Gotterfunken: for Stuart S.

Father Warren Freeman, S.J., influenced me in college because. . .well, to tell the absolute truth, I loved the man because he had been in the same orphanage as Babe Ruth and told wonderful, movie-like stories of those days. (He knew the Babe well enough that he called him Herman.) He also had a block of instruction in his theology class where he discussed the various types of atheism. Some atheists, that clever old Jesuit said, are merely indolent atheists, that is, persons for whom theological questions are a bore. Other atheists, continued Father F., are what some folks call "muscular atheists" or "village atheists," that is, people who think it is fun to file lawsuits about "In God We Trust" or reading from the Bible in a public school. Madelyn Murray O'Hair was such a one. " But God loves the other category," intoned the priest. And what category is that? That last category of atheists includes those whom we would call "reluctant atheists." They are people who wish that the mythology of Christianity was literally, or at least figuratively, true, but they are also educated to respect the scientific method. He always ended this section of his course in Catholic Dogma by saying that "Truth is One and Indivisible!" When pressed as to what that meant, he would say: "The truths of natural theology and the truths of science are all part of the same truth. Be patient! Eventually, in God's good time, we will find there is profound truth in the beliefs of Christianity." I guess that's what Faith is.

And I have stood for Handel's Chorus,
tears welling,
choking back near-wracking sighs.

and Beethoven's grand Chorale
can make me blubber most unmanly:
Freude, Schoener Gotterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium.

Gotterfunken?
Sparks of God?

Once, twice, or even thrice a year,
I'm forced to wipe tears, stifle sighs,
and put cold logic back in charge
before those little godly sparks
set off a fire
that might wreck
everything I know.

And knowledge -- damn it all! --
we know
is everything!

Warren F. O'Rourke, 2005