"OH YES"

The Abend Post is the German language newspaper of Chicago. Guten Abend! (Excuse me, Dudley Moore!)

"How can you live with that woman?" was a question I was asked, not tongue-in-cheek as I recall, by a Lutheran pastoral counsellor with whom I was working from about 1979-1982. And, no, I was not going to him for counseling. He knew nothing about her except how she presented herself, by herself.

This leads into a consideration of Absurdism, one of many possible choices as to the meaning of existence. Absurdism was apparently pioneered by Soren Kierkegaard as a precondition to what he famously called, "the leap of faith." Once again we can return to the writings of Walker Percy who studied Kierkegaard intensively while he was confined in a tuberculosis sanatorium. This goes back to his word, "unsubsumable," which basically means that which defies human categories. To Kierkegaard the human person was also unsubsumable as an individual, but had to face the apparent meaninglessness of the universe without a specifically rational, ethical, or aesthetic "categorical imperative."

(I use this term not as it was originally intended but I may have invented sort of a new and personal meaning for it; If the word "avatar" can change its spots, why not this phrase? I must confess I use this in the sense of a sort of male-dominated juggernaut and somewhat as a term of derision.)

Let me insert here that I am not technically speaking a philosopher or a theologian. I am simply interested in philosophy and theology because I am going back to my roots, so to speak, and re-investigating the stepping stones that have led me to the present day of blessing. As I told myself before I started this blog but after I started reading the New Yorker, I want to go back and see if I missed anything. Plus, I wanted to look at my beginnings from a new perspective, that is, from the perspective of someone who is no longer full of fear.

When I turned 60, it occurred to me, or I was inspired to consider, "What can man do to me?" That is the beauty of working in bench science. In a small town. No one is going to fire me because of my beliefs. And, whatever friends I have, I have. If anything I might say might be so offensive as to alienate the few friends that I have at this time, among whom I would consider the readers of this blog, such that they might leave me completely: at this point, whether from an Absurdist perspective or a Christ centered one, what would it matter?

Two people at least have de-friended me in the not-recent past because of my beliefs. While I believe that at that time that I was much more of a Pharisee than I want to be now, indeed a kind of obnoxious teenager in the faith, it really came down to the fact that they felt quite strongly that I wasn't playing fair by appealing to God, whether in science, politics, or you -name- it. They liked me better as a Sadducee I guess.

Hence I am grateful that my family has not disowned me in the relational sense although I certainly do try their patience probably more than is good for either one of us. But I thank them for their acceptance of me, "Just As I Am."

But to get back to Flo: I have found her to be the easiest person to relate to in all the world, to speak in the manner of The Little Prince. Getting married to her was at least the second best thing to occur in my life and has rarely been an effort. I never understood what Pastor Tews was talking about, hence this question has stuck in my memory for 30 years as being one of those unsubsumable mysteries.

("Is this a trick question?")

I can only explain it in the same way that Walker Percy explains his Kierkegaardian faith, as absurdly wonderful as the whole world is itself, not explainable in human and certainly not in scientific terms. Because of that, I find that particularly among men, there is an unwillingness to believe that anything could be this good. c.f. Twain's Joan-andTwain's wife as well)

Percy could not explain why God would give him such a gift with him being completely undeserving and, worse than our lawyer friend in "The Fall", a man who had never had any inclination to do any good works, perhaps after he -- Walker Percy -- gave up on the idea of medicine. And probably, with Camus' help too, he most certainly detected the many absurdities in medicine and science starting with its extremely limited scope and potential. (The Thanatos Syndrome etc.)

My own inclination after 32 years is to say this: do not believe what I say and do not believe because of my frankly rather questionable example. In fact, do not look at me at all for answers, I am just talking through my Kentucky derby hat. Rather, consider this: before I met Flo, by the testimony of others and herself, she was a very foulmouthed girl. When she gave her heart to Christ, she did not realize that she had done so--or that anything had changed in or about her at all.

Her friend, Corinne, noticed a difference immediately: "There's something wrong with you -- you're not swearing anymore!" This was not something she asked for or desired but it was a sign of what Garrison Keillor once called, "special grace." I guess this is a theological term to try to explain the unexplainable, such as why God would choose people like Moses, Gideon, David et. al., entrusting liars and thieves and murderers and adulterers and so forth to more or less present Him.

But, if this were not real and unsubsumable change, why is it then that in 32 years she has not slipped into cursing again, not even once, in my presence? Nor in the presence of our children or anyone else I know. (Would that I could say the same for myself!) Considering that this was her Chicago native language, culture, etc.?

Is this what T.S. Eliot meant when he referred to, "the permanent things?" Not merely gilding the lily or spray-painting the leopard? As most of you know, I can claim no such special grace as this for myself and continue to often wallow in- and offend through- my many weaknesses. As Paul said, therefore I will not post of myself, but someone else entirely: "yet not her but Christ who lives within her."

This is a little bit of my Valentine tribute to Flo; men may say that love is blind -- but then again, how would they know?

What if the supernatural is in fact more real and more permanent than the things we apprehend with our 3 pound brain and our very limited sensory antennae?

I have read that there were at least three possible St. Valentines -- but allegedly all of them gave their lives for Christ in one fashion or another. So there is some bloody irenic irony to the second-most famous St. Valentine's Day, the St.Valentine's Day Massacre which I do believe did occur in Chicago. Thus I often -in my anti-urban moods or rants, ask: "Can anything good come from Chicago?" And the immediate answer always has to be the answer for which my granddaughter Keziah is currently semi-famous:

"OH YES."