above. Open and wounded. Through that partition Elf entered the dream. Through the wound.
I have no one kissing me.
Israel's thigh was wounded and he could not run.
I can run but don't know where to run to. Only from, of course.
In the dream the other one rushed forward and the hair on his shoulder blades preened like feathers. Israel could barely stand but was supported. What did this dream signify?
In her dream the brothers embraced. Oil ran down the beard. In her dream God hovered, strangely present and pushing against her.
She woke up and sensed God's presence. But without a church she had no way to express it. And since she couldn't express it, it felt less real. Only the running felt real.
*
To know bereavement intimately, first there is the need to have. First you have. That way you come to know what withdrawal means.
Elf could no longer go to church -- to any church -- because her mother was there. It was a mother of many other things besides herself. She could not go near.
She wandered her own city, a lost thing. Although there were other church doors, the fact is that faith is not so promiscuous as that == because there is a kind of promiscuity involved in swinging through different doors, cruising for your faith, given that membership is so much like marriage. So she swung around outside the doors and dreamed her dreams.
*
In one dream, Esau ran forward to his brother and embraced him. Esau then ran forward. In her dream he moved as from right to left -- like Hebrew.
In her dream he fell upon his brother's neck and kissed him and wept. A family restored, although broken.
In her dream the hairy man rushed up to kiss the one with the wounded thigh.
Israel tried to run but was unsupported in the thigh, weak, with a thigh touched from above. Open and wounded. Through that partition Elf entered the dream. Through the wound.
I have no one kissing me.
Israel's thigh was wounded and he could not run.
I can run but don't know where to run to. Only from, of course.
In the dream the other one rushed forward and the hair on his shoulder blades preened like feathers. Israel could barely stand but was supported. What did this dream signify?
In her dream the brothers embraced. Oil ran down the beard. In her dream God hovered, strangely present and pushing against her.
She woke up and sensed God's presence. But without a church she had no way to express it. And since she couldn't express it, it felt less real. Only the running felt real.
*
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Running (Part 1)
*
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
*
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
*
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.
*
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