I had an extraordinary walk this afternoon.
I started at three, to walk to the university to turn in my final work for the semester. I took some pictures and saw some children on the mall. I found a wonderful card someone had dropped. On the front it says "Hallelujah!" The message on the inside says "Just praising God for the blessing of your friendship!" Then Jooban had written on 5/3/06:
"Hey guys! Thanks so much for being the first non-family members to use our guest room. And you think you're not special! Anyhoo (as Kalil would say) we really enjoyed spending time with you and yes even playing Cranium… (Lawton's rolling his eyes but in agreement.) We have to admit that you are the better friends (i.e.) call more, remember more, visit more, blah blah blah, but we still Y you & keep u in our prayers always. But remember…we didn't move away! Touché!
Y Jooban & Lodon
Lodon's message, on the other side, is a checklist: "Movies, Cranium, Face-stuffing, Karaoke, Argu…I mean, discussion, Mushy, Kalil ("Emo") moments."
On the back, it says "P.S. 'you'll be bach!' it's inevitable!"
I got to school and turned in my paper.
Then I checked my box in the office and found that I had made a very embarrassing mistake: a credit card company had called the office looking for me. I don't know if I gave them the number or if they looked I up – regardless, I was terribly, terribly ashamed and embarrassed. I left very quickly. I called the credit card company to make sure they never called there again, but I still felt so embarrassed I wanted to die.
Shame is a very, very powerful emotion for me. It is, in fact, one of the dominant emotions of my life. I am still capable of being completely overpowered by feelings of shame about events from when I was a very small child. Recent embarrassments can be so difficult to deal with that I collapse completely. (Excessive shame, it's called.)
So I was feeling very bad as I walked towards home. Bad enough that I didn't know what to do – nothing would take this feeling away. But I decided that I should just keep walking, maybe in the direction of Monticello. Anything to distract.
I turned on 10th street. I walked up it, and eventually I found myself on Prospect Avenue. Prospect Avenue is the poorest neighborhood in Charlottesville. It is where the only housing projects I know of in the city are. (There may be others. I just don't know where they are.) It is almost entirely a black neighborhood. I found a piece of paper there. It was torn and written in blue marker in a child's handwriting and was about "going to tell," as far as I could read. Somehow, later, I lost it. I don't know how.
I obviously do not belong on Prospect Ave. But then again, that is wrong, so although I hoped that people did not think that I was coming to do them harm in some way, I was happy to walk there. Everyone was out in their front yards, talking to one another and working on their cars and playing. It is actually a much nicer-looking neighborhood (in the day) than, say, much of Cherry Ave. People were friendly. A man said "how you doin'" when I smiled at him, and a child said "Hey! Hey you! Walking down the street!" I smiled and laughed but I didn't stop. I kept walking.
I got to Fifth Street. Fifth Street is very long, but I knew where I was. I turned back in the direction of downtown, but as I was walking I saw a sign for a church.
The sign said "Friend, you have entered the golden gates." I was interested, and slightly unnerved for some reason, so I walked up to it. Another sign said this was the Charlottesville Church of Christ, a Pentecostal church. I turned up the long driveway, which was indeed guarded by gold-painted gates (standing open), and which curved away to the right.
On top of the gates were plaster angels. I took pictures. I tried to think they were funny, but I felt uneasy. I thought maybe I was worried someone would not like me taking pictures of their church. But I wanted to see the church building anyway. I kept going up the driveway.
At the top was an empty parking lot and a chalet-style building – the church. I stood back and took a picture of the entrance – carpeted with astroturf. There was yellow tape in front of it. "They must be remodeling," I thought. "The place could certainly use it." Then I looked to the right and saw broken glass…charred wood. I looked further. "There's been a fire here!" I said.
There had. As I looked at the church, I saw that it had been a terrible fire. The whole right side of the building, which I hadn't seen as I walked up, was completely destroyed. I became aware of a terrible smell – the smell of the fire. I don't know how I didn't notice it before. Maybe, subconsciously, I did, and that was what made me feel uneasy.
The church burned on Thursday, according to the Daily Progress (I looked it up). A 24-year old vagrant is charged with the crime. At first they thought it was an accident, but now they have charged him with arson.
I walked around the building. I took more pictures. I felt increasingly bad. "This is awful," I thought. "This is really awful. This feels bad. It feels wrong. I want to leave." But I didn't leave. I climbed up on an air conditioning unit and looked over the wall of the church – which I could do because the roof is completely gone. And I saw:
It was the worst thing I have ever seen. The worst place I have ever been. It was utterly, terribly, horribly wrong. I have never felt such a bad place in my life. I have also never been so frightened.
No one died in this fire. The church will rebuild, and the congregation is strong. But I would bet money that it was intentionally set, simply on the feeling of absolute hatred and horror I felt looking at that burned building. I was so horrified I could not move or speak. I can't explain why looking at a burned building made me feel that way, except that it was just…wrong. It was like when I broke my ankle and even though it didn't hurt yet I knew it was a very, very wrong sound, only ten thousand times more wrong and worse. I have seen burned buildings before. They did not make me feel like that.
I took pictures. I couldn't not take pictures. I ran out of space, so I deleted bunches I had taken before and took more and more.
Finally I left. Nothing happened to me. No one came (this surprises me now, since I have found out the fire was so very recent). I didn't (of course) try to go in the building. But I felt overpowered and overwhelmed by the terror of that place.
"I will have nightmares," I thought. "That is the worst thing I have ever seen. It is the worst thing."
I was very shaken. I walked back to Fifth Street and kept walking up and up the road. I turned on to First Street and kept walking. I thought I might cry or throw up. Then I realized I was at the city cemetery, and when I looked to my right, I saw a smaller walled burying ground. Written on the gatepost was "Hebrew Cemetary." I hadn't even known there was a Jewish cemtary in Charlottesville – but of course there has to be since we have a synagogue. Anyway, here it was. I went in.
The Jewish cemetery in Charlottesville is not very big. The earliest graves are from the 1950s. I stood there for a little while, hoping to feel…something. God. I was hoping to feel God in that place.
I walked to the back of the cemetery. The sunlight was golden – four o'clock it must have been. After a while, I sat on a bench. The bench, I saw had a plaque. It said
Here Comes the Sun
In memory of Michael David Rothstein
Love Mom and Dad.
I started to cry. "Here Comes the Sun" means a lot to me, actually. It is my favorite Beatles song too. But that was not why I was crying.
"I don't know what God has to do with this place," I said. "I don't know what God has to do with that church, or with a boy who died who loved the Beatles, or with Trina or Uncle Rob. I don't know what God has to do with any of it."
God wasn't there.
I tried being very still in case some kind of voice spoke to me, but there wasn't any more God in the cemetery than there is anywhere else. Nobody spoke. I sat there on the sunny bench and I thought about it for a long time.
Finally, I thought "It doesn't matter that I don't know what God has to do with it."
The sun felt very warm on my skin, and the light was very beautiful. It made the brass on the plaque on the bench gleam, like I remember it doing on the plaques at the synagogue at home when the light comes in on Saturday morning.
I thought about Kol Nidre.
Kol Nidre is the most beautiful prayer in the Yom Kippur service. The cantor sings it on Friday night. It is deeply moving, haunting, and sad-sounding. It is a cry to God. I have always thought that what Kol Nidre is saying, over and over, is "God, I am small and the world is big. I am so small, God, I am so small and the world is so big. Hear me, hear me."
I thought about how small I am. I thought about how small Michael David Rothstein was. And I realized that though I have always thought that when Kol Nidre said "I am small and the world is big," that that was a sad thing to say, in fact, perhaps, it is a comfort.
I realized, all at once, that I am small, but the world is big, and that it has been big and that it will keep being big. And that even though all these people died, even though Michael David Rothstein died, even though his parents thought about the Beatles and they grieved, even though the church burned to the ground, even though people I love have died and will die, and eventually I will die too and people will mourn me – even though all this was true and has been true, and will be true, at that moment, I was sitting on that bench, and I was thinking about Michael David Rothstein, and the church, and Trina.
And when I left, no one would be sitting on the bench, and maybe after that someone else would be. And even when there was no bench, which there won't be after a while, I realized, the world will go on being big. People will go on living in it and feeling things. And most of all, people will go on remembering. They won't remember the specific things that have been important to me, or important to anyone else who is gone, but they will remember things that are important to them.
"I am small," I thought, "my life is small, but the world is big. And so God is big. God is so big that all the small things in all the world that are and will be, all the memories that are happening at every moment, do not add up to God."
"God," I thought, "I am small, but the world is big. Thank God, the world is big."
I tried to think of something to say before I left the cemetery. Finally, I just touched the plaque. "I remember you," I said.
I walked through the other cemetery, the Christian one. There were some graves that had fallen over by a tree, and some bottles by them. I read the graves. "I remember you," I said. I touched them, and I remembered all of them. "I remember you, I remember you," I said to each grave. Those people weren't there. But I remembered them.
I kept walking. I walked all the way up Monticello Avenue to the point where it turns into the interstate and you can't keep walking any more. I wanted even to walk all the way to Monticello itself, but I'm not sure you can do that without walking on the interstate.
I met a man who had just gotten out of prison. He was a black man, maybe in his mid-thirties, kind of thin but not skinny. He had a wonderful voice – a really deep but colorful voice, with a slight hoarse burr. I tried to think who he sounded like, and all I could come up with was Clint Eastwood which isn't good enough but gives you a little bit of an idea. I know he just got out of prison because he told me.
"Where your man at?" he asked me.
"At home," I said cheerfully.
"And you just left him at home?" he asked me.
"Well, he was working!" I said. I know he asked at first to see if I had a man, but I was not threatened by him. I did have a man. For then, anyway. And he liked me for it, I think – not in a creepy or bad way, but in a genuine way.
"Do you know what this place is?" he asked. He gestured up a driveway to our right, where he was headed. I said I didn't.
"This is Piedmont House. Have you ever heard of it?" I said I hadn't. "It's a place for people who've just got out of prison," he said. He looked at me. He wanted to see if I was scared.
"Oh, ok!" I said. I wasn't scared, for real.
"I just got out of prison myself," he said.
"Good for you," I said. "Congratulations!"
He looked…he looked actually happy, I think. He looked a little confused and a little maybe overwhelmed. I don't want to sound like I think I made his day or anything, but I figure he didn't expect that reaction because of the way he was asking me. "Thank you," he said. And he kind of mumbled "Bless you. Thank you." People say that kind of thing a lot, but I think maybe he really meant that.
He told me he has a job – at the mall. He's a manager already he said. He works at Auntie Annie's (they sell pretzels). I said "Oh, yeah, I've seen that." Then I told him I had to keep walking. "It was nice meeting you," I said.
"Nice meeting you too," he said.
I did keep walking, and as I walked, I remembered him. I think that talking to him was the same in a way as remembering the graves that had fallen down or Michael David Rothstein.
That sound sanctimonious, but I don't mean it to. I mean it meant the same thing to me, not to the man or the dead people. I don't know what it meant to them. I can't know, and I don't need to know.
I had to turn around because I was at the interstate, so I did, and I walked home. The sun was setting. All the way, when I looked at people, I thought "I remember you. I remember you." That was the sound my feet made. (I always have a mantra when I am walking. I can't avoid it. Often it is annoying or worse than annoying.) "I remember you, I remember you," my feet said, all the way home.
I got home at eight o'clock. I figure if I walk about a fifteen minute mile, which I think I do, I probably walked close to eighteen miles. That's leaving out the sitting in the cemetery and stops for picture taking and one time I went into a gas station to pee. That's a lot of miles. My legs are tired.
But it was an extraordinary walk.
I hope that all this doesn't make me sound overly pleased with myself or like I think I'm some kind of visionary. I don't. My life won't be changed forever because of the things I saw and thought about this afternoon. I am not filled with an indelible inner light. I won't stop feeling ashamed or worried or sad or mean or any of the bad things that I feel sometimes. I didn't learn some lesson that's going to help me solve any of my problems or anyone else's problems. I did not talk to God.
Except maybe I guess I did – I remembered, and that is as close to talking to God as maybe I will get. That's okay. I don't need to see a burning bush or a cloud or a little thing the size of a hazel-nut and know that it is really God. It might be nice, but it isn't necessary.
For a while, when I was sitting in the cemetery, I thought really hard about whether maybe after all I don't believe in God. I want to believe in God. I've always thought about it that way, as wanting to believe. But I've also always known that that's not quite enough. So today I really asked myself if maybe, deep down, I don't believe in God at all.
But I think I do. I think remembering God is believing in God for me. And whether or not I still think that tomorrow or the next day, today was extraordinary. I hope that I will always remember it.
As a postscript, I'm not sure when or if I'll post the pictures I took. I was going to post them and link them from here, but I haven't looked at them yet, and I think I'll have to take my computer in to the shop tomorrow. The power cord just isn't working anymore, and I'm going to have to get it fixed, however much it costs. I am thankful it waited until I was done with papers. So I may be only sporadically online (how will I live?!) for a little while. So, maybe pictures later. I still am not sure whether to post the ones of the church. It seems like it might be wrong. But I do have a lovely picture of a ceramic donkey I can post.
And that is truly all. Good night, then. Good night.
I started at three, to walk to the university to turn in my final work for the semester. I took some pictures and saw some children on the mall. I found a wonderful card someone had dropped. On the front it says "Hallelujah!" The message on the inside says "Just praising God for the blessing of your friendship!" Then Jooban had written on 5/3/06:
"Hey guys! Thanks so much for being the first non-family members to use our guest room. And you think you're not special! Anyhoo (as Kalil would say) we really enjoyed spending time with you and yes even playing Cranium… (Lawton's rolling his eyes but in agreement.) We have to admit that you are the better friends (i.e.) call more, remember more, visit more, blah blah blah, but we still Y you & keep u in our prayers always. But remember…we didn't move away! Touché!
Y Jooban & Lodon
Lodon's message, on the other side, is a checklist: "Movies, Cranium, Face-stuffing, Karaoke, Argu…I mean, discussion, Mushy, Kalil ("Emo") moments."
On the back, it says "P.S. 'you'll be bach!' it's inevitable!"
I got to school and turned in my paper.
Then I checked my box in the office and found that I had made a very embarrassing mistake: a credit card company had called the office looking for me. I don't know if I gave them the number or if they looked I up – regardless, I was terribly, terribly ashamed and embarrassed. I left very quickly. I called the credit card company to make sure they never called there again, but I still felt so embarrassed I wanted to die.
Shame is a very, very powerful emotion for me. It is, in fact, one of the dominant emotions of my life. I am still capable of being completely overpowered by feelings of shame about events from when I was a very small child. Recent embarrassments can be so difficult to deal with that I collapse completely. (Excessive shame, it's called.)
So I was feeling very bad as I walked towards home. Bad enough that I didn't know what to do – nothing would take this feeling away. But I decided that I should just keep walking, maybe in the direction of Monticello. Anything to distract.
I turned on 10th street. I walked up it, and eventually I found myself on Prospect Avenue. Prospect Avenue is the poorest neighborhood in Charlottesville. It is where the only housing projects I know of in the city are. (There may be others. I just don't know where they are.) It is almost entirely a black neighborhood. I found a piece of paper there. It was torn and written in blue marker in a child's handwriting and was about "going to tell," as far as I could read. Somehow, later, I lost it. I don't know how.
I obviously do not belong on Prospect Ave. But then again, that is wrong, so although I hoped that people did not think that I was coming to do them harm in some way, I was happy to walk there. Everyone was out in their front yards, talking to one another and working on their cars and playing. It is actually a much nicer-looking neighborhood (in the day) than, say, much of Cherry Ave. People were friendly. A man said "how you doin'" when I smiled at him, and a child said "Hey! Hey you! Walking down the street!" I smiled and laughed but I didn't stop. I kept walking.
I got to Fifth Street. Fifth Street is very long, but I knew where I was. I turned back in the direction of downtown, but as I was walking I saw a sign for a church.
The sign said "Friend, you have entered the golden gates." I was interested, and slightly unnerved for some reason, so I walked up to it. Another sign said this was the Charlottesville Church of Christ, a Pentecostal church. I turned up the long driveway, which was indeed guarded by gold-painted gates (standing open), and which curved away to the right.
On top of the gates were plaster angels. I took pictures. I tried to think they were funny, but I felt uneasy. I thought maybe I was worried someone would not like me taking pictures of their church. But I wanted to see the church building anyway. I kept going up the driveway.
At the top was an empty parking lot and a chalet-style building – the church. I stood back and took a picture of the entrance – carpeted with astroturf. There was yellow tape in front of it. "They must be remodeling," I thought. "The place could certainly use it." Then I looked to the right and saw broken glass…charred wood. I looked further. "There's been a fire here!" I said.
There had. As I looked at the church, I saw that it had been a terrible fire. The whole right side of the building, which I hadn't seen as I walked up, was completely destroyed. I became aware of a terrible smell – the smell of the fire. I don't know how I didn't notice it before. Maybe, subconsciously, I did, and that was what made me feel uneasy.
The church burned on Thursday, according to the Daily Progress (I looked it up). A 24-year old vagrant is charged with the crime. At first they thought it was an accident, but now they have charged him with arson.
I walked around the building. I took more pictures. I felt increasingly bad. "This is awful," I thought. "This is really awful. This feels bad. It feels wrong. I want to leave." But I didn't leave. I climbed up on an air conditioning unit and looked over the wall of the church – which I could do because the roof is completely gone. And I saw:
It was the worst thing I have ever seen. The worst place I have ever been. It was utterly, terribly, horribly wrong. I have never felt such a bad place in my life. I have also never been so frightened.
No one died in this fire. The church will rebuild, and the congregation is strong. But I would bet money that it was intentionally set, simply on the feeling of absolute hatred and horror I felt looking at that burned building. I was so horrified I could not move or speak. I can't explain why looking at a burned building made me feel that way, except that it was just…wrong. It was like when I broke my ankle and even though it didn't hurt yet I knew it was a very, very wrong sound, only ten thousand times more wrong and worse. I have seen burned buildings before. They did not make me feel like that.
I took pictures. I couldn't not take pictures. I ran out of space, so I deleted bunches I had taken before and took more and more.
Finally I left. Nothing happened to me. No one came (this surprises me now, since I have found out the fire was so very recent). I didn't (of course) try to go in the building. But I felt overpowered and overwhelmed by the terror of that place.
"I will have nightmares," I thought. "That is the worst thing I have ever seen. It is the worst thing."
I was very shaken. I walked back to Fifth Street and kept walking up and up the road. I turned on to First Street and kept walking. I thought I might cry or throw up. Then I realized I was at the city cemetery, and when I looked to my right, I saw a smaller walled burying ground. Written on the gatepost was "Hebrew Cemetary." I hadn't even known there was a Jewish cemtary in Charlottesville – but of course there has to be since we have a synagogue. Anyway, here it was. I went in.
The Jewish cemetery in Charlottesville is not very big. The earliest graves are from the 1950s. I stood there for a little while, hoping to feel…something. God. I was hoping to feel God in that place.
I walked to the back of the cemetery. The sunlight was golden – four o'clock it must have been. After a while, I sat on a bench. The bench, I saw had a plaque. It said
Here Comes the Sun
In memory of Michael David Rothstein
Love Mom and Dad.
I started to cry. "Here Comes the Sun" means a lot to me, actually. It is my favorite Beatles song too. But that was not why I was crying.
"I don't know what God has to do with this place," I said. "I don't know what God has to do with that church, or with a boy who died who loved the Beatles, or with Trina or Uncle Rob. I don't know what God has to do with any of it."
God wasn't there.
I tried being very still in case some kind of voice spoke to me, but there wasn't any more God in the cemetery than there is anywhere else. Nobody spoke. I sat there on the sunny bench and I thought about it for a long time.
Finally, I thought "It doesn't matter that I don't know what God has to do with it."
The sun felt very warm on my skin, and the light was very beautiful. It made the brass on the plaque on the bench gleam, like I remember it doing on the plaques at the synagogue at home when the light comes in on Saturday morning.
I thought about Kol Nidre.
Kol Nidre is the most beautiful prayer in the Yom Kippur service. The cantor sings it on Friday night. It is deeply moving, haunting, and sad-sounding. It is a cry to God. I have always thought that what Kol Nidre is saying, over and over, is "God, I am small and the world is big. I am so small, God, I am so small and the world is so big. Hear me, hear me."
I thought about how small I am. I thought about how small Michael David Rothstein was. And I realized that though I have always thought that when Kol Nidre said "I am small and the world is big," that that was a sad thing to say, in fact, perhaps, it is a comfort.
I realized, all at once, that I am small, but the world is big, and that it has been big and that it will keep being big. And that even though all these people died, even though Michael David Rothstein died, even though his parents thought about the Beatles and they grieved, even though the church burned to the ground, even though people I love have died and will die, and eventually I will die too and people will mourn me – even though all this was true and has been true, and will be true, at that moment, I was sitting on that bench, and I was thinking about Michael David Rothstein, and the church, and Trina.
And when I left, no one would be sitting on the bench, and maybe after that someone else would be. And even when there was no bench, which there won't be after a while, I realized, the world will go on being big. People will go on living in it and feeling things. And most of all, people will go on remembering. They won't remember the specific things that have been important to me, or important to anyone else who is gone, but they will remember things that are important to them.
"I am small," I thought, "my life is small, but the world is big. And so God is big. God is so big that all the small things in all the world that are and will be, all the memories that are happening at every moment, do not add up to God."
"God," I thought, "I am small, but the world is big. Thank God, the world is big."
I tried to think of something to say before I left the cemetery. Finally, I just touched the plaque. "I remember you," I said.
I walked through the other cemetery, the Christian one. There were some graves that had fallen over by a tree, and some bottles by them. I read the graves. "I remember you," I said. I touched them, and I remembered all of them. "I remember you, I remember you," I said to each grave. Those people weren't there. But I remembered them.
I kept walking. I walked all the way up Monticello Avenue to the point where it turns into the interstate and you can't keep walking any more. I wanted even to walk all the way to Monticello itself, but I'm not sure you can do that without walking on the interstate.
I met a man who had just gotten out of prison. He was a black man, maybe in his mid-thirties, kind of thin but not skinny. He had a wonderful voice – a really deep but colorful voice, with a slight hoarse burr. I tried to think who he sounded like, and all I could come up with was Clint Eastwood which isn't good enough but gives you a little bit of an idea. I know he just got out of prison because he told me.
"Where your man at?" he asked me.
"At home," I said cheerfully.
"And you just left him at home?" he asked me.
"Well, he was working!" I said. I know he asked at first to see if I had a man, but I was not threatened by him. I did have a man. For then, anyway. And he liked me for it, I think – not in a creepy or bad way, but in a genuine way.
"Do you know what this place is?" he asked. He gestured up a driveway to our right, where he was headed. I said I didn't.
"This is Piedmont House. Have you ever heard of it?" I said I hadn't. "It's a place for people who've just got out of prison," he said. He looked at me. He wanted to see if I was scared.
"Oh, ok!" I said. I wasn't scared, for real.
"I just got out of prison myself," he said.
"Good for you," I said. "Congratulations!"
He looked…he looked actually happy, I think. He looked a little confused and a little maybe overwhelmed. I don't want to sound like I think I made his day or anything, but I figure he didn't expect that reaction because of the way he was asking me. "Thank you," he said. And he kind of mumbled "Bless you. Thank you." People say that kind of thing a lot, but I think maybe he really meant that.
He told me he has a job – at the mall. He's a manager already he said. He works at Auntie Annie's (they sell pretzels). I said "Oh, yeah, I've seen that." Then I told him I had to keep walking. "It was nice meeting you," I said.
"Nice meeting you too," he said.
I did keep walking, and as I walked, I remembered him. I think that talking to him was the same in a way as remembering the graves that had fallen down or Michael David Rothstein.
That sound sanctimonious, but I don't mean it to. I mean it meant the same thing to me, not to the man or the dead people. I don't know what it meant to them. I can't know, and I don't need to know.
I had to turn around because I was at the interstate, so I did, and I walked home. The sun was setting. All the way, when I looked at people, I thought "I remember you. I remember you." That was the sound my feet made. (I always have a mantra when I am walking. I can't avoid it. Often it is annoying or worse than annoying.) "I remember you, I remember you," my feet said, all the way home.
I got home at eight o'clock. I figure if I walk about a fifteen minute mile, which I think I do, I probably walked close to eighteen miles. That's leaving out the sitting in the cemetery and stops for picture taking and one time I went into a gas station to pee. That's a lot of miles. My legs are tired.
But it was an extraordinary walk.
I hope that all this doesn't make me sound overly pleased with myself or like I think I'm some kind of visionary. I don't. My life won't be changed forever because of the things I saw and thought about this afternoon. I am not filled with an indelible inner light. I won't stop feeling ashamed or worried or sad or mean or any of the bad things that I feel sometimes. I didn't learn some lesson that's going to help me solve any of my problems or anyone else's problems. I did not talk to God.
Except maybe I guess I did – I remembered, and that is as close to talking to God as maybe I will get. That's okay. I don't need to see a burning bush or a cloud or a little thing the size of a hazel-nut and know that it is really God. It might be nice, but it isn't necessary.
For a while, when I was sitting in the cemetery, I thought really hard about whether maybe after all I don't believe in God. I want to believe in God. I've always thought about it that way, as wanting to believe. But I've also always known that that's not quite enough. So today I really asked myself if maybe, deep down, I don't believe in God at all.
But I think I do. I think remembering God is believing in God for me. And whether or not I still think that tomorrow or the next day, today was extraordinary. I hope that I will always remember it.
As a postscript, I'm not sure when or if I'll post the pictures I took. I was going to post them and link them from here, but I haven't looked at them yet, and I think I'll have to take my computer in to the shop tomorrow. The power cord just isn't working anymore, and I'm going to have to get it fixed, however much it costs. I am thankful it waited until I was done with papers. So I may be only sporadically online (how will I live?!) for a little while. So, maybe pictures later. I still am not sure whether to post the ones of the church. It seems like it might be wrong. But I do have a lovely picture of a ceramic donkey I can post.
And that is truly all. Good night, then. Good night.
Labels: liminality, lonliness, space, spirit of the age, spirituality
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