It was a dull Sunday afternoon, grey skies and dead air in the house. Nearmann was bored and depressed. Nothing great ever seemed to happen anymore and the main problem was that people behaved either as cloth-eared, switched-off automata, or as venomous snakes, ready to strike to defend the slightest territorial threat, and perfectly fitted to exploit anyone who offered any suggestion of potential usefulness, even the most passive and gentle folks, who could be neatly arranged to form flattering mirrors.
Booze no longer seemed to help other than to draw attention to the maddening torment of alienation. Even cannabis had lost its ability to deflect, distract, and enhance. Like when Nearmann, Barnes and Mikey smoked that bag of Congolese grass and got so totally wasted that they believed they had actually entered a separate realm. Twenty years ago.
He thinks back to his conversion, his grown-man baptism, just ten years ago. His punch-in-the-stomach realisation that the Bible was literally true.
But today, nothing feels real except pain and silence.
His progression through the church began at a big place in town with music and bands. The preacher wore chic Italian suits and was unreservedly dull and ineffectual on the platform. It was all a sham. There was a heap of money behind the veil, the Bible not preached, believed or even present in the building other than in some fourth-grade translation replete with innumerable errors and heresies.
Proceeded with a strict and faithful chapel where the Bible was preached, somewhat believed, and never acted upon
Shifted briefly to an unconventional assembly with heretical views and extreme devotion to the outward signs of faith. A close-knit community of third and fourth generation converts, a horde with glazed eyes and unhearing ears, forever locked in a mortal embrace of pretence and tradition.
Landed at a very grave and self important larger church with great reverence for the Word coupled, as usual, with a general disregard for the principles enshrined therein.
Nearmann idly wondered why men are so keen to be uplifted but knew that he shared that same aspiration. To receive regular praise and pleadings to accept a seat at the table and a place at the lectern would of course dispel the boredom and depression and replace them with a sense of excitement and vigour. But in the corrupt court of the corrupt king only the complicit may be allowed to speak. Only the most obedient courtiers will be raised up. The dogma they embrace unimportant compared to their ambition to shine or attain privilege: a signpost announcing their easy manipulation and unconscious willingness to lull, deflect, stultify, mislead, hypnotise, and eviscerate.
So now on this dull Sunday Nearmann contemplated, for the first time, the possibility of actually abandoning the faith. He wasn't sure it could be done, because a truth once seen can never be removed from the psyche. The Bible notes that the disciples of Jesus shall know the truth and the truth will set them free, but Nearmann, bound by the chains of his heaviness of heart, had no sense of freedom or inspiration on this winter day.
The way, he reasoned, of disavowal must surely pass by the way of endorsement. No pair of shoes can be reasonably discarded until a replacement pair has been purchased. But Nearmann had already shopped in all the other supermarkets of philosophy and they had all conspired together to lead him into his Christian journey in the beginning. At the time he thought of it as point of arrival. An endless forging of new friendships in faith, loyal companions at arms, resolute and deep thinking fellow converts, instead of a port of embarkation on an interminable voyage toward perilous and mist-shrouded lands, with shadowy and mutinous seamen and a villainous helmsman forever seeking to drive the ship onto a reef.
Nearmann did understand the odd comfort of absolute solitude. The freedom to prepare his funeral home with care, arrange the bier, cultivate the floral wreathes, whiten the walls of the sepulchre. And when a man is truly alone then he is he not free to think and do as he pleases?
To sit beside the pool and observe the thrush. To wonder at the oily river and inspect the hedgerow. To smile at strangers and climb the hill to the parade. To slouch at a corner table in a pub and allow his thoughts to ripple outward?
Booze no longer seemed to help other than to draw attention to the maddening torment of alienation. Even cannabis had lost its ability to deflect, distract, and enhance. Like when Nearmann, Barnes and Mikey smoked that bag of Congolese grass and got so totally wasted that they believed they had actually entered a separate realm. Twenty years ago.
He thinks back to his conversion, his grown-man baptism, just ten years ago. His punch-in-the-stomach realisation that the Bible was literally true.
But today, nothing feels real except pain and silence.
His progression through the church began at a big place in town with music and bands. The preacher wore chic Italian suits and was unreservedly dull and ineffectual on the platform. It was all a sham. There was a heap of money behind the veil, the Bible not preached, believed or even present in the building other than in some fourth-grade translation replete with innumerable errors and heresies.
Proceeded with a strict and faithful chapel where the Bible was preached, somewhat believed, and never acted upon
Shifted briefly to an unconventional assembly with heretical views and extreme devotion to the outward signs of faith. A close-knit community of third and fourth generation converts, a horde with glazed eyes and unhearing ears, forever locked in a mortal embrace of pretence and tradition.
Landed at a very grave and self important larger church with great reverence for the Word coupled, as usual, with a general disregard for the principles enshrined therein.
Nearmann idly wondered why men are so keen to be uplifted but knew that he shared that same aspiration. To receive regular praise and pleadings to accept a seat at the table and a place at the lectern would of course dispel the boredom and depression and replace them with a sense of excitement and vigour. But in the corrupt court of the corrupt king only the complicit may be allowed to speak. Only the most obedient courtiers will be raised up. The dogma they embrace unimportant compared to their ambition to shine or attain privilege: a signpost announcing their easy manipulation and unconscious willingness to lull, deflect, stultify, mislead, hypnotise, and eviscerate.
So now on this dull Sunday Nearmann contemplated, for the first time, the possibility of actually abandoning the faith. He wasn't sure it could be done, because a truth once seen can never be removed from the psyche. The Bible notes that the disciples of Jesus shall know the truth and the truth will set them free, but Nearmann, bound by the chains of his heaviness of heart, had no sense of freedom or inspiration on this winter day.
The way, he reasoned, of disavowal must surely pass by the way of endorsement. No pair of shoes can be reasonably discarded until a replacement pair has been purchased. But Nearmann had already shopped in all the other supermarkets of philosophy and they had all conspired together to lead him into his Christian journey in the beginning. At the time he thought of it as point of arrival. An endless forging of new friendships in faith, loyal companions at arms, resolute and deep thinking fellow converts, instead of a port of embarkation on an interminable voyage toward perilous and mist-shrouded lands, with shadowy and mutinous seamen and a villainous helmsman forever seeking to drive the ship onto a reef.
Nearmann did understand the odd comfort of absolute solitude. The freedom to prepare his funeral home with care, arrange the bier, cultivate the floral wreathes, whiten the walls of the sepulchre. And when a man is truly alone then he is he not free to think and do as he pleases?
To sit beside the pool and observe the thrush. To wonder at the oily river and inspect the hedgerow. To smile at strangers and climb the hill to the parade. To slouch at a corner table in a pub and allow his thoughts to ripple outward?
No comments:
Post a Comment