Gray Matters

Perhaps it’s the weather. The humidity holds everything close to the ground, makes everything sit on the skin and hang in the senses. My thoughts are that way these days.

I’ve been thinking about patterns in my life, especially my perception of myself and my strengths and weaknesses through the years. It’s not very pleasant to honestly face certain truths about myself, and one of those truths is that I spent most of my life believing that I was a lot smarter than I really am. Encountering a few really brilliant men in person didn’t show me the contrast right away, but the perspective provided by the passing years has brought home the difference with shocking clarity. Tracing the decisions I’ve made at various crossroads, I see that I am not only not particularly bright, but am something of what might be called a dumbass. I remember reading years ago that true intelligence is the ability to manipulate one’s environment or circumstances to one’s own advantage. If that’s accurate, I’d say I possess a certain low cunning and a weensy bit of craftiness. But truly smart? It is to laugh.

But considering my beginnings, it’s somewhat remarkable that I made it as far as I have without being imprisoned, institutionalized, or reclining on a steel table with my name on a toe tag. Perhaps I’ve been lucky. Time was, I would have scoffed like a good Protestant at the idea of luck. “Providence. The immutable will of God. That’s the ticket. The Almighty doesn’t mess with something pagan and lowbrow like ‘luck’.” But I no longer believe that luck is off the table. Fact of business, I don’t really know what I believe about most of the things I was once ready to go to battle over. That’s a hallmark of fellows from my theological background. They loooooooove to debate. They love syllogisms. They love obscure references. Above all they love to argue. And I know if any of my old church crowd heard me refer to my life as having even possibly been influenced by luck (or chance, or fortune, or fate), they would put one index finger in the air, clutch their Starbucks cups a little tighter with the other hand, and “own” me within a few short dueling passes.

Which I suppose would prove that I’m not as smart as they are.

For the drive home, I decided to try and find a podcast to which I could listen. I found one in which a woman was interviewing a Benedictine monk. The topic was “suffering,” a subject in which I’ve long been interested.

I didn’t even make it ten minutes into the podcast. The interviewer asked the monk, “God doesn’t want us to suffer, does He?”

And the monk replied, “That’s true. If we look into Jesus’ life, we see that He came to take all the pain away…”

Click. Off it went.

I spoke aloud, driving and shaking my head in annoyance and disappointment. “So in other words, Jesus failed miserably in His mission. He said ‘It is accomplished,’ but that was just happy-talk. He came to take all the pain away — and where does it say that again? — but left the world just as full of pain as when He arrived. He failed, right?”

It’s very treacherous to sail up this channel, with the cliffs of Argumentative and Unsmiling Hair-Splitters on the east and the sandy bluffs of Warm and Tolerant Embracers on the west. And both of them seem to have their cannon trained on me. It reminds me of 1977, when I owned both the Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album and The Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks…Here’s the Sex Pistols” LP. Where’s a fellow to turn? Makes a fellow feel pretty vacant. Vacant like the pews in most of the churches.

I”m not that smart. But I’m sharp enough to stay away from the pews overseen by males who kneel before criminals and wash the feet of degenerates while telling 80 year-old impoverished pilgrims that the waters of Lourdes won’t really protect them from Covid-19, much less possibly heal them of their afflictions, and that the last 150 years of faith & miracles was all a big overstatement, nothing to see here, move along, won’t you, there’s a good chap.

Having developed an affection and appreciation for the Catholic faith late in my life, this stuff stings me. But that’s nothing compared to my reaction to how the faithful elderly and the faithful poor and the faithful lonely have been treated by ALL of the Christian denominations and sects closing their doors on the say-so of moist-palmed, chair-warming government careerists.

The leadership (and many of the laity) of the entire Christian church have acted disgracefully during this time. I’m smart enough to see that.

~ S.K. Orr