Quotations from my Reading (cont.)

From Septology by Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, a Catholic convert.

“it’s in the darkness that God lives, yes, God is darkness, and that darkness, God’s darkness, that nothingness, yes, it shines, yes, it’s from God’s darkness that the light comes, the invisible light . . .

“I don’t understand why it’s at night, in the darkness, that God shows himself, yes well maybe it’s not so strange, not when you think about it, but there are people who see God better in the daylight, in flowers and trees, in clouds, in wind and rain, yes, in animals, in birds, in insects, in ants, in mice, in rats, in everything that exists, in everything that is, yes, there’s something of God in everything, that’s how they think, yes, they think God is the reason why anything exists at all, and that’s true . . .

“the invisible is present in both what dies and what doesn’t die, the invisible is present in both what rots and what doesn’t rot, yes, the world is both good and evil, beautiful and ugly, but in everything, yes, even in the worst evil, there is also the opposite, goodness, love, yes, God is invisibly present there too, because God does not exist, He is, and God is in everything that exists . . .

“the same as all human eyes, they’ll rot, they’ll pass away, or else flames will consume them . . . the whole visible human being, the body, is gone, but the invisible human being is still there, because that is never born and so it can never die, I think, yes, the invisible eye is still there after the visible one is gone, because what’s inside the eye, inside the person, doesn’t go away, because there’s God inside the person, it’s the kingdom of God there, yes, as stands written, and yes, yes, that’s how it is, in there, there inside the person is what will pass away and become one with what is invisible in everything . . .

“I think that is was to share in the human condition, our sorrows, that God became man and died and rose up again, because with him, with the resurrected Christ, all people were resurrected too, I think and I think that this is just a meaningless word . . . and I think that since God is eternal and outside of space and time everything is simultaneous in God, yes, in God everything that has happened and is happening and will happen are all simultaneous, so that’s why all the dead have already awoken, yes, they live, yes, they live the way they were and simultaneously as part of God . . .

“it’s almost like a language, because every language gives you access to its share of reality, and the different religions are different languages that can each have its own truth, and its lack of truth, I think and it’s foolish to think that God is anything defined, anything you can say something about, Ales [the wife who converted this fictional narrator to Catholicism, and is now dead] said and of course she was right, I think and I think that people can’t have free will if God is eternal and everything is in God, past, present, future, or actually of course it’s possible, because God can know everything, can have everything in him, even if it isn’t he who willed it, who set it in motion, I think,  but thoughts like that don’t mean much and really it’s only art, maybe, in the best case, that can say anything about the truth that belief contains, or not say anything about it but show it, I think and I think Ales also said that God is not all-powerful, he is powerful in his powerlessness, it is God as Jesus Christ hanging powerless, nailed to the cross, who is powerful, it’s his powerlessness that gives him power, that makes him all powerful for eternity, yes, God is powerless, not powerful, I think, anyway that’s what Ales thought, I think and I think that maybe these are just empty thoughts but I think them anyway . . .

“Ales often said that it was these so-called Christians, Catholics and other kinds, who were always constantly misusing God’s name, again and again, yes, the people who took God’s name in vain the least were the ones who never took the word of God into their mouths at all . . . and even I’m only a borderline member of the Catholic Church, I think, and really I’m outside it, because of how I think, still I’ve found my place in The Church, I think, and seeing oneself as Catholic isn’t just a belief, it’s a way of being alive and being in the world, one that’s in a way like being an artist, since being a painter is also a way of living your life, a way of being in the world, and for me these two ways of being in the world go together well since they both create a kind of distance from the world, and point towards something else, something that’s both in the world, immanent, as they say, and that also points away from the world, something transcendent, as they say, and you can’t entirely understand it, I think, and then I again think that the Kingdom of God is within me, because a Kingdom of God does exist, I think, and I can feel it when I make the sign of the cross . . .