June 16
Is it a sin to use Scripture as a crutch merely to keep going, to survive? I have never heard a sermon on this and probably never will, as Christendom is complicitous in this crime of misuse of the Word. Life is good when I do not think on the past and unbearable when I do—mistakes and failures with years-long consequences overshadowing bright moments. John the Evangelist writes: “In him was life, and the life was the light of humanity. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not grasped it.”22 Scripture keeps me in the present and orients me toward the future on the basis of a summary recognition that my past is a morass best left behind, where my sins are forgotten not by me, but by God, who covers them over with his darkness, the darkness that precedes all sin, the darkness that gives birth to light. Yes, that gentle darkness is the feminine side of God, containing the potential for life within. God is in the pre—no, Jesus is in the present—no no, the Holy Spirit is in the present (the Spirit of Jesus)—Jesus is past (supplanting Satan, like Jacob supplanting Esau, though Esau did nothing wrong!) and future, and God comprehends all of it. Probably not sound Trinitarian doctrine—what would those fierce Dominicans have to say, those wolves in sheep’s clothing, though I think the sharp contrast of their black-on-white habit gives them away—but it matches my experience in this body.
What happens to the Holy Spirit after death, I wonder. It cannot be our lifeline to Jesus any longer—it seems it will not be necessary. Does Jesus stop having a spirit when there are no longer any bodies to get in the way? What kind of talk is this? This is why I need Scripture as a crutch—to keep from landing in a heap on the side of the road, lost in fruitless supposings, passed over by the priest, who hurries on to more important errands.23 But what I really wanted to express is the notion that the very same book, whether the Bible or Faust, can open one’s mind to reality one day and shut it down the next, depending on how one uses it. So its being a “crutch” is not the point so much. I am not clear on this—maybe another time.
Matt 16:5–12. The yeast of the Pharisees is false nourishment. When Jesus breaks bread with his followers, it is the same bread and yet different. The Pharisees do not bother to feed the multitudes (this is part of the problem—they are all talk and no action), but even if they did, it would be all wrong. So if books are like bread (Jesus says bread is a metaphor for teaching), the real issue is not so much the substance of the book (it must be a good book but even a good book can be offered in the wrong way), or how the followers are inclined to use it (this is usually mistaken as well), but how it is offered that matters. Jesus offers us bread, teaching, a crutch freely, and as soon as we realize the freeness—the grace—of that offering, the fact that we are using it as a crutch no longer matters. The crutch falls away at that moment of realization, and we find we can walk without it, though we keep it in a safe place (our hearts) so we can offer it to others when the time is right.
The need to write is a gift in two ways. It forces me to give my world back to myself and give to the world what I have found. It becomes an offering. My world is so small—a few people—a few books. But does this really matter? “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees.” Leaven makes bread appear to be bigger than it really is. The size of one’s world is not determined by the number of one’s friends or the desirability of one’s attributes, but by the freeness of the offering.
June 18
I sound like a frustrated preacher. How pathetic! My master—how is it with all his education and wealth and the privileges and opportunities afforded him as a man, he is so at odds with everyone and everything? I have heard it said that younger sons have more trouble than older ones. What is (or was) it like to be the youngest of seven (four girls and three boys)? I would hardly know, an only female child and no mother to speak of. Mrs. H. has children of her own but does not draw comparisons. “Bless God, they live” is all she will say.
Matt 16:13–20. I am reminded of Faust’s complaint that anyone possessing truth and revealing it will be hounded to death, not by the truth but by liars. Jesus strongly warns his disciples not to reveal who he is. That is to protect them, to keep the real threat to himself for as long as possible. But once he is gone and they are sent out, there is no more safety. Or rather I should say the Holy Spirit protects the mind and heart, but not the body as we know it. The body is a great mystery. All the saints’ bodies are the rocks that make up our foundation. To rename Simon Peter is to predict his martyrdom. To confess is to seal one’s fate. No wonder there is so little genuine confession.24 For things to make sense, one need only look squarely at them. And then try not to look away.
June 19
Headache. Clouds, then sun, then wind, then rain, over and over. The dog pacing the kitchen, underfoot all day. Faust gives me life. A different Word.
June 20
Struck by the seriousness of the historical references in Goethe’s burlesque tavern scene25 to choosing a pope, Doctor Luther, and the devil afoot in Spain. Remembering the historical Faust lived 1480–1540 and the Faust of the drama is no longer young, so putting the action circa 1520, at the start of the Reformation—1000 years before that the fall of the secular Roman empire and 1000 years before that the first destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the first diaspora of the Jews, the Babylonian exile. Spain, a reference to Catholic suppression of dissent—expulsion of Jews and Muslims, the Inquisition—“choosing” a pope alludes to the ascendancy of the Holy Roman Empire over the Vatican. So Faust’s midlife “dark wood”26 is situated at a tipping point for humanity. There is a grim but honest humor in allowing the weight of the world to rest on the shoulders of one over-educated and lovesick man, like the fattened rat, who in the end succumbs to poison.27
Matt 16:21–28. Peter as Satan, the adversary. “What good is it to a person if he wins the whole world and his soul is harmed?”
June 22
Summer takes me back to my childhood in Berlin, though the weather here is wetter and colder. Like Faust I am no longer young but with an untapped reserve of passion—for what exactly I do not know. My admiration for my master is childlike, unpossessive. I have just enough learning to realize how far above mine is his. And yet he too is a child, a precocious playmate. He knows full well all that of which he has been deprived, while powerless to provide for himself. He mocks the worldly and laughs himself to exhaustion—no tears to wipe away.
Matt 17:1–13. Peter an eager young puppy. It occurs to me these disciples are all young men. Jesus tries to teach them something about steadfastness in the face of disappointment, but they are either full of silly ambitions, explaining away the inevitable, or belly down in the dirt with fear. They would rather believe anything than that their brilliant teacher’s career is about to come to a disgraceful close. Young people are made for beginnings, old for endings. The middle-aged “look before and after,” like Hamlet, who was older than his years. My master is younger and yet ancient. He seems almost primitive to me at times in his disregard for social niceties. But really I think he believes he is the ghost of Socrates, the supreme ironist, come back to haunt modern Western civilization, akin to Mephistopheles, though with the genuine piety of an ancient Athenian that a modern German almost certainly lacks. I know nothing about the Danes, though from reputation they enjoy having the upper hand. But then who does not? Is