'He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.' --Friedrich Nietzsche
I've been utterly unable to express that which has worried me the most in these last few years. It is the invisible but weighty Hand behind various suitcase-style preparations and ultimately my participation in conversion; I know what this is, in one sense, but I do not talk about it (especially, ironically, with those I care about most). I have yet to discover how to express it, and perhaps it just takes clumsy, vague, and unproductive expression. Incoherent gurgling continues.
I think there is a sharp truth to this vision, but there is also an element of disease and of severe distortion in my perception of it and my interpretation. I doubt my perceptions. I do see the Beast, but in my babbling inability to express it -- in recognising my/our utter frailty in the face of the storm and in dabbling in my blasphemous despair -- I jump to conclusions about the Beast and fill in details. The eyesight gets blurry. The viewing demands expression, but the gap between my soul-eye and the vocal chords (or fingers) is like a Great Divide; the revelation is there in some uninterpretable way, but I am compelled to interpret ... and then don't ... but keep talking/writing.
Perhaps it is fear; I think that is a large part of it. If I talk about it, those around me will perceive me to be a fatalist or a self-absorbed crystal-ball gazer or a coke trip. I haven't 'seen something' as though through a crystal-ball, and this isn't a 'vision' like some bearded hermit on a mountain somewhere getting caught up into a third-heaven -- but that is how it will be interpreted, that's what we're looking for. But I urgently feel the need to talk about it. But then I don't talk about it.
So here goes, in a wild and sweeping landscape. What if a church removed its confessional booth until times grew to times when the floor was done-over, the dust that had gathered around the edges had been swept away (no longer revealing that there was a presence there)? What if Western culture removed its ears? and then genetically passed this on? for a thousand generations? --What if, a thousand years from now, the prophets were still yelling from the mountain tops, 'Repent and do justice' to such a populace? What if, once, someone felt the pang of the Holy Spirit in the church and did not know that there once (years ago) was a confessional booth and therefore eventually shrugs and goes on? What if, in the midst of Western culture's inner-decay, its apathy, and its great crimes, we no longer have the corporate (i.e. plural), general ability to repent? What if there is too much momentum behind the snowball that has grown into an avalanche? What if our parents' parents' parents had hardened their hearts for us? What if the verdict we have generally accrued for ourselves is already on its way -- already having arrived, but brewing just over the horizon?
That's as far as I can get before it gets fuzzy and unintelligible. We are biding time. We're all embroiled in our pet issues, and the general Protestant framework (not just dogmas but into the realm of social cogs and mental constructions) underpinning Western culture will not sustain us. It will not provide manna for us in the Wilderness to come. What if, just over the horizon, there is a new manifestation of famine and destruction that we have invited upon ourselves? What if there is another dark age on the way?
My greatest fear, to be honest, is that we will no longer know where to turn. I fear something of a larger-scale event of what has already happened to numerous acquaintances and childhood friends: the utter rejection of Christ because of Protestantism's eventual nihilism -- its eventual emptiness. That is the 'Basilisk' of which I write, which swings like a sword in the moment we're least prepared for it. It is not necessarily God, it is not necessarily Satan -- I don't know what to call it or ascribe to it -- but it is a crisis that forces us to stand and say 'Martyreo' (I witness), and we each witness to one thing or another. Some spit on the Cross, others trembling take it back up, but (on a more basic level) it is a horrible crisis.
The trouble is that I gaze into this and obsess over it and anchor it down as dogma. It is not dogma. It is a perception, and I (with good reason) doubt my perceptions. Furthermore, even if it is true, the longer I gaze into it, the less helpful, healthy, or sane I become. That is the prompting of Satan, to gaze deeper and deeper into the unknown and try to bridge it.
--Because there is something into which we are supposed to forever be gazing, shouting with joy, 'Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.' And even if the darkness seals us in, we breathe His name. Even if our children or grandchildren will bear witness in blood -- even if the Body is completely sealed away into the tomb -- we can still affirm: 'Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.'
-rick
