Post Script

The nice thing about blogs is that they allow you to spout as much ignorance and incongruence as you like without having your credibility challenged. At least blogs like mine---which no one reads anyway :) After thinking more about what I wrote the other day re: "leaps and descents," I need to reconsider--or at least acknowledge--a few things...

• Kierkegaard would have been the first to declare that few things in life are unambiguous. His "leap of faith" was complicated, intricate. He said that people may not find "ultimate meaning" in this life but that they could find something they valued and commit themselves to it. In his case, it was Christianity. His "leap" into such a commitment was not blind; it was taken after a lot of premeditation---as much as one can premeditate matters of faith. Which, as he understood well, is a paradox.
• My descent into the abyss also requires a large measure of faith. Who knows what they are getting into when they choose to descend? In the end, we all die anyway. Perhaps the real point is that we have a say in how we journey. This freedom of choice is, to me, what infuses life with meaning.
• Julian the Apostate was just as committed to his pagan gods as his Christian counterparts were to "The Galilean." So he, too, was caught up in magical thinking. However, he was not evangelical; he was a polytheist who was tolerant of most practices save intolerance. He inspires me because he was a free spirit who loved knowledge and delighted in being alive. I just bought Gore Vidal's novel, Julian. I can't wait to read it, to learn more about this ancient "man of the open hand."
• Trent Reznor may not have resorted to The Leap, but he's resorted to plenty of other abyss-avoiding mechanisms including drugs and S & M. Even so, I admire his honesty and ability to turn pain and terror into something art-worthy.
• Stephen Crane captures the essence of faith's complexity in the poem, "The Wayfarer:"
  The wayfarer,
  Perceiving the pathway to truth,
  Was struck with astonishment.
  It was thickly grown with weeds.
  “Ha,” he said,
  “I see that none has passed here
  In a long time.”
  Later he saw that each weed
  Was a singular knife.
  “Well,” he mumbled at last,
  “Doubtless there are other roads.”