Sunday, March 26, 2023

11th Step? Or the 3rd?

 Reliving this idea of a Higher Power while on holiday . . .   This mini-series we watched called Midnight Mass (which ended on a very disappointing Attack of the Zombies note) made me think about God and the end of life question.  A couple of the characters who weren’t comforted by religious concepts of what’s going to happen mused as to what they thought the end might look like.  I think often of an A.A. retreat I regularly attended back in sincity that was led by a Jesuit priest in recovery.  He talked about great art and beautiful music and the wonders of just being in nature as being easy, accessible ways to start to get your arms around the idea that there’s something Bigger out there.  I’m often reminded of KK and I wandering around a small art museum in Helsinki that featured a lot of more modern pieces.  On one wall, spaced far apart, were three paintings, all by themselves, that were the works of some great painter - who I cannot even remember at this point.  We weren’t aware of this set-up when we wandered over to these paintings but both  of us were almost stunned into silence, it was so obvious that the inspiration and the technique and the skill that produced them were too much, too much to come from the small, narrow mind of a human.  It was almost like a loud, startling retort or being slapped in the face the effect was so profound.  I remember thinking that here was an easy step into the belief that I was pretty puny.