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“Well,” she sighed, “He knows already, so you may as well tell me.”
Because that’s what the natural state of the world is, at night, isn’t it? Total darkness.
she never joked about things that mattered.
Proof, once again, that reality was not objective, but always waiting to be reshaped and redefined by one’s attitude. Of course, everybody on earth had the power to reshape reality. It was one of the things Peter and Beatrice talked about a lot. The challenge of getting people to grasp that life was only as grim and confining as you perceived it to be.
We’ve just got to have faith.”
It always struck him, whenever he was in an airport, that the entire, vast, multi-storied complex pretended to be a playground of secular delights, a galaxy of consumerism in which religious faith simply did not exist. Every shop, every billboard, every inch of the building right down to the rivets and the toilet plugholes, radiated the presumption that no one had any need for God here.
And yet these hordes of bargain-hunters, honeymooners, sunbathers, business executives preoccupied with their deals, fashionistas haggling for their upgrades … no one would guess how many of them ducked into this little room and wrote heartfelt messages to the Almighty and to their fellow believers.
He had been granted perspective. This was not Gethsemane: he wasn’t headed for Golgotha, he was embarking on a great adventure.
“We … we both believe in being friendly,” said Peter. “It costs nothing and it makes life more interesting.”
Conversation, genuine unforced conversation, but with the potential to become something much more significant if the moment arose when it was right to mention Jesus. Maybe that moment would come; maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe they would just say “God bless you” in parting and that would be it. Not every encounter could be transformative. Some conversations were just amiable exchanges of breath.
What had seemed like a grand adventure in the prayer room now bereaved him like a sacrifice.
“It’s an old-fashioned word,” conceded the chauffeur. “I use it out of respect for tradition, I guess. The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that’s always been there, and the next minute it’s just a memory.”
But I would rather devote my life to something that might persuade human beings to treat each other more humanely. Because human beings suffer so much more than ducks.”
“It’s a beautiful concept, but every time I wash, I kill microscopic creatures that were hoping to live on me.”
“These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does.
Seen in this way, there can never be any such thing as social unease or shyness or embarrassment. All you need do is greet your fellow soul.
God was never cruel. Life could be cruel, but not God. In a universe made dangerous by the gift of free will, God could be relied upon for support no matter what happened, and He appreciated the potentials and limitations of each of His children.
He must reinvent himself, and this morning was a good time to begin.
Oasans invoked the blessing of God for everything, which either meant they understood the notion of blessedness better than most Christians, or not at all.
“There can be moments in a person’s life,” he suggested, “when grief over the loss of a loved one is stronger than faith.”
And wasn’t that the point? There was grace in their strenuous approximation.
Why was even the shallowest human conversation so fraught with pitfalls and tricky calibrations? Why couldn’t people just keep silent until they had something essential to say, like the Oasans?
It changed the color and tone of the sentiments, the way a cheaply photocopied photograph loses warmth and detail. His love for his wife was being cartoonized and he lacked what it took to display it as the vividly figurative painting it should be.
Finally, he let go of any notion of quoting Bible verses or giving advice. He was her husband, she was his wife: that was the only thing he could be sure of.
You cannot create a thriving community, let alone a new civilization, by putting together a bunch of people who are no fucking trouble!
We are all specialized forms of survivor, Peter reminded himself. We lack what we fundamentally need and forge ahead regardless, hurriedly hiding our wounds, disguising our ineptitude, bluffing our way through our weaknesses.
All the scars ever suffered by anyone in the whole of human history were not suffering but triumph: triumph against decay, triumph against death.
But no: the rhetoric of a sermon was one thing; his wife’s grim reality was another.
It was such an infantile prayer, the sort of prayer a five-year-old might pray. But maybe those were the best kind.
Everybody’s sentimental, everybody. There’s only about fifty people in the whole damn world who aren’t sentimental. And they’re all working here.”
“You are …” said Lover Five, and paused to find the right word. “… man. Only man. God iS more big than you. You carry the word of God for a while, then the word become Poo heavy, heavy Po carry, and you muSP reSP.” She laid her hand on his thigh. “I underSPand.”
Belief was a place that people didn’t leave until they absolutely must. The SLM had been keen to follow him to the kingdom of Heaven, but they weren’t keen to follow him into the valley of doubt.
