We have excuses for being jerks; some are good ones – say, you just caught your wife with the oil delivery guy – and some aren’t. For instance, one time at a Quicky Mart a guy flung hatred at me because I had parked somewhat in front of him in a designated parking space as he was filling his car. His anger was so bad I almost reached under my car for a camping tool that is often there, but my wife had a clearer head. After calming me down, she went inside to get the bread or whatever and then came out to tell me some more about the guy, who had gone from filling his car to shopping in the store. He had come up to her in line and had practically laid down his life for her, apologizing nonstop until she could finally leave the store. He had had a really, really bad day and was so, so sorry. He should have been, and he was. His bad excuse, it turned out, had not been the excuse at all. The excuse was that his life at that moment really, really sucked.
Yesterday didn’t really, really suck, but it was one of those days where the weather smothered everything under its heavy, sticky weight. Weather is really not a good excuse either for being a jerk, but regardless, it put me on edge in a non-attractive way. I was able to stay quiet for the most part and not bum everyone out, but I did a good job of bumming out myself (bummer: a word made by the hippies of the 1960’s for bad acid trips. A bad acid trip is a usually- temporary trip into panicked insanity – a real bummer). I did this by observing. And what I observed made my lips curl – hopefully not visibly – in contempt, for this and that and really, everything in quotidian life: conversation (she said, he said, blah blah), the un-mowed lawn, the rotting trailer that has needed fixing for three years, for myself (of course), and for…TV.
The last is too easy, I know – who doesn’t have contempt for TV, even as we all watch it? Nowadays, I only watch one certain national news show, some pro and college football, and the local news for the weather. That evening it was for the news show, and there it was, all pap, not only the ads but the ‘serious’ news. ‘Blah blah’ would have been nice compared to the nattering and rodent-like squeaks they all seemed to emit. The lips curled again – what fools these mortals be! And it was here, at the height of my lordly contempt, that it came to me: I was doubting. In the sweltering fog of the day, life had lost its coherency, its immersion in meaning. Now it was this and that, all mindless nattering, which was true. It was true for the people who were speaking that I observed, because they were indeed focused on small stuff, and for me, who was not seeing how things and people and everything worked together from small to large to the infinite. My contempt was, again, ultimately for myself. There in front of the glowing, flickering tube, I realized that I had allowed myself to be drop-kicked back into the ontological dumpster.
From there came the slow climb out, slipping on metaphorical banana peels and empty bottles the whole way. Think – what is this world you are in? It goes on and on forever, and here you and everything are, all nicely arranged from nothing. Of course there is a God, and of course it all hangs together. Don’t let the dark gravity pull you down again. Look, you fool! If faith is blind, unfaith is even blinder, seeping through you from the inside out. How can you let this happen to you – again?
This contempt that was really doubt did not suddenly drop off any more than the persistent sticky weather did, riding with me into a morning dream that got me up way too early in the soupy darkness. After a walk with the flashlight and the dog and a cup of tea, I was here before the golden calf of our era, the computer screen. It was at this altar that I planned to write on this very topic when just beforehand I thought to grab a book by the side, Rediscover the Saints by Mather Kelly. This was not my usual habit, but I picked it up and opened it to the next chapter I was going to read tonight or tomorrow or soon, and there was the title: “Thomas: We All Have Doubts.” Imagine that.
Yes, it really could be coincidence, even though that is unlikely, but it is not coincidence that we live in a world way, way, beyond our comprehension even as we spend most of our lives convincing ourselves that it is all so easy to understand, so much so as to be worthy of our bored contempt, at least at times. Thomas is infamous for declaring his disbelief of Jesus’s resurrection until Jesus himself appeared before him and, knowing all his thoughts, asked him to place his hands in his wounds. Thomas fell on the floor in worship and went on to die a martyr’s death (as all the 11 apostles – the 12 without Judas – did except for John) in India, but still we recall him only for his disbelief. We are admonished by Jesus himself to believe without seeing (or touching), but we do not, even while we see and touch God’s marvel every moment. We live a miracle that is graspable, not in its entirety, but in its magical wonder – but we push it away. It is in our face – it even is our face – at all times, and yet we think and talk and act as if this miracle, no less stunning than the resurrected Jesus, is no great shakes at all. We have nothing on Doubting Thomas. If it were not for an act of grace, a dispensation for our willed ignorance, even the resurrected Jesus would not maintain our faith for long. We would explain it away somehow, like we do the infinite universe, and then cry for another good adventure movie to take away our bored annoyance of day-to-day life. The faith of Doubting Thomas puts ours to shame.
Maybe my excuse for being a jerk is a good one after all. Since it all hangs together, the muggy fog of weather might have permeated my senses like an inadvertent drug or virus. Not my fault. Thomas was not there with the other disciples when Jesus first appeared after his death. Not his fault. Who else would have believed?
It should be a lesson and a slap-down. We all are at fault. The power and the glory are all so easy to believe because they are before us in living color every day, from a pulsing sun a billion- billion times the power of a hydrogen bomb to simple birth and death and everything else in between and beyond, each enough to convince the most skeptical of con men, and yet here we are. Nattering. Starting fights. Curling our lips and denying miracles even as they appear fully dressed before us. Sometimes it takes the fog of a lousy day to take the fog away.
We have excuses for being jerks; some are good ones – say, you just caught your wife with the oil delivery guy – and some aren’t. For instance, one time at a Quicky Mart a guy flung hatred at me because I had parked somewhat in front of him in a designated parking space as he was filling his car. His anger was so bad I almost reached under my car for a camping tool that is often there, but my wife had a clearer head. After calming me down, she went inside to get the bread or whatever and then came out to tell me some more about the guy, who had gone from filling his car to shopping in the store. He had come up to her in line and had practically laid down his life for her, apologizing nonstop until she could finally leave the store. He had had a really, really bad day and was so, so sorry. He should have been, and he was. His bad excuse, it turned out, had not been the excuse at all. The excuse was that his life at that moment really, really sucked.
Yesterday didn’t really, really suck, but it was one of those days where the weather smothered everything under its heavy, sticky weight. Weather is really not a good excuse either for being a jerk, but regardless, it put me on edge in a non-attractive way. I was able to stay quiet for the most part and not bum everyone out, but I did a good job of bumming out myself (bummer: a word made by the hippies of the 1960’s for bad acid trips. A bad acid trip is a usually- temporary trip into panicked insanity – a real bummer). I did this by observing. And what I observed made my lips curl – hopefully not visibly – in contempt, for this and that and really, everything in quotidian life: conversation (she said, he said, blah blah), the un-mowed lawn, the rotting trailer that has needed fixing for three years, for myself (of course), and for…TV.
The last is too easy, I know – who doesn’t have contempt for TV, even as we all watch it? Nowadays, I only watch one certain national news show, some pro and college football, and the local news for the weather. That evening it was for the news show, and there it was, all pap, not only the ads but the ‘serious’ news. ‘Blah blah’ would have been nice compared to the nattering and rodent-like squeaks they all seemed to emit. The lips curled again – what fools these mortals be! And it was here, at the height of my lordly contempt, that it came to me: I was doubting. In the sweltering fog of the day, life had lost its coherency, its immersion in meaning. Now it was this and that, all mindless nattering, which was true. It was true for the people who were speaking that I observed, because they were indeed focused on small stuff, and for me, who was not seeing how things and people and everything worked together from small to large to the infinite. My contempt was, again, ultimately for myself. There in front of the glowing, flickering tube, I realized that I had allowed myself to be drop-kicked back into the ontological dumpster.
From there came the slow climb out, slipping on metaphorical banana peels and empty bottles the whole way. Think – what is this world you are in? It goes on and on forever, and here you and everything are, all nicely arranged from nothing. Of course there is a God, and of course it all hangs together. Don’t let the dark gravity pull you down again. Look, you fool! If faith is blind, unfaith is even blinder, seeping through you from the inside out. How can you let this happen to you – again?
This contempt that was really doubt did not suddenly drop off any more than the persistent sticky weather did, riding with me into a morning dream that got me up way too early in the soupy darkness. After a walk with the flashlight and the dog and a cup of tea, I was here before the golden calf of our era, the computer screen. It was at this altar that I planned to write on this very topic when just beforehand I thought to grab a book by the side, Rediscover the Saints by Mather Kelly. This was not my usual habit, but I picked it up and opened it to the next chapter I was going to read tonight or tomorrow or soon, and there was the title: “Thomas: We All Have Doubts.” Imagine that.
Yes, it really could be coincidence, even though that is unlikely, but it is not coincidence that we live in a world way, way, beyond our comprehension even as we spend most of our lives convincing ourselves that it is all so easy to understand, so much so as to be worthy of our bored contempt, at least at times. Thomas is infamous for declaring his disbelief of Jesus’s resurrection until Jesus himself appeared before him and, knowing all his thoughts, asked him to place his hands in his wounds. Thomas fell on the floor in worship and went on to die a martyr’s death (as all the 11 apostles – the 12 without Judas – did except for John) in India, but still we recall him only for his disbelief. We are admonished by Jesus himself to believe without seeing (or touching), but we do not, even while we see and touch God’s marvel every moment. We live a miracle that is graspable, not in its entirety, but in its magical wonder – but we push it away. It is in our face – it even is our face – at all times, and yet we think and talk and act as if this miracle, no less stunning than the resurrected Jesus, is no great shakes at all. We have nothing on Doubting Thomas. If it were not for an act of grace, a dispensation for our willed ignorance, even the resurrected Jesus would not maintain our faith for long. We would explain it away somehow, like we do the infinite universe, and then cry for another good adventure movie to take away our bored annoyance of day-to-day life. The faith of Doubting Thomas puts ours to shame.
Maybe my excuse for being a jerk is a good one after all. Since it all hangs together, the muggy fog of weather might have permeated my senses like an inadvertent drug or virus. Not my fault. Thomas was not there with the other disciples when Jesus first appeared after his death. Not his fault. Who else would have believed?
It should be a lesson and a slap-down. We all are at fault. The power and the glory are all so easy to believe because they are before us in living color every day, from a pulsing sun a billion- billion times the power of a hydrogen bomb to simple birth and death and everything else in between and beyond, each enough to convince the most skeptical of con men, and yet here we are. Nattering. Starting fights. Curling our lips and denying miracles even as they appear fully dressed before us. Sometimes it takes the fog of a lousy day to take the fog away.
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