Poor Isaac.

I was anxious because of the formality he was trying to force, and so I blurted it out. "Okay, but I don't believe in God." My mouth is my worst enemy when I am embarassed. It is a mutinous bastard, completely liberated from any inhibition that would like it to just shut-up.

And he looked at me for a minute, processing. Looking for the right slot to file away the new information. He teased me about it, my face went as red and hot as a matador's cape, and after awhile he went back out. Left me alone with my thoughts, feeling insecure as ever about my doubts, about my weaknesses.

Later he came back, and I could tell he had been thinking about it and that part of him felt bad for the abuse I had suffered by his taunts. (Didn't stop him from twisting the screw just a little more though, but only at first.) He wanted to relate to me, wanted to understand, and so he tried by explaining the foundation of his beliefs to me. He said, "I just think about shit like waterfalls. There is no way that man could ever make something like a waterfall."

Mercifully the phone rang, and when I hung up the subject had changed.

But I can't get the vision out of my head. I can see him contemplating the holy beauty of nature while he's sitting in his pew Sunday mornings, arm around his wife, everything being right with the world. I can imagine him giving thanks for the mountain bike trails, the getaways to the ocean he takes every year, for his daughters and for a life that is honest, good, whole. The picture I have of it makes my joints weak it is so convulsively beautiful. I lock it away deep inside, in the hopes that some of his faith might leak into my bones, like some kind of divine osmosis.

But the doubter knows it won't. The doubter dwells on the story of Job and Abraham and wonders who the hell would want to believe in such a petty, insecure God. The doubter thinks about the paganism of a Catholic service and how it is a sin to not believe that the communion wafer is actually the honest-to-god flesh of christ. The doubter is too occupied with her skepticism to notice the small miracle that is a waterfall, that is the silence of a dense and lonely forest.

So she invests her faith with Marcus Aurelius and waits for some kind of sign, some kind of proof. She is almost completely convinced that it will never come.

Thank you, Owen Meany

He said,
"IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT--IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT,"
and I earmarked the page.

It is one of the most beautiful books I have picked up in a long, long time; I will be sad to lose the characters when it's over. And it has thrown my head into a tumultous fit. Anxiety. This is good for the soul, I keep saying to myself.

I suffer from a profound lack of faith. This has been true of me at least since confirmation class in the ninth grade, and was probably true of me before then, I just didn't have the vocabulary to realize it. In truth, my agnotisticism is unassailable. Perhaps doubt is a form of a priori wisdom, perhaps some of us are just born with it. I remember being very young --still sleeping in a crib-- and waking up early one morning wondering why I was born, "what was the point of it?" When I was older I prayed for boys to like me, and for us to win softball games. I never took it seriously.

But I imagine how comforting it must be, to have the ability to believe. To know that God exists, the way you know that the walls are full of electricity, even when the lights are off. How much of a sense of belonging there must be, to have a moral code completely spelled out for you, to even have a book to refer to when one's mind gets clouded with desire! And I'm not talking about your average "weekend christian" or "sunday catholic". I am talking about holding fast to a faith so deep and nourishing that it changes the entire shape of one's life, a faith along the lines of Alyosha Karamazov or Guy Fawkes.

But I just can't make the leap.

----------------------------------------

Maybe I am being too naive about it. But my fatalism knows no bounds. And my beliefs are not completely without christian influence.


One must approach life with an unfailing sense of virtue; in all things strength and honor.
You will encounter many ignorant people who would like to harm you with their words and actions--treat each occurence as a way to build up your humility and compassion.
Be wary of anyone who has a subjective sense of right and wrong.
The object of each day is to be truer to your sense of justice than you were the day before; a static morality is one that has atrophied.
Remember that your name is priceless, let it be devalued by no action.
Do not succumb to anxiety about the future; you will meet it with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

You are O-town's pride!

He said it on the show, and I know it's sappy and lame and for chrissakes it's a spoof anyway, but damn didn't it make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Didn't I want to be running down the street, gear over the shoulder, fighting the good fight. We were born under an obsessive star, possessed of the need to lay ones' self down at the feet of justice, to sacrifice everything for the moral and the good. We are happy just to give and give and give.

So we make our decisions accordingly. For the first time in my life I feel focused. My energy is channeled and I spend my time eating up road and iron and information as quickly as it can be metabolized.

I have this picture of us in my mind. We are knights, we are glorious, we are the knowledge of all of the men of the family who went before us, and we are fueled by the strength of all of the women who sought out a more daring fate than their peers. We are strong, we are smart, and we have a killer instinct. There is nothing that will stop us.