Sparks

An imaginary conversation with religious themes.
  February 9, 2003

We sit in a coffeehouse, enjoying the warmth and the honied sounds of jazz seeping through the speakers, while outside it snows.  My motorcycle is parked on the street.  Her balloon is tied to the roof.  Before us sit tiny cups of fragrant espresso, which we contemplate.  The table tops have chessboard patterns on them, and the cups look like the last two giant chess pieces left standing after a high-casualty game.

I am speaking.  I say: “Ivan Karamazov spoke on the jurisdiction of the Church and argued against the separation of Church and State.  In fact, he argued for the absorption of the State by the Church.  His point was that the Church is ordained by god to further goals that are inherently higher than the goals of the State.  Shall we expand on that?”

Her eyes are dark and inscrutable.  They are fixed on mine.  “We shall,” she says, and sips her coffee.

“Our existence on earth is sinful.  Put simply, when left to our own devices we screw each other over: we lie, cheat and steal.  The State is the force that keeps us in check through the fear of violence that it will inflict on us if we transgress.  But even the most efficient State, which enforces its laws with perfect stringency, fails to resolve the problem of sin in two important ways.  First of all, its laws are not guided exclusively, maybe not even chiefly, by the desire to abolish sin.  What they are guided by is open to debate, but I think it’s philosophical theories of varying quality seasoned with randomness and a dash of stupidity.  Secondly, even if the State did go after sin it still would fail to mend people’s nature from which this sin arises.  Prosecution here fights the symptoms but not the disease.  To regard this as a failure is a rather Orwellian view, actually: even if you don’t do anything, you are just as damned for carrying the seeds of bad deeds in your soul.  Crimethink dooms you even if no crime is committed; actions mean nothing, urges mean everything.  Presumably this argument could be flipped on its head: a man with a pure, urge-free soul couldn’t commit a sin even if he engaged in actions that had all the outward appearances of it.”

“ ‘Blessed are the pure of heart: for they shall see God,’ ” she quotes.  “But you digress.”

“Sorry.  Where was I?  Oh yes, the State won’t mend you soul.  The Church won’t either but it’ll help you save it, if you buy into the whole afterlife talk, and that’s as much as you can expect from any earthly organization, I suppose—to show you the right exit from this crowded theater.  The purpose of an ideal state is to protect and better its citizens’ lives.  So a state bent on high-quality service must aspire to offer people the ultimate betterment: the salvation of their souls in the afterlife.  However, a State that does this becomes a Church.  Ivan Karamazov’s idea implies a continuum of social organizations from less to more developed, starting with the pagan Roman empire that concerned itself with purely worldly matters, and ending with some kind of a universal theocracy.  Separating the Church from the State under this view is like separating loving from fucking: you’re left with something satisfactory but empty and coarse.”

“That’s sex without love,” she says.  “Don’t forget love without sex.”

“Actually, I didn’t specify which,” I reply with a smile.  “It’s no fun either way.”

Silence.

“I wonder if Dostoyevsky read St. Augustine,” she says finally.

“Why?”

She reaches into her black messenger bag and fishes out a thick red tome.  Dante’s Inferno.  She opens it at the foreword and quickly thumbs through the pages until she locates an underlined paragraph.  “Just read this part,” she says and hands the book over to me.

I read:

A city, according to St. Augustine, is a group of people joined together by their love of the same object.  Ultimately, however, there can be only two objects of human love: God or the self.  All other loves are masks for these.  It follows that there are only two cities: the City of God, where all love Him to the exclusion of the self, and the City of Man, where self-interest makes every sinner an enemy to every other.  The bonds of charity form a community of the faithful, while sin disperses them and leaves only a crowd.

The preceding page says: foreword by John Freccero.

“How’s that for serendipity?” she asks proudly.  “I only bought this yesterday.”

I smile and nod, and study her face.  Her straight dark hair is cut short; deep in her eyes dance mischievous sparkles.  She is not wearing any makeup, and I like that.  Her lips are full and pale; behind them tiny white teeth show with every smile.

As I give her back the book, she nods by inclining her head slightly, and then we return to watching the milk slowly swirl out of shape in our coffees.  The conversations around us are muffled to the point of being inintelligible but even without parsing the words, one can tell that everyone is speaking the same familiar language.  Outside, it is dark.  Past the window, a trolleybus rolls majestically downhill, bounces rhythmically on its shock absorbers.  It hits a knot of cables at the intersection and spills a volley of blue sparks.  Another second, and it’s gone, swallowed by the snowy night.

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