When the Homily is about Immunology

Some Great Good Thing

There was a very brief moment of intense clarity again last night. It happens from time to time and seems inspired by any number of things both within and without. I cannot hope to accurately describe it – like some untamed dream, the weight of which cannot hope but be lost in its description. I’ll try anyway.

An epiphany of pure truth in the midst of little white, gray, and pitch black lies (with very little potential for accurately categorizing any of the three). There was a deep, yet brief (as in flash bulb brief) sense of some great good thing out there. No, that’s not right: some great good thing there. Well, no, that’s not it either: some great good thing. Or, as it seems appropriate to me now: Some Great Good Thing.

Suffering, selfishness, stealing, murder, rape, child molestation, war, corrupt corporate leaders, starvation, cancer, birth defects, illicit sex, love being made synonymous with sex, taking advantage of other people’s trust and/or innocence, death and all manner of sickness (spiritual and physical) surrounds us. We all recognize the Dukkha in the world, just as Sidhartha did…truly his was no great discovery – I don’t think – we all detect the misalignment of the terrestrial stars, no?

I discern it all too often. Right here (pointing to my heart) and right here (pointing to my head). Hedonism abounds in me. Nothing has taught me this (like a big gnarly slap to the face) than having children. They have fully manifested my true selfish self and I suppose I should be thankful. God, I so want so badly to be a better man…a better husband, a better father! And in these strange moments of intense and profound clarity, when I sense that ethereal and elusive “Some Great Good Thing” I almost feel as though such personal betterment is possible, attainable.

Transcendence. Rising above all the fecal matter that pollutes this world and me. It is the power of the Transfiguration and the Resurrection. Truth, Beauty, and Love. I want the moment to last…it is like a great precipice that I’ve already fallen off of and am trying to get back onto, but cannot quite reach – save for those occasional split seconds in which I am strangely able to stretch a bit more than I had before. Actually, most times there are no attempts made at all…I just suddenly notice the ledge at the apex of my extended fingertips, along with the muck and mire of the pit I lather myself in. A brief glimpse of the plain, which forms the edge of the cliff, makes sense (somehow) of all the evil and suffering – the Dukkha. More than that…it is safety and deliverance from evil and suffering. It is home. Yet, we do not escape to it through the portal of death. I am convinced that it is here and now with us, amongst us…like some great source of potential energy waiting to explode and fill the world with uninhibited truth. To bring light into the darkness in which we humans clamor about it now. It is a judgement…and to that extent it scares me a little…a judgement which reveals reality exactly like any light does when turned on in a darkened room.

Some Great Good Thing. That is (in my simple and stupid mind) my most powerful Christian apologetic. Telling myself and those around me that in what I have described here, I have used the wrong pronoun.