Doing It Again

It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

― G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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Dear Kate,

If the idea of human community is one of a tragic ideal, then the church community must be one that is doubly tragic--a double tragedy, on earth as it speaks about heaven.

I want to stop thinking about this, especially 3 o'clock in the morning, the hour my son coming home literally the next day to wake me up from a stupor lingering from before.  But I am afraid if I do I would stop going to church at all.

An interesting expression: going to church.

You might go for a family dinner, but you don't "go to family."  You were initiated and involved, even if you are to live as if it'd never happened.

Family happened, and that's that.  You deal with it, don't deal with it, die without letting any family know, but you can't talk yourself out of the fact.  It's a matter of whether the fact of being a part of such togetherness really matters.

It doesn't, in our childish days we would say, could hardly wait to undo the tyranny of necessity.  Then we would go on having our own kids, repeat our parents' mistake of idealism and find our bridges burned.  We burned them; the world gave us a good hand; it was a nice collab, embarrassingly thorough once and thoroughly embarrassing now for us to salvage from the ruins.

Rags to riches, that's what we think our story is about.  Prince to beggar, that's our actual life's work: sadder and more subdued everyday, aging beyond our age, dying it once dying it twice dying it every old way each new morning, beggar for love, love to beg.

I don't know how you define "church" and if, by now, understand it has not much to do with "churchgoing."  You might have a vague idea of it being a family where you first belonged and everlastingly since.  That it could withstand the frequent and persistent assaults of this world, vandalism by fire and everything else just as embarrassingly thorough within and without, that to let the idealism die is to let go finally of your Self and blot out the memory of a bridge that there ever was.

Hiding from God, the old game that we are never tired of.  God makes another daisy just now for another new day just for us, and we say, Dad, why don't you go fuck yourself.

Yours, Alex