The pope that was greater than God
Or one of them (one of the popes that was greater than God).
Nils said, “Your pope must have been greater than God.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. I was going to add, “My ... pope?” But Nils went on, “The Holy Father grander than the Holy Father.” At which point I did manage to squeak in, “My pope?”
“‘Without knowing a woman, he fathered not one but sixteen,’” Nils said.
“I hadn’t thought of that. You mean the pope in the farable.”
“Yes, your pope” Nils said.
I: “I don’t make this stuff up, you know.”
Nils: “Of course not.”
He took a breath. He said, “Do you think I could come in?” It was another case where he had just come to the door, tried to open it, and, finding it locked, rung the bell. Then he starts the conversation at the door as if he has already been invited in. And I make a point not to.
I know that is mean, both as in inhospitable and as in nasty, and I would help myself if I could, but I can’t seem to. I am always shocked: there are people that believe they are welcome anywhere at any time, when they aren’t. They come in when I am thinking how I can keep them on the front porch.
I must have made the wrong move again; I had stepped back,before I finished my thought. And Nils was inside, taking off his pea coat, and saying, “Tell me what you think of this. I was talking to this guy, a non-believer, and ... ”
“What does that mean? – sorry to interrupt,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Non-believer.”
“Yes,” Nils said, “a good question. A non-believer as compared to what? you’re saying. Are there any believers really?” He didn’t believe it was a good question; he was just clearing his throat, because the next thing he said was “You don’t have any coffee do you?”
“Wait a minute,” Nils said as he followed me back to the kitchen. “You have a Keurig, right?
“Anyway,” he said, “I get your point: I’m not a believer. Axel’s not though he tries to be. But checking off a list of approved dogma, saying at each check mark, ‘Yes, I subscribe to that one,’ doesn’t make for a believer, does it?” Sitting down at the table. “You – you’re not a believer even if you still insist that Jesus is your friend. Whatever that means. Right? That’s what you’re saying.”
“Black, right?” I said. He took a sip, made a face, but then said, “Right. Good.” Then:
 |
| Dostoevsky out of focus as usual |
“Okay,” I said. “But where did you meet this guy you were talking to?”
“On an airplane.”
“When?”
“It doesn’t matter. Listen.”
“Who? What? When? Where? How?” I said.
“Not that kind of story,” Nils said. He took another sip of coffee, made another face. Looked at me, making a face. “No. Good,” he said. “You’ve read The Idiot, right? – Dostoevsky.”
“I’m reading it now.”
“So, I don’t know where you are – you may or may not have gotten to this and I may not remember it exactly right anyway – but Hippolite, who is dying of consumption reads this hugely long deathbed declaration to the Prince and a bunch of people assembled for his, the prince’s, birthday. I don’t know how they listen to it all, but Dostoevsky is full of these characters that can talk forty minutes at a time, and people seem to put up with it, I guess like we put up with an absurdly long movie.
“Anyway, at one point, toward the end, I think, Hippolite starts railing about humility: Why should it be demanded of him? He will submit to the inevitable, to death, but why should he be humble about it even if religion tells him to.
“So, I was trying to explain to this non-believer why the church wasn’t thriving at a time when, as he thought, people were longing to belong to something. That’s what he wanted to know. I wasn’t sure, I said, that this was such a time, especially if belonging required any inconvenience whatever, you couldn’t just zoom in whenever and for however long you desired. Then, I went on that the church, if it followed the movement Jesus began, was a particularly in-convenient something to belong to, because it existed, as a wise man once said, not for its members but for everyone that wasn’t one. If it stood for humility then ... Wait. Let me say it this way, I know you’ll agree: Following Jesus means giving up yourself for the sake actually of anyone else that happens to be passing by or fell off the side of the road.
“I am utterly incapable of this, so I can't imagine anyone that is. I’d say actually that we end up with The Church, the institution, because the movement that demanded giving yourself up – or just asked for it, or asked that we at least try it – that movement failed. It had to fail, but typically, we couldn’t let it.”
“We didn’t have the humility to admit we had failed,” I said.
Nils looked at me over the coffee cup he’d just put to his mouth. He tilted his head, meaning he couldn’t quite believe I’d gotten what he was saying, but yeah, that was it.
“I haven’t gotten that far,” I said. Now he looked at me, meaning wait, what was I saying, now? “In the book,” I said. “I haven’t gotten that far in the book.”
03.15.22
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