The Gargoyle

by Andrew Davidson

Heaven is an idea constructed by man to help him cope with the fact that life on earth is both brutally short and, paradoxically, far too long.

It’s a strange but consistent trait of people who consider themselves unattractive. They look embarrassed if you suggest that they might be interested in someone; because they feel unworthy of receiving attention, they also deny that they would dare to give it.

it left me feeling as confused as a cow standing in front of a new gate.

When I came across Eckhart in my readings and asked Gertrud about him, her reaction had been severe. While she admitted that she hadn’t actually read any of his works, she stated emphatically that neither did she need to. She’d heard enough of Eckhart’s filthy views that she did not need to go to the filthy source.

I asked why Sister Gertrud claimed that Meister Eckhart would not even admit that God was good. Seuse explained that Eckhart’s position was that anything that is good can become better, and whatever may become better may become best. God cannot be referred to as “good,” “better,” or “best” because He is above all things. If a man says that God is wise, the man is lying because anything that is wise can become wiser. Anything that a man might say about God is incorrect, even calling Him by the name of God. God is “super-essential nothingness” and “transcendent Being,” said Seuse, beyond all words and beyond all understanding. The best a man can do is to remain silent, because any time he prates on about God, he is committing the sin of lying. The true master knows that if he had a God he could understand, he would never hold Him to be God.

I would burn my poetry journals and watch the burning pages peel off one another in layers, the flames spitting little gray flakes into the air. As my ashen words swirled into the heavens, it pleased me to know that my inner self was once again safe: a team of the FBI’s best forensic scientists couldn’t put my emotions back together again. The beauty of keeping my truest emotions hidden in my writing was that I could incinerate them at a moment’s notice.

“This is Svanhildr,” said Einarr. “My anchor.” “Ah, your steadying influence, then?” asked the wife. “No,” answered the husband, “that which is dragging me down.”

The cliché goes that at twenty a person has the face that God gave him, but at forty he has the face he has earned. But if the face and the soul are intertwined so that the face can reflect the soul, surely it follows that the soul can also reflect the face. As Nietzsche wrote: “The criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo (a monster in face, and a monster in soul).”