Whenever someone tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny. Tell me not what you believe, but what you doubt. A white man in dreads stood in line at the Hilo KTA, wearing a shirt with an AR-15 on it and the word Jesus. Townspeople gathered to tell Jesus to leave. They were afraid of 1) his ability to rid a man of his demons, and 2) the effect on their economy of the loss of pigs to the demons. A homeless man in black tattered clothes wanders onto the highway near the airport. Are we afraid we might run him over, or see him as he might be, looking us in the eye? Perhaps it’s not illness that frightens us, but the chance that it might be taken away.
Fear the cure, for it’s a change of state. Fear the state, for it will enforce the cure. Jesus sent the man back to his townspeople to tell the truth. No guarantee they’d listen to him who lived so long in the tombs. Death and madness are comforts because they last.
So is the wind, though it moves, casting doubt like the sun writing on a brown fence in front of me. Fern hands, a patch of illegible writing, it all dances with the air. “Have you written your daily affirmation?” my daughter asks. I doubt it.
Note: the opening quotation is from Simone Weil. The Biblical passage is Mark 1-20.
No comments:
Post a Comment