Recognizing Inferno

"...seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

-Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

What Hell Looks Like - 2

"The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the sum total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity....In an...utterly tragic principle regulating the structure of nearly all complex systems, building up must be accomplished step by step, whereas destruction need occupy but an instant."

-Steven Jay Gould, reflecting on 9/11, Globe and Mail, Thursday, September20/01

"...it is hope that those who take up permanent residence in hell must first of all abandon."

"The really significant events of human life are hidden from view when they occur....But there is still a difference between seeing only [forebodings of disaster] and seeing in it the eclipsing shadow of a power that is still fighting for us."

–Northrop Frye

The Non Perceivables

"Everything about us, everything we see without looking at it, everything we brush past without knowing it, everything we touch without feeling it, everything we meet without noticing it, has swift, surprising and inexplicable effects on us, on our senses, and through them on our ideas, on our very hearts."

-Maupassant, The Horla

Surprise

"...its not that writers know more things than other people, or understand more things than other people, but that hey are surrprised by more things than other people....to me they seem really extraordinary and things I want to explore."

-Alice Munro, Globe and Mail, Saturday, Sept. 29/01

Theology and Poetry

"I assert that theology and poetry can be said to be almost one and the same thing; indeed I say more: that theology is nothing more than a poem of/on God."

-Boccacio, Life of Dante as quoted in Steiner, How to Read and Why, 2001

Melville on Shakespeare's Truth

Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear and Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things which we feel to be so terrifically true that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them.

Emily Dickinson and the Kingdom

"Blessed are they that play, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

"Life is death we're lengthy at, death the hinge of life."

"Remoteness is the founder of sweetness; could we see all we hope, or hear the whole we fear told tranquil, like another tale, there would be madness near. Each us of gives or takes heaven in corporeal pieces, for each of us has the skill of life."

"I believe we shall in some manner be cherished by our Maker– that the One who gave us theis remarkable earth has the power still farther to surprise that which He has caused. Beyond that all is silence....

-E.D. to her Norcross neices

"'Twas Christ's own personal Expanse
That bore his from the Tomb–"

-E.D., Poem #1543

"Who has not found the Heaven–below–
Will fail of it above."

-E.D. Poem #1544

"But the world is sleeping in ignorance and error, sin, and we must be crowing cocks, and singing larks, and a rising sun to awake her..."

-E.D. to George Gould

"Hope is the thing with feathers."

-E.D. Poem #254

The Friend

A few years ago now, a friend of mine suddenly died. He was my age. He had spent the last ten years or so working very, very hard to build a computer company. He was a wonderful man, great at a party and somewhat of a raconteur. He always brought people together. He once said that he was compiling a list of incredible people but the truth was that he was the incredible person who connected so many of us. Still, he was a remote person, hard to get close to in an intimate way. He was like a lot of men I know. Robert Bly put in best when he said, "It's well known that any man would prefer to walk thirty miles upwind in a blizzard than talk for ten minutes about his relation to a woman or to God." My friend was like that.

In the latter years of his life, his ambition became a dominant force in his life. When he died, his company was trading on the New York Stock Exchange. He was worth in the neighborhood of three million dollars. I had lost touch with him and only heard of his passing in the newspapers.

Just a few days after he died, I had a dream about this man. We were all at a party. I was very surprised to see him there. I walked up to him and said in my most direct manner, "So your not dead." He looked at me, quite shocked and a little hurt, "No," he said. "It was just a test." He seemed a little softer to me, a little more buffeted by the wind than I remember him. And then he said, "I'm more compassionate now. I listen to people more." And I rejoiced to have my friend back and I rejoiced to have my friend back somehow a better man than he was - and he was a very good man. And then I woke up -to grieve for him once more, while God continued to delight in his company.

Living With The Silence of God

Tell me it's a bad dream. Tell me it's not real. Tell. me. Tell me ... I'm tossing and turning and soon I'll wake up from this nightmare. tell me I'm still happy ... Vishnu preserve me, Allah protect me, Christ save me, I can't bear it ... I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.

[All] have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, .... Is it no more than to shine at practicalities– the getting of food, clothing, shelter? why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?

- Yan Martel, The Life of Pi

Northrop Frye on Christmas

We turn on all our lights, and stuff ourselves, and exchange presents, because our ancestors in the forest...chose the shortest day of the year to defy an almost triumphant darkness and declare loyalty to an almost beaten sun.

We have yet to learn..., that no matter how often man is knocked down, he will always pick himself up, punch drunk and sick and morbidly aware of his open guard, spit out some more teeth, and start slugging again.

...the new light coming into the world must be divine as well as human if the struggle is ever to be won.

Scrooge saw the air filled with fettered spirits, whose punishment it was to see the misery of others and to be unable to help...we too are unable...and we can offset our helplessness by affirming Christmas,...of what human life should be, a society raised by kindness into a community of continuous joy.

...there is now in the world a power of life which is both the perfect form of human effort and all we know of God, and which it is our privilege to work with as it spreads...until there is no one shut out from the great invisible communion of the Christmas feast. Then the wish of a merry Christmas,...will become,...a worker of miracles.

...Christmas is the only traditional festival...that retains any real hold on ordinary life...people want Christmas....because Christmas helps them to understand why they go through the bother of living out their lives the rest of the year. For one brief instant, we see human society as it should and could be, a world in which business has become the exchanging of presents and in which nothing is important except...happiness and well-being.

...Christianity speaks of making the earth resemble the kingdom of heaven, and teaches that the kingdom of heaven is within [us]. This is... the conquest of the whole year by the spirit of Christmas.

There is an unmistakable panic (something of the old pains recurring) in the advertisers' desperate appeals of "only so many shopping days left, "...

The story of Christmas, from its primitive beginnings to the present, is, in part, a story of how [we], by cowering together in the common fear of menace, discovered a new fellowship, in fellowship a new hope, and in hope and new vision of society."

...Dickens shows us,...Christmas past brings us only regret...Christmas future brings us only...terror of the future. But...to know and appreciate better the spirit of Christmas present is to wake from the nightmare of the future.

Joseph

My name is Joseph bar Jacob of the line of David, originating in the area of Bethlehem. Despite my bad health, I have consented to be called here before you, the elders of the city, because the story about Mary and Jesus needs to be told. No one, it seems, is in a better position to know the truth than I am. That is, except Mary herself, who because of her feminine gender, cannot testify before you.

The issue, as you well know, is whether my son Jesus is really my son or whether he is, as some have said, the son of a Roman soldier Pantera by name. Who would invent such a story to blacken our name? Of course, the whole issue will decide the matter whether my wife Mary is to be convicted of adultery and therefore, to be put out of my house and forced to leave our fair city.

It seems impossible to me that thirteen years have passed since Jesus' birth. Our life has been so quiet and pleasant since our return from Egypt. Time has a way of making important things unimportant. But not in this case.

Since we lost Jesus in Jerusalem last month and found him in the temple, impressing the teachers of the law with his knowledge, people have been asking questions about him. They cannot believe he is the son of a carpenter and a peasant woman. Rumours have spread and gossip has turned our lives inside out.

You have already noted that I myself do not condemn Mary. It is others who have brought this charge. Even though, as is our custom, Mary and I were legally betrothed one year before her arrival in my home, it was noticed that the boy Jesus was born only six months after fourteen year-old Mary arrived.

I must add that despite her peasant origins, I consider Mary among all women in the city to be the most devout and humble I know. She is widely respected by the women who know her. She has been a loving wife and mother. Indeed, if she were sent away, I doubt whether the paper-thin walls of my heart could withstand one more minute of this sinners life.

But you, my elders, are the only ones in a position to judge. You must forgive me if part of my tale seems ridiculous to you, even blasphemous. For it is precisely this reason which has prevented me from telling anyone what transpired those thirteen years ago. But now it does seem to me a greater blasphemy to have Mary convicted of a crime she did not commit.

The whole thing started innocently enough. I was going to visit someone at the Lion’s Gate Hospital, as was my habit in those days. I entered by the front entrance and stood by the elevators. I pushed the up button and patiently waited. It seemed to take forever, and considered taking the stairs, but something prevented me.

When the UP elevator arrived, I stepped on board. Two other people joined me. Dear brothers, as you well know, there is no greater obstacle to human communication than the elevator. If someone should speak, its tantamount to swearing in church. Silence and awkwardness are gods of the elevator. From the moment you enter, not an easy word is spoken, the eyes of our fellow travelers never meet, and we all stare vacantly at the progress of the numbers, or the permit with the two illegible signatures, or the maximum weight allowed. How many times have I counted and calculated the weight of my fellow travelers just to occupy the time between floors?

We had progressed from the main floor to the third floor, one person got off and another got on. The doors closed, when without any warning at all, the telephone began to ring. I have always wondered whether elevator telephones really work and often, I have almost succumbed to the temptation to pick the receiver up and see who, if anyone, would be on the other end. But I never did. That is, until this moment.

Call it what you like. Perhaps an obsessive-compulsive streak in me. When a phone rings in my vicinity, if no one answers, something urges me to pick it up. After all, I know what its like to be a caller with no answerer, unsure if you have called a wrong number or if the party was really not at home or is simply ignoring the ring. Except, who could be calling the wrong number on an elevator? Didn't Telus guard against such accidents? Could it possibly be the right number?

As the phone continued to ring, my elevator mates didn't move. It was as if they were stones, too heavy to shift their weight. Or as if the floor of the elevator had become as hot as an iron, melting their goulashes and sticking them to the floor. So, after some hesitation and four rings, I succumbed. I answered the phone. The elevator stopped dead.

The person called me by name. "Joseph," it said. The voice sounded so familiar to me. Was it my parents? But they had been dead for many years. Besides, how did they get the number? Were they checking up on me? Or was this someone's idea of a practical joke? Could it be Candid Camera?

But the voice was not my father's nor my mother's. Perhaps some other relation or a former girlfriend.

It was a voice I had heard in my heart from time to time, in the silence of the night when I wake for no reason, it was like the heartbeat in my ears in the quiet and the dark. Urging me. Holding me.

And the feeling I felt as I heard it! I felt strangely warmed, as when one returns to a summer place filled with fond, youthful memories; or when one dwells on a delicate phrase from Mozart and the whole world becomes, for an instant, briefly beautiful. But whomever it was, I had no fear of being familiar.

"Yes," I said, "What is it? And why are you calling me here? Can't you see I'm busy?" Even I was surprised by my curtness. It did indeed sound as if I were talking to my parents. All of a sudden, I became conscious of where I was again. My companions were staring at me in terror. This was no ordinary elevator ride.

"It's just my mmmmma, my faaaa, its just a, a friend," I stammered. "I won't be a minute."

"What do you want?" I snapped impatiently. The voice said something about Mary.

"What's wrong with her," I said. "Has something happened?" For, although she did not live with me as yet and I did not have responsibility for her, she was, after all, my betrothed.

And then the voice told me. It was the worst possible thing. It was like the crashing of cymbals in my ears. My standing in the community fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft. All my plans. All my hopes.

"She's what?" I asked. Then I looked again at my mates on the elevator. Their expressions had changed from terror to incredulity. Perhaps they thought I was a doctor, I reasoned, receiving an emergency call, or more likely perhaps I had escaped from the psychiatric ward. I started to feel hot. I loosened my collar.

"I'll be right there," I said. And hung up the phone. The elevator began moving again. I couldn't wait to get off. When the doors finally opened, I rushed out and disappeared down a corridor.

My mind was racing. My heart was in my mouth. I felt faint. I felt angry. What was I to do? Somehow I found my way to the chapel and sat down.

I could do nothing but put her away. Divorce her. But she could be tried and stoned. The law requires it, as you know brothers. O Lord! I could not do nothing, that was sure. But how could it be possible, unless perhaps the rumours around the countryside were true, that Roman soldiers were seducing and raping young women with impunity.

But even this seemed incredible, for Mary's parents mentioned nothing to me of this and they kept diligent watch over their daughter. O what did it all mean?

This was no time for anger and yet all I felt was rage. O Mary, Mary who would have thought that you of all people would come to this, that I would come to this.

I would be quiet about it, so as not to cause her shame. And as a result, dear brothers, I resolved not to bring her before this august gathering then. Yet, I could not help being overwhelmed with it all and I dissolved helplessly into sobs and bitter tears.

And then when I was at the very bottom of the pit, I remembered the voice. As comical as it may seem to you, brothers and though you may think me quite out of my mind, it struck me that I was left with a choice. If I followed the logical and most practiced way of dealing with such matters, according to the law of our people, I would cause nothing but hurt. I would be hurt. Mary would be shamed. Her family. My family. The community scandalized. The law, it would seem, was wrong in this case. But how could the law be wrong?

If I took the other course of action, it would be nothing but graceful for all concerned. You know as well as I do brothers, that there are many situations we men are faced with, including the children of dead relatives, where a man has the choice of taking a child as his own, even though the child is not genetically his own.

So it was my choice. I could make the child my own and the child would be my own. No one could dispute it. All I needed to do was say the word and he was mine. All of a sudden the solution seemed so easy. After all, I did not love Mary any the less for this. No, strangely, I loved her even more now than I had. I would name the child Jesus, meaning "he shall save" because he saved me, he saved my heart from becoming hard. He would become part of David's heritage, a son of the royal family, of which even Solomon, one of the greatest, was conceived by David and Uriah's wife Bathsheba under dubious circumstances.

Something told me, my brothers, that this was the way God was leading me and that despite the scandal which might occur and has in fact occurred thirteen years later, I could do nothing other than trust the voice which told me of the news and warmed my sinners heart. This child was special. And even now, he has proven to be so, even in his thirteenth year.

May God be praised that I did what I did, my brothers, for my son Jesus has been nothing but a blessing to me and if I should die tomorrow, my brothers - and let us make no pretenses, you all know my time is short - I shall die a proud man for what I did, a proud husband for whom I married, and a proud father for whom I gave my name and David's.

And now it is up to you my brother's to decide what the truth is. May God search your hearts and find in you courage and strength. With all due respect to your power here, dear brothers, I must tell you: I have a sense that whatever you decide shall make little difference to the events that have occurred in our land and will occur in our land. For I have a feeling that what is happening here has greater significance than the judgment of men and therefore it will be debated by many people from now and until no human questions need be asked any more.

© Donald M. Collett, 2004