30.5.15

I hadn't been to a church in a while. Quite a while. When I was a kid, I used to feel scared. Scared of the bleeding Jesus, of my sins, of the promise of hell or paradise. It stopped one day. I guess it had to do with my fear of disappearing after dying. I wanted to believe that it was going to be like eternally sleeping. You see, I did not fear not feeling, not being able to see anyone: I was afraid of vanishing. Heaven seemed like an ok promise, you know, being able to see your loved ones ever and ever, without thinking of dying once more. But the words of the priests felt like hogwash, for they only infused me with fear. Fear the almighty and obey, they would say. And I did not want to be scared no more. So I stopped believing cause there is no greater discouraging idea than doing things out of fear. Still, I feared disappearing. I feared becoming nothing. I feared not being to see or smell or feel or taste. You know, I once read a tale about a little kid who died in a traffic accident. He had been a good kid, so obviously he went to heaven. Before that, he asked to see his parents once more. At the burial he saw them cry. He shouted that he was alright, that he was going somewhere better, but they couldn't listen. At the end, while going to heaven he told an angel he felt so sorry about not being able to tell them so and comfort them. And I did not fear that, you savvy, for I suspected there would be nothing after I went. It would only be a shut window, with no one on the inside to look at it. So, there is no faith in me, perhaps there never was. I see the bleeding christ and the pointing saint, the suffering virgin and the condemning priest, and I feel nothing within. Not even mockery. I just breathed, waiting for something to happen. I heard the heavenly voices chanting, the smiley priest and the old women arranging flowers, but nothing did move me. I once felt jealousy. Of people's conviction and focus, of their love and their trust on someone they could not prove existed. It is gone. And it is not that I wanted to believe in which they believe, no. It is that I wish I were so confident, so brave and confident. That I knew there is no void into which I will unavoidably have to jump. But such jealousy is gone. Now I sometimes think of my having to jump, and not of whether I will have to. And that sometimes depends upon my faith in love. I like to believe it will save me. That it can save us all. Yet sitting right here, all by myself in this sea of people, this sea of uncertainty, I am empty, and doubt this what I feel happens to be love.

Saint Patrick's Cathedral
Dublin
December, 1999

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