[b]Russell Banks
Biology doesn’t matter, the Christians argued, because this body we live in is not ultimately real; history doesn’t matter, they said, because God’s time is different and superior to man’s anyhow; and forget cause and effect, forget what you’ve been told about the physical world, because there is heaven and there is hell and there is this green earth in between, and you are always alive in one of the three places.[/b]
Believe it!!
From then on, we were simply different people. Not new people; different.
Though sometimes it’s a distinction without a whole lot of difference.
John had once said to me, in a complaining tone, that Father had taught us to be afraid of no man except him. And it was true. Father always insisted that we think for ourselves in every way, except when we disagreed with him, and that we hold ourselves independent of every man’s will, except his. He wanted us simultaneously to be independent and yet to serve him.
One more rendition of half a loaf?
Other people were in one world; he was in a second. And the distance between their worlds caused other concern and perplexity made them curious about him – for here he was alone in his world; and there they were gathered together in theirs.
It’s just more extreme around me.
One minute he was moving securely through time and space, in perfect coordination with other people; then, with no warning, he was out of step, was somehow removed from everyone else’s sense of time and place, so that the slightest movement, word, facial expression or gesture contained enormous significance. The room filled with coded messages that he could not decode, and he slipped quickly into barely controlled hysteria.
Been there, done that. Twice so far.
Because it’s anger that drives us and delivers us. It’s not any kind of love either-love for the underdog or the victim, or whatever you want to call them. Some litigators like to claim that. The losers.
Anger bgeing right around the corner from vengeance.