Month: January 2014

Sins of impure thought

My grandsons stayed overnight during the past couple of
days.  At bath time – a bath time
of sorts, a puddle of water in the base of the bath on which the two paddled mechanized
ducks – I noticed how reluctant the older boy was to take off his clothes.  This compared to his younger brother of
two years, who has no shame or modesty.
 
I put those words together effortlessly, shame and
modesty.
 
Why be ashamed of your body?  What drives my grandson as a six-year-old, and not even into
the hormonal stirrings of pre-adolescence, to want to hide his penis from
others?
I remember the sensation as a thirteen-year-old; my
mortification when my older sister insisted I should not try to change my
clothes in private.  My desperation
when all the cubicles at the swimming pool change rooms were occupied and I was
forced to change out of my bathers in public.
Others did not mind. 
Others were okay with standing there naked to towel themselves dry.  Others bent over to pick up clothes,
unabashed by their nakedness, but I had decided early on that it was shameful,
my body was shameful and needed to be kept hidden.
There are those who might suggest my shame comes out of
some sort of desire frustrated, to use a technical term, out of ‘repressed
libido’.  The excitement of looking
at naked bodies,  as I did so
often in those days when I was a child .
 
I scanned the pages of my father’s art books under cover,
hidden beneath layers of blankets so that no one else, none of my siblings,
might see what I was up to.
 
What was I up to? 
Looking at naked men and women in old fashioned settings with bits of
material draped over strategic bits, the occasional fig leaf, but enough
nakedness revealed to send shivers of excitement through me. 
I did not understand my excited pleasure but I recognised
it as wrong. 
By the time I was my older grandson’s age I had begun
preparations for my first confession and first communion.  The nuns took us to the priest who
taught us about the nature of sin. 
Sins like stealing and telling lies.
 
Such tame and obvious sins did not trouble me, but the
priest gave a name to my excitement under the blankets with my father’s
borrowed art books.  
He called mine
the sin of impure thoughts.  And impure
thoughts were worse even than stealing ten pounds.  They were worse even than even the biggest of lies.
 
Whether it is true or not, in terms of Catholic doctrine,
in my mind it became true: impure thoughts constituted mortal sins, and mortal
sins were dangerous indeed.  
Die
with a mortal sin on your soul and you will be banished to hell forever.  Die with a mortal sin and you can never
enter the kingdom of heaven. 
By the time I was eight years old I agonized over these
incessant sins to the point where I imagined God’s pointed finger burning red
at the tip in my direction, but I could not bring myself to tell the priest
about my impure thoughts in the confessional. 
I could not bear to tell the priest things that I feared
might not only cause him to despise me, but might also stir him up. 
Somehow, I knew about that strange contagion of desire; the
way looking and being seen, listening and telling could evoke powerful
responses in the others. 
What could I do?  My sins of impure thought weighed me down as if I were carrying lead,
like the silver grey lump that rested on a bench in my father’s workshop; a
lump of lead, poisonous my brothers told me, and too heavy for us to
carry.
 
How could I be rid of this sin? 
Then I heard about novenas, and relief from sin, of all
kinds and degrees of severity, when a person goes to mass on the first Friday
of every month for nine months. 
How I managed to get to the first Friday of every month Mass
as a ten year old, I cannot fathom, but in my memory I managed it.  I most likely went along with my
sister. She was busy getting up early most mornings by then to avoid our
father’s visits in the night. 
She and I went to early Mass together. In those days daily
seven o’clock Mass was commonplace. 
She and I walked together to mass to cleanse our souls; she for what was
done to her, and me, for what I might do to others.  

Glory be to God for dappled things.

Years ago, in the days when most communications, other than
over the telephone, came in the form of mail through the post, I received an unprepossessing post card, dolphins leaping through waves? Some friend on holidays had sent it, I imagined, until I read the
words scrawled on the card.
 
Les Murray, who at that time was literary editor for Quadrant had decided to accept my story, ‘Hold on’ for
publication in his magazine.  No
matter that Quadrant was renowned
as a right wing magazine, I had finally had a story accepted for
publication.  I was a writer at
last.  A published writer. 
It was official. 

The pleasure of being published that day was more profound than for any publication since, but every time someone agrees to publish something I
have written, I am filled with some of the same pleasure; short lived as it may be.
 
Anne Lamott in her book, Bird by Bird, writes about the way in which, until your writing is
published, you imagine your whole life will be completely different, and better, for evermore after publication.  And then it happens. 
Something gets published, but your whole world does not change. 
At least, not simply because of the
writing. 
Our lives change, as inevitably as day follows night, but
the changes come about through things other than writing, at least they have
for me, and yet here I am stuck in this fantasy of wondering what it will
be like once my book gets accepted for publication.  
 
I pinch myself.  My book is still not quite ready to send
out.  Nearly ready, but who will
want it, if anyone?
That same dreaded fear of rejection; that same secret
longing; that same hideous sense that someone will read my writing and say, ‘Sorry, no market here.  Nothing of interest to the general public.  Interesting perhaps, but not of
interest to us.’
This morning as I hung out the sheets, I considered my wish
that I be like Gerard Manly Hopkins.  An English poet and Jesuit priest, he wrote for the love of God – as in his 1918 poem, ‘Pied Beauty’ with its fine first line: Glory be to God for dappled things – or so he believed, or would
have us believe.  
Publication was
not within his desire.  He wrote
for the glory of God and given that God knew and read everything, Hopkins
always had a ready and willing audience.  
I can’t say the same for me.  For my own writing. 
I have no God-like audience, only a few people who visit my blog and others unknown to me who might read my writing in hard copy or elsewhere online. 
But if I can get this book of mine out into the published
world, then life will be different – or will it?
 
I’m not quite at the age where I imagine that every new
year that dawns might be my last, though of course it could be.  
Last night at midnight we went outdoors
onto our street, which sits atop a hill across from the city, to admire the
fireworks.  
We do this every New
Years Eve, the highlight of our efforts at acknowledging the birth of a new year.
 
Our daughters laugh at us.  It’s hardly inspirational to go out onto the street and
dodge the trams of Riversdale Road and the few cars that flash by and honk
their horns in greeting.  But for us it’s enough.
 
The lights over the city were glorious, better this year
for the weather I expect.  A calm
cool evening without even a gentle breeze.  
I had also avoided too many drinks as I might sometimes do
by way of New Years Eve celebrations as I needed to collect our youngest from a
New Years Eve party in the wee hours of the morning. 
As it was, she called me at three.  Normally, she might catch a taxi but
they’re hard to come by on New Years Eve, besides, she, like her sisters, hates
to catch taxis when she’s the only one travelling.  
Young women in taxis late at night are vulnerable and easy
prey, especially if they have been drinking.
 
I decided I would rest easier if I could instead collect
her from her party, even if it interfered with a reasonable
bedtime post midnight on New Years Eve.
 
So I’m up late this morning, filled with a fresh desire to perfect my book.
 
Happy New Year to all my blogging friends.