Kierkegaardian

Do you know what today’s high temperature was? 26. It’s January, of course, so it’s supposed to be cold, but is it supposed to be that cold? I didn’t leave the house today, and I’m not going to if I can help it. 

I’m reading Fear and Trembling for no reason other than I hadn’t read it before and I felt that I should. I seldom read philosophy. When I do, I read passively. I let my eyes slide over the words and then I wait for my brain to absorb them. 

Fear and Trembling is about faith, the faith of Abraham, willing to sacrifice his only son to please the Lord. I don’t know very much about Kierkegaard, so I don’t know why he wrote about Abraham, nor why he was preoccupied with the problem of faith, nor why he wrote under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio. I picture him writing alone in an attic or a sparsely furnished study, trying to keep warm during the icy Copenhagen winter with night falling at 3 pm or so. It’s a very Scandinavian book. 

*****

It’s Wednesday now, one day later and ten to twelve degrees warmer, at least for now. Things are looking up. I’m still reading Kierkegaard, a little bit at a time, and I think it’s getting through to me, a little bit at a time. My brain is thawing now. That’s probably it. 

I’m thinking a lot about resignation in the Kierkegaardian sense. I’m probably getting this completely wrong but who cares because this isn’t a philosophy final, but my understanding is that resignation is a stepping stone on the way to true faith. To be resigned to your fate, to the path that God has chosen for you, even if it is nowhere near the path you want to be on, even if God demands that you sacrifice that which is most precious to you, is NOT to convince yourself that you no longer want whatever it is that God is taking away from you. If you train yourself not to desire whatever you have lost or cannot attain, then there’s no real sacrifice other than the initial sacrifice of loss. True sacrifice is to willingly give up what you most want or love, and to continue to want and love that thing, cheerfully. That kind of freely given sacrifice is essential to being resigned and ultimately, to being faithful. 

*****

It’s Thursday now, and temperatures remain tolerable for a second straight day. If you were looking for a weather report for a day that is now in the past, you came to exactly the right place. 

Last night, I read Kierkegaard on the topic of greatness. I was going to pull a quote from the book but I’ll paraphrase instead. I don’t know that he is limiting greatness to this one characteristic, but he does say that the great have one thing in common: they act without knowing ahead of time what the outcome will be. 

Deceptively simple, no? Using Mary the Mother of God as an example of greatness, Kierkegaard explains that Mary’s greatness lies not in her pre-ordination as the Blessed Mother, nor in her Immaculate Conception (look that up if you’re not Catholic, because it’s not the same as the Virgin Birth). Her greatness lies instead in her willingness as a young teenage girl to obey God with no promise of protection, and no assurances whatsoever that things would turn out OK. As Kierkegaard points out, the Angel Gabriel announced the Lord’s will to Mary and she readily complied, but Gabriel didn’t tell her what else to expect, and he didn’t communicate on the Lord’s behalf to Mary’s friends and neighbors. No one went around knocking on doors explaining that Mary’s premarital pregnancy was the Lord’s doing, and that they should give her a pass. Except for St. Joseph, the poor girl was on her own. 

*****

Do you know what I did? I bought ANOTHER handbag. Madness. Sheer madness. It’s now in the box in which it came, labeled for return shipping. I wish that I could claim that I was returning it because I recognized the sheer ridiculousness and self-indulgence of me buying yet another handbag, but that’s not true. I’m returning it because I just don’t like it as much as I thought I would. It is not the handbag of my dreams, as I had hoped it would be. 

So that’s January so far. I’m reading about detachment and resignation and great faith and self-sacrifice, but I’m also buying stupid things that I don’t need with money that I don’t have. Well, that’s not really true. I do have the money, and I always pay for everything I buy with actual money, and not with credit. But I have a child in college and another one soon to start. I need to buy a car. And I’m getting old. I should be saving money so that I don’t spend my dotage in poverty. I must do better. I MUST do better. 

****"

"DIVERS! LET'S GOOOO! Sorry."

It's 9:10 on Saturday morning, and we're here at the MLK Indoor Swim Center, waiting for the dive meet to begin. Our swim and dive coach has a loud voice in any circumstance, but the echo in the swim center makes it that much louder, especially for the two unsuspecting Clarksburg parents who were standing right behind him at the scorers' table, minding their own business, waiting to sign in and collect their stopwatches. 

I'm a stroke and turn judge today. I would do this job anyway, because I am certified and because so many other people really hate doing it. And now thanks to the Omicron surge, volunteering is the only way I can watch the meet. Mere idle spectators are not allowed to be in the swim center, and we’re not technologically sophisticated enough to live stream the thing. My younger son is nearing the end of his swimming career, which means that our family is almost done with swimming altogether, and I don't want to miss a meet. So I'm here with my clipboard and my name tag and my white polo shirt, ready to officiate. 

*****

Even the natatorium was cold yesterday. I brought a cardigan, and I wore pants rather than shorts with my white polo shirt. This was the right call, but in the end, the pants and shoes and socks didn’t do much good. A stroke and turn judge has to stand right in the splash zone to see the turns and finishes; and at the end of the meet, as always, I was damp from the waist down. . A Clarksburg boy who came in for a strong finish in the 100 fly, splashing me from nearly head to toe, said “sorry!” as he waited in the water for the rest of the swimmers to finish. 

“No worries,” I said. “If you don’t want to get wet, you shouldn’t hang around at a swimming pool, amirite?”

“True,” he said. “Very fair.” 

And that’s me. Truthful and fair as possible. I approached the building exit, fearful and trembling at the idea of walking out into the 20 degree cold in wet clothes. And it was just as horrible as I feared it would be. That was my pain and suffering for the day. That was my sacrifice. That was the thing that somebody had to do, so why not me? We do what we can.