The Tales We Tell

It turns out that I have a tendency to make the most of a bad situation, and I write it that way because this was not readily apparent to me for the longest time. If I had been asked, while a student, if I liked school, I would have replied in the affirmative. I imagine that after Dennis, Luke, Bridget, and I moved to Colorado Springs from suburban Denver I likely claimed, on more than one occasion, to be happy down there. I know that I balked when Dennis told me, a little more than a year after buying our house in the Springs, that it was time for him to find a new job and that might mean moving.

It took getting out of situations for me to realize how miserable (or at the very least, how discontent) I was in them. I don’t know if the case still holds, because I’ve been in my mold-filled habitat here in Maine for just about 16 years, and my family and I have built a life that works. I don’t absolutely love it—I know that, but I’m also not in a hurry to change (other than to finish fixing my house). Overall, I am content with the rhythm of my days and nights.

Restlessness might be the word for what generally eludes, but it might be a blindness to what is wrong in the world. Maybe I’m not terribly adept at recognizing the bad. That doesn’t seem quite right, either, but how good are any of us at identifying the truth, especially about ourselves?

In a rather uncomfortable scene in The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, Bendrix, the protagonist who has decided he hates God, finds a certain amount of satisfaction in poking the bear of a priest who has come to dinner.

[Bendrix says] “Your church certainly goes in for superstition in a big way—St. Januarius, bleeding statues, visions of the virgin—that sort of thing.”

[Father Crompton responds,] “We try to sort them out. And isn’t it more sensible to believe that anything may happen than …?”

The bell rang.

Bendrix was deceiving himself. He wanted to hate God, he wanted to refuse to believe, but it’s hard to hate something that doesn’t exist. So where does that leave him? Such contradictions can be hard to recognize, never mind actually escape.

With the arrival of Lent, reminders about rules and regulations, pharisaical faith and true faith, justice and mercy come to mind.

Moralism has two grave symptoms. The first is pharisaism. No one is more contrary to the Gospel than someone who considers himself honest, because he has no need of Christ. The Pharisee lives without any tension, because he himself establishes the measure of what is right and he identifies it with what he thinks he is capable of. As a defense, he uses violence against anyone who is not like him. …

Who is capable of morality? In his weakness, every man is a sinner. If we lack the awareness of being sinners we cannot approach anyone without injustice, presumption, pretension, aggression, calumny, and falsehood. Awareness of being sinners makes us capable of discretion, keen on the truth for ourselves and for others, hopeful that at least the other might be better than oneself, and humble. We cannot establish any true relationship unless we begin from the awareness of being sinners, of what we lack and of where we fail.  —Luigi Giussani

Most days, I don’t know where I need to go, so I try not to worry about it. If I end up unable to discern what’s really going on, at least, I am able to find my place in the book and pick up where I left off.