To be human and to be holy

After finishing Chapter 3 of James Joyce's 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', which ends with a long sermon about hell and consequently the protagonist repenting for his sins by confessing to a priest.

Somehow we always end up like this, trembling before God. Aching for repentance, aching to be smaller and smaller and smaller. Kneeling on altars in a desperate attempt to be worthy. So hungry for forgiveness only for being human. You thought He could be found inside you, that’s what they said. You thought you were holy too. But why then would you be on your knees? How then could your goodness be so little and so fleeting, like it was lent to you instead of your own, second-hand and frayed, passed down generation after generation, somehow without changing, too?

I have served only false gods all my life. I have never known or seen the gentleness and benevolence of any of their Gods and I have never known to surrender to what I don’t know and can’t see. So when you find me naked and vulnerable entirely, know that it is not for want of a God to love me back or forgive me my sins. Know that if I am found powerless, it will be for love, or art, or desire, or beauty. I have served only false gods all my life. 

I wasn’t planning on this being a confession. But I have never wanted to be holy. I have only ever wanted to be human. I am slowly learning that despite what they tell you, it will never be the same thing. 

If my God loved me, I wouldn’t have to tremble before him. And if I tremble before him, if I am powerless, disarmed, then He is not looking down from above, but in front of my eyes every instant so that I do not have to crane my neck in search of Him. In front of my eyes every instant - in the warm eyes of the one I love, in my friends’ laughter around the table, in my mother’s lap and my father’s arms, in the art that creaks and drips out of every chip in the walls of the world, in the sun and the wind and this morning. So do not take me for a disbeliever. Because to surrender is to be human, not holy. 

I do not know who my God is yet but I know I want to look him in the eye when I manage to find him. Because that’s how I love. I stare in the face of that which can build me or destroy me entirely, my eyes fiercely gentle. And without looking away, I give myself over to it. I was never taught to look down, or to kneel, or beg for forgiveness, but to be powerless before that which you love is the only way I know to be human. 

I hope my God will forgive me for not attempting to be holy. For I do not concern myself with Heaven and Hell and all that is to come. I stay rooted instead to the spot in the moment, feel my life coming from me. In every breath I hope to catch the moment that has just passed so that I may remember it, that is how I live. I create as much as I breathe, that is how I live. With this incessant urge to preserve and to capture the Now in my feeble palms. 

I am not immortal but infinite because I am alive right now and I can feel myself alive right now. And then even in the swift passing of time I think I can feel a forever in a second, even catch a strand of it in my fingers and hold on if only for an instant. I have loved and I have lost, I have been terrible and I have been good, and there is much to come when I will not be worthy, or good, or kind, and if I tried otherwise it would be in vain. It is not a sin to be human, it is the greatest power and the greatest vulnerability you will ever know. 

You do not have to cower before that which is holy, you do not have to tremble and kneel. You have to stand up and stare it in the eyes like you’re not the same, but equals nevertheless.