a suicide of bliss

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Like a match that has been struck, there are many good things to be said for belief ... inspiring, supportive, illuminating dark and frightening places. And like a match that has been struck, conflagrations can spring up and do endless harm ... look at Arizona and New Mexico.

But Arizona and New Mexico are nothing compared to the scorched earth belief can inflict within. Belief's bright spark may begin as a way of lighting darkened passages, of demarcating the great out-there, of controlling what otherwise might be out of control, but without examination within, belief creates a life of charcoal and ash ... a desperate place without water or food.

It's not so much the righteous homicides that belief can impose on others, though lord knows there are endless examples of those, but the blissful suicides they can inflict on believers soi-même.

Yesterday, the editor of the local paper had a lonnnnnnng page 1 article ("Sermons from Embers") about the rebuilding of a Congregational church that had burned down three years ago and the minister who had done yeoman service in the course of resurrecting what had been dear to many. The article was pock-marked with the minister's various sermon notes as the rebuilding advanced and was quite touching. I sent Larry Parnass, the editor, an email that was probably longer than emails are supposed to be and said ....

Once upon a time, when news stories about why ministers and priests left their profession were popular, I got fed to the teeth with the simplistic, wowsers reporting... mostly relying on juvenile explanations (never stated explicitly) that "they wanted to get laid." I decided I wanted to do a series of three side-by-side articles -- one pair each for Christianity, Judaism and Protestantism. Each pair would consist of a story about someone who had quit the profession and, more important, one story about someone who had stayed on.

Finding people who had quit was a piece of cake. It was when I started trying to find someone who could say precisely why s/he stayed that I ran into problems. I didn't want to give religion and religious calling the kind of free ride that journalism usually accords to such topics. I wanted the bedrock, the guts, the "God" of it. I talked to two, three, four or more professionals until finally I came to one minister who had the good grace to be honest ... and in so doing, put my efforts to a stop. "Jesus Christ!" he exploded, "You want me to talk about my faith!" And he was, of course, precisely correct. Why should a merchant of faith not be capable of assessing and depicting his own bedrock convictions? Should s/he be given a 'bye' simply because what she was doing was deemed (by lots of others) 'good?' But that minister's explosion put my efforts to bed: My idea was never going to get off the ground ... it was too near the bone and some things that are too near the bone do not open themselves to another's scrutiny. It is simply a matter of choice ... or as the Anglican and novelist Charles Williams once put it, "People believe what they want to believe." All my journalistic nagging and nattering was never going to get anywhere ... each makes his or her own choice and then, with luck, gets to the bottom of it.

Sorry to rattle on. Your page-oner today put me in mind of that other time. To me, your story conveyed hints and whispers of some honest journalism. Thanks.

Believers are all ministers speaking from their own pulpit. They light matches for themselves and then ... and then ... and then what? How saddening when they leave it at that, when further investigation is put on the back burner, when relief is what they seek and yet the relief they receive is little more than a charred wasteland, friendless and dry. Without examination of what is nearest and dearest, how can what is nearest and dearest spring to life?

And worse than saddening, it is dumber than a box of rocks.

A suicide of bliss.

Common enough, but still ....
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