Wednesday, October 05, 2005
The Society of Others.
***I have decided to reveal nothing about my recent experiences to the little priest. The less he knows, the less trouble I will bring down upon him should things go wrong. However he clearly wants to talk about something, so in the interests of keeping the conversation focused on him rather than on me we talk about being a musician and being a priest and before I can apply the brakes we're onto the existence of God.
I say I can't see it. I mean, it would be comforting and so forth, but check out the facts.
'Which facts do you have in mind?' he asks me.
Now this isn't a topic on which I've actually prepared an essay, but the surprising thing is I find I'm all full of arguments in support of what I'm saying. What's more, I turn out to be quite heated on the subject.
'Okay, so what's this God supposed to have done? Created everything, right? So why? For him to play with? Does he get off on watching us little creatures squirm or what?'
'That is something of a puzzle.'
'I mean, either do us a favour or leave us alone. I never asked to be created. you have to admit there's something a bit bent in this idea that God creates us bad and then tells us to get good before we're let into heaven.'
'A bit bent.' He chuckles at that.
'And I haven't even started on the Christian stuff. Jesus dying for my sins? Puh-lease! It's a set-up. God rigs the game and then sends Jesus onto the pitch to win it. I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.'
'It's an odd business. I admit that.'
He swerves to avoid an oncoming truck. As we have been driving, the clear early-morning light, and my own forceful thinking, combine to make me feel powerful. Cello's gentle concession does not satisfy me. I want opposition or surrender.
'So you're agreeing with me?'
'Not agreeing, no. I'm listening.'
'I thought this was supposed to be an argument.'
'Not at all. Arguments are for winning and losing. What use is that?'
I'm a little taken aback by this question. I had rather supposed that winning was the point of more or less everything.
'If you win an argument, that proves you're right.'
'Not at all. It only proves you're better at arguing.'
'So that's good.'
'How is it good? It seems to me that it gets you no further than you were before. We might as well stand in the rain and piss at each other.'
'Oh.' I'm quite surprised by his language. 'So if we're not arguing then what are we doing?'
'Embarking on a voyage of discovery.'
This is the sort of thing Vicino writes.
'To undiscovered countries,' I quote, 'on the far side of lost oceans.'
He nearly crashes the car.
'You read Vicino!'
'Yes. Some.'
'Then you understand! You and I, we are explorers. When I listen to you, I enter a new country where things are done in new ways. That is exciting. Why woud I wish to take you prisoner and drag you back to my country and force you to live as I do?'
'Right.' Put like that I see his point. 'Even so, we can't both be right, can we? About God, I mean.'
'Of course we can! Look ahead. What do you see?'
'A road. Snow. Sky.'
'And me, I see the ditch that runs beside the road, and the ice in the ditch, and the sunlight on the ice.'
'I see all that too. I could have said that.'
'But you chose to see one thing, and I another. We're both right. We invent nothing. We select. We each make our own world, out of the common store that is reality.'
* * * *
'My God who exists may not be the same as your God who does not exist,' he says. 'So maybe if you show me your God I will agree he doesn't exist, and if I show you my God you will agree he does exist. And so we will both have been right.'
'That would be cosy.'
'So you show me yours and I'll show you mine.'
'My god,' I offer, 'is like the Great Examiner, and the life he gives us is like one long exam.'
'Then I most decidedly do not believe in him.'
'So who's your God?'
'My God is you.'
'Me?'
'Yes.'
'So what does that mean? I created the universe? You worship me?'
'All that, and a great deal more. You see, my friend, your mistake if you will allow me to say so lies in thinking of God as an individual. A moment's reflection will tell you that can be no more than a picture for children. God in the image of the father. True divinity can't be limited in this way. In fact, true divinity can't be limited at all. God can be no less than everything that exists. Which includes you.'
'So I'm not really God at all. I'm just a tiny piece of God.'
'There! Again, the child's picture of God. You see an individual, an entity, shall we say, that possesses the attribute of size. Very big, no doubt, but limited and divisible. My God is not that kind of giant. Think instead of, say, fire. Suppose God is fire. And I am fire. And the road down which we go is a road of fire. And the clouds in the sky are clouds of fire. All things are made of fire. Now I say to you, You are fire. Do you reply, I'm not really fire at all, I'm just a tiny piece of fire?'
'But I'm not fire.'
'Not fire. But life.'***
Shu at 5:41 PM
