w i n t e r
turin train station
The leaves go by in singles and pairs at first growing in number until the entire skylight is filled with mottled color as they blow by. I lay under the covers looking up. I'm watching the light grow brighter into a new day.
"Then fate o'errules, that, one man holding troth,
A million fail, confounding oath on oath."
Am I that one man? Right now, am I that man? Does faith have such a grip on me? Now more than ever I need to be that individual. One in a million. I need that.
I look for some argument as to why I shouldn't be. I turn to Eranous Lectures, a common place on the shelf. I look to refute the possibility, oh, Puck, you can't possibly be right pushing these thoughts into my sleep.
I hear the shower and I know I've got a few minutes to thumb through the book. I always start with the first page just to read the first paragraph and indeed, just the first sentence.
"...that juncture where psychology cannot be fully separated from religion -- religion as relation with divinity and as relation with community -- that is, where psychology is drawn to consider theology and politics."
So simple. Except to me religion and faith have always been inseperable no matter what you believe in. So now I lie in bed on this Sunday morning watching the blowing leaves, listening to the shower in the other room, contemplating my faith in what I consider divine and yet part of the whole that becomes you, us, we...society.
It's better than reading the paper. Damn the headlines anyway. All you can read about here are falling stocks, local crime, and why we should or shouldn't bother bombing Iraq. I've my own feelings about that, twisted though they may be, but I've no room for them this morning. It's so much easier to wait for an opportunity at a bar or dinner. To play the devil's advocate. To hide my real thoughts behind a front. A smoke screen that leaves the rest of the table wondering, "Was he arguing that point because he believed it, or because we didn't?"
Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes I get so caught up in the debate I don't care what side I take so long as the debate goes on. So long as I can ride that wave of energy, of excitement, that is so rarely mined in the folks I know. But I'm losing track.
I still want to know if I'm that man. Can I be partners with fate? I've gained new insight. Moved a little up or down, direction really doesn't matter, I'm not in the same spot. By necessity I've moved. But wait a second, that could be a bad thing. Have I moved only so the same idea takes on a different image? Appears new. Am I walking around statue that is the same on all sides but seeing something different on each face? The "faithful carrying through of the delusion itself"
I don't know. I want to believe that my recent change in mood, that my optimism is genuine but I have my doubts. Perhaps I've made the same mistakes as Boisen. Perhaps I've gone "too far and attempted to universalize my own experience."
Could be that the trouble with my new found faith is the way in which it came and through that my false belief that it carries a certain authority, Boisen's second classic mistake.
Karl Jaspers writes, "The spirit that speaks is highest authority, correct and incontestable." And a lot of people would be happy to hear that. Be glad to say it were true and would close the book right there, but they'd be missing the rest. "This habit of taking the blame on oneself, so compensatory to the inflation of revelation, is one of the main delusions in Christian revelations."
It doesn't really matter, what matters is that it all remains an invasion from an outside source. I can walk the line between that source and myself or I can try to find it and face it. I can cower behind some form of twisted paranoia and a lot of language, or I can look within instead of without.
A stern voice says "Now look here"
listen little abbess
hunched over behind the lattice
like you were at early prayers
gimme my goddam TICKET
this ain't
no station of the cross
it's the Turin
TRAIN station
---chappell
goodnight 11.12.98