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 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, perhaps, 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
