now for almost seven years.
As for the child honoring the parent, I believe that had to be commanded because the parent is a greater mystery, a stranger in a sense. So much of our lives has passed, and that is true even for your mother, who is a good generation younger than I am but who had a considerable life before she came to me—by which I mean only that she was well into her thirties when we were married. As I have said, I think she experienced 136
a good deal of sorrow in those years. I have never asked, but one thing I have learned in my life is what settled, habitual sadness looks like, and when I saw her I thought, Where have you come from, my dear child? She came in during the first prayer and sat in the last pew and looked up at me, and from that moment hers was the only face I saw. I heard a man say once that Christians worship sorrow. That is by no means true. But we do believe there is a sacred mystery in it, it's fair to say that. There is something in her face I have always felt I must be sufficient to, as if there is a truth in it that tests the meaning of what I say. It's a fine face, very intelligent, but the sadness in it is engrafted into the intelligence, so to speak, until
they seem one thing. I believe there is a dignity in sorrow simply because it is God's good pleasure that there should be. He is forever raising up those who are brought low. This does not mean that it is ever right to cause suffering or to seek it out when it can be avoided, and serves no good, practical purpose. To value suffering in itself can be dangerous and strange, so I want to be very clear about this. It means simply that God takes the side of sufferers against those who afflict them. (I hope you are familiar with the prophets, particularly Isaiah.) Now, your mother never talks about herself, really, and she never admits to having felt any sort of grief in her life at all. That's her courage, her pride, and I know you will be respectful of it, and remember at the same time that a very, very
great gentleness is called for, a great kindness. Because no one ever has that sort of courage who hasn't needed it. But you might not realize that, when you are young. I have often worried a little about the way the people in the church act toward her. She is distant, but she can't help that. So they are distant, too. On the other hand, I have often thought that she and I are well suited, no matter how we appear, because I have seen enough of life to understand her. They are not unkind, and 157
they will give her whatever help she will accept. But most of them cannot see her youth in her as I do. I believe she may even seem a little hard to them.
I have written a letter to her, with instructions. I will add this to it—I have given money to people over the years, not a large amount, but a fair portion of my salary. Generally, I made up stories about forgotten funds and anonymous donations. Whether most of them believed me I doubt. At the time
I had no idea that I would ever have a wife or a child, so I didn't think much about it, as I have said. I didn't keep any
record, and I have no certain memory of individuals or circumstances. I have also paid for things around the church,
paint and windowpanes and so on. We had some bleak times when I couldn't bring myself to ask anyone to provide what I could provide myself. I say this only because I want you to
know that any help you receive, even to a fairly substantial amount, may be thought of by you not as charity but as repayment. I have never thought of the congregation as being in my
debt, but the fact is that I have cast considerable bread upon those waters, and whatever bread returns you will be receiving
as from my own hand. By the grace of God, of course.
But I wished to say certain things about the Fifth Commandment, and why it should be thought of as belonging to the first
tablet. Briefly, the right worship of God is essential because it forms the mind to a right understanding of God. God is set apart—He is One, He is not to be imagined as a thing among things (idolatry—this is what Feuerbach failed to grasp). His name is set apart. It is sacred (which I take to be a reflection of the sacredness of the Word, the creative utterance which is not of a kind with other language). Then the Sabbath is set apart from other days, for the enjoyment of time and duration, per138
haps, over and above the creatures who inhabit time. Because 'the beginning,' which might be called the seed of time, is the condition for all the creation that follows. Then mother and father are set apart, you see. It seems to me almost a retelling of Creation—
First there is the Lord, then the Word, then the
Day, then the Man and Woman—and after that Cain and Abel:—Thou shalt not kill—and all the sins recorded in those prohibitions, just as crimes are recorded in the laws against them. So perhaps the tablets differ as addressing the eternal and the temporal.
What the reading yields is the idea of father and mother as the Universal Father and Mother, the Lord's dear Adam and His beloved Eve; that is, essential humankind as it came from His hand. There's a pattern in these Commandments of setting things apart so that their holiness will be perceived. Every day is holy, but the Sabbath is set apart so that the holiness of time can be experienced. Every human being is worthy of honor, but the conscious discipline of honor is learned from this setting apart of the mother and father, who usually labor and are heavy- laden, and may be cranky or stingy or ignorant or overbearing. Believe me, I know this can be a hard Commandment to keep. But I believe also that the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always the sense of the sacredness of the person who is its object. In the particular instance of your mother, I know that if you are attentive to her in this way, you will find a very great loveliness in her. When you love someone to the degree you love her, you see her as God sees her, and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and of Being itself. That is why the Fifth Commandment belongs on the first tablet. I have persuaded myself of it.
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I slept decently. I stay at home Mondays when I can—my day of rest—so I had the morning to think and pray and also to do a little reshelving, and while I was doing that, it came to my mind that I should consider what I would say to myself if I came to myself for counsel. In fact, I do that all the time, as
any rational person does, but there is a tendency, in my thinking, for the opposed sides of a question to cancel each other
more or less algebraically—this is true, but on the other hand, so is that, so I discover a kind of equivalency of considerations that is interesting in itself but resolves nothing. If I put my thinking down on paper perhaps I can think more rigorously. Where a resolution is necessary it must also be possible. Not deciding is really one of the two choices that are available to
me, so decision must be allowed its moment, too. That is, as behavior, not deciding to act would be identical with deciding not
