A Secret Reservoir of Courage

Filed Under books, from the heart, quotes

This seems to be the season for birthday parties, weekend day-trips and walking the long way home. I’ve been having a hard time keeping up with all the discussions going on lately, but I’m enjoying what I can. Finished reading The Things They Carried, and I would recommend this to anyone. Still reading Etty Hillesum’s journals; reading her words is like looking into a mirror sometimes. I want to know where she goes, spiritually.

These days I’m living less in my head. My feelings about this are mixed. Once in a while I’m not sure I even recognize this irreverent, uncomplicated person.

Health means so much. I’ve been to a lot of doctors recently and have more to see in the coming months. Almost daily I ask myself, how can people live without health insurance? And why does the medical system seem like a scam?

People are talking about summer like it’s ending, but for me it can’t be yet. It’s only mid-August; summer doesn’t end here till end of September, weather-wise. Still so much to do: outdoor concerts, the corn maze, picking peaches, clearing the yard, a visit to Mt. Hood’s Trillium Lake, that yet undone Spring (?) Cleaning …. And in September I have my big 3-0 birthday party, a weekend in Las Vegas, and a trip to North Carolina. There’s barely enough time for everything.

Recent, real life conversations have revolved around: the death penalty, the legal system, the devastating book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, ending friendships, getting second opinions, real estate, being fearless, Stan Lee’s reality show, illogical op-ed pieces. The DH is urging me toward artistic pursuits, and I am tentative. There are still no words, but I’m beginning to wonder if that isn’t the best time to be creative - when there are no words.

Every day I’ve thought about the-God-I-don’t-believe-in, trying to understand what my feelings are about him, and why I talk about him like he’s real. After many weeks or months of considering this, an image quite suddenly came to mind tonight: a profile of myself facing an opaque gap of nothing, talking to an empty space. Maybe there could be an echo, but mostly it is silence. Mine is the only voice. In this image, I see myself raise a hand toward this shapelessness, although I expect nothing. Nothing happens. After several long moments, I bring the hand back. But I don’t feel alone, bereft or afraid. Sometimes I’m even looking away, still talking to it. There is nothing there.

At this moment, that is all I have to say about God. And - seemingly unrelated - my favorite passage from On the Rainy River, a chapter of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.

All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forthrightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit …. If the stakes ever became high enough - if the evil were evil enough, if the good were good enough - I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside me over the years. Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future.

(photo by HSA: from May 2006, Elk Reserve near Reedsport on the Oregon Coast.)

Comments

2 Responses to “A Secret Reservoir of Courage”

Stephen on August 19th, 2006 3:18 am

That’s funny you said that about Etty Hillesum. When I recommended it to you I was thinking that you write in a similar way to her. There’s something about your thoughtful writing that reminds me of her. I’m going to pick up Etty again soon.
Last Night in the Poetry Section on August 23rd, 2007 3:38 pm

[...] the second I’ve loved; the first, “Girl Without Hands” is obliquely alluded to here in my description of God (which is still true, by the way). Maybe I will read Habitation at our [...]

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