On 5/22/10 5:17 PM, Frederick Pollack wrote:
> Bobbie, if I believed in God I would pray for you and your soon.
> Instead I do what atheists do, which looks a lot like prayer. Your
> letter has the horrible beauty of truth.
If I'm classified as a "believer" it's in a god of inexplicable and
momentary cruelty who will give with one hand take back with 10 (he's
Hindu). I talk daily to a being I despise in the hope he will get around
to giving me a day's parole. Bobbie and her child have been made to
suffer through something so monstrous that even that fucked-up parable
about Jesus meeting the man born blind doesn't lessen the horror. What
do we learn from seeing this cruelty in action? What do we do if we are
25 years old, ARE the man born blind, and now have to reinvent ourselves
as members of society? That's not a punishment?
I suppose I escape into the pablum of all good recovering drunks, the
endless litany about Gratitude. "Better you than I." Hey God, you're
right, but fuck you for being so.
I saw an appalling moment on the Philadelphia local railroad last night
and contrasted it with a photo (and the life thus far) of my 29-year-old
son who grew up in a world 100 light years from the Hell Planet I
visited on the SEPTA yesterday evening. You bet I'm grateful. But very
few people escape my dismay.
http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/2010/05/22/myself-before-it-got-to-me/
Last night when I got home I watched Kubrick's *Barry Lyndon*, a film
denounced by some as a longwinded bore, but one I find absolutely
treasurable. And it never fails: when the film comes to the horrid
accident that kills Barry's son, I weep through the chaplain's
recitation from the 1662 English BCP:
"I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter
day upon the earth." Waterworks everytime.
Or maybe it's just those two goddamned sheep pulling the hearse.
Ken
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