Tuesday, July 27, 2004
(11:28 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Confessions
Let my eyes stream with tearsA reading from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. I read his book during college, and though I haven't been able to do so since, I've always preferred Jeremiah. The last chapter of Jeremiah is just a repetition of another passage from Kings, on the fall of Jerusalem, but in this context, I regard it as beautiful. The only glimmer of hope: the emperor gives the impotent king of Judah an allowance, every day. Did he have to go ask, every day, for that allowance? Did the imperial bursar ever give him trouble?
day and night, without rest,
Over the great destruction which overwhelms
the virgin daughter of my people,
over her incurable wound.
I went to mass today, as part of my day of discipline. Whenever I'm serious about getting things done, my life takes on a liturgical cast -- also when I'm feeling lonely, when my life is formless. Saying morning prayer gives me something to wake up for, some reason to give myself a little space before I have to turn myself over to work. Evening prayer gives me a transition from work to either laziness or a different kind of work. The noon mass at St. Rose, though usually something of a liturgical disaster, has a special role of punctuating my day. If the first part of the day is wasted, I can have a fresh start after mass. If it was productive, I get a break and can return to my labors with a fresh resolve.
I don't think much about heaven, or about whether God is pleased with my actions. That is my incurable wound: a blindness to the referent of my religious acts. I find the gospel -- all of it, the incarnation, the impossible ethic of Jesus, the resurrection, the coming Kingdom -- radically implausible. It doesn't even occur to me to "question" or to be a "seeker." It's just impossible, laughable on its face, that those things happened and that they continue to be discussed and even, furtively perhaps, acted upon to this very day. Yet I am enrolled in a theological seminary, go to church most Sundays, say morning and evening prayer most days, even go to daily mass sometimes. I am the only person even close to my age group at daily masses.
The person closest in age at St. Rose is a girl who can't be older than ninth grade, probably home schooled, attending under compulsion by her mother -- in summer time and during the school year alike. Her little brother sometimes serves as altar boy. One priest is so old that he doesn't appear to care what's going on around him; he says the Gloria and other ordinary parts so fast that the congregation can't keep up. The other is very enthusiastic but also very difficult to understand, and to us three young people, he always says, "Believe, the Body of Christ." He used to go out of his way to greet me after mass, but I stopped attending so regularly, due to other obligations. How unfair of me, a young man, to be devout when I have no intention of becoming a priest! (No intention, right?)
There are so many people doing good work in the church. There are seminars to attend and interesting articles to read and organizations to align yourself with, and I just do not care. I don't care about the debates among theologians, except for an inherent bias toward Barth and Barthians (HUVB, for instance). It matters to me much more that Giorgio Agamben critiques Derrida's reading of Walter Benjamin than that Jürgen Moltmann critiques Karl Barth's concept of eternity. Lacan's objet petit a has a great deal more intellectual resonance for me than the concept of the Holy Spirit. Somewhere along the line, the libidinal charge of Christianity apparently left me, and I don't know if it will ever return.
For now, Catholicism remains a religion, a way of ordering my life, and I do not seek any other way of ordering my life. I have already changed over once, and I'd prefer not to change again. I am loyal to the Catholic Church insofar as my conscience allows. I become involved as much as I am asked to become involved, sometimes more. I like thinking about the Bible in a Catholic context, and I enjoy the liturgy. Doing the readings at mass feels somehow right -- here, now, I think, these are words that can leave my mouth. Catholic charities get my money, as much as I feel like I can give. I may even join a Catholic pacifist organization, which will give me a way to become politically involved.
But do I believe? I don't know. I don't know what it would mean to say that. I would sign a paper that read, "I, the undersigned, do hereby affirm the following: 'We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth &c." But to talk about how much I believe or about my "spiritual life" right now feels like a particularly dangerous kind of obscurantism. Maybe that will change some day. I can't really know. Maybe someday when I hear the word "spirituality," I won't reach for my gun. Maybe someday, God, such as he is, will help my unbelief. I can wait.
