"'Who can forgive me?'"

I first read The Sparrow in 2006.
The following post is comprised of excerpts
from a letter written to a friend shortly thereafter.

Yes, The Sparrow.

...this is a book about a bunch of Jesuits on a mission (literally) to an unknown planet; a mission which ends badly. Father Emilio Sandoz (priest, mystic, saint) is maimed, and forced into prostitution by one of the planet's most powerful inhabitants; the one whose singing, whose songs, had drawn the Jesuits there in the first place. Emilio is the only one to survive the mission and return to Earth, a broken man....

...what I loved most was the nakedly honest spirituality of it all. I loved the ecstasy of Emilio's faith and then the raw truthfulness of his fall from it. Passages like the following (page 394):

Emilio speaking: 

"You see, that is my dilemma.  ... if I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, then the rest of it was God's will too, and that ... is cause for bitterness. But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn't it? The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances, ... is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God."

And in the next paragraph: 

"I had nothing between me and what happened but the love of God. And I was raped. I was naked before God and I was raped."

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I read the sequel to The Sparrow (Children of God), and then I read A Thread of Grace, also by Mary Doria Russell, but written prior to The Sparrow. It is a historical novel, set in Italy during World War II, and follows the lives of Jewish refugees. There is a really compelling scene in it, in which a Nazi SS Officer with tuberculosis goes to a priest for confession, and the priest refuses to absolve him of his responsibility in 90,000+ deaths and then struggles with his own inability to forgive. 

This reminded me of Emilio in The Sparrow (page 399) saying: "So many dead, because I believed....  Who can forgive me?"

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If there is no god, then how do we live with our own culpability? Our own fragility?

If there is a god, then where is grace?

on vows, and serial monogamy with the same different person

The following is an excerpt from Mary Doria Russell's novel, The Sparrow. In it, the fictional character Anne Edwards discusses her marriage of four decades with the young and unmarried Jimmy Quinn.

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“We all make vows, Jimmy. And there is something very beautiful and touching and noble about wanting good impulses to be permanent and true forever,” she said. “Most of us stand up and vow to love, honour and cherish someone. And we really, truly mean it, at the time. But two or twelve or twenty years down the road, the lawyers are negotiating the property settlement.”

“You and George didn’t go back on your promises.”

She laughed. “Let me tell ya something, sweetface. I have been married at least four times, to four different men.... They’ve all been named George Edwards but, believe me,  the man who is waiting for me down the hall is a whole different animal from the boy I married, back before there was dirt. Oh, there are continuities. He has always been fun and he has never been able to budget his time properly and -- well, the rest is none of your business.”

“But people change,” he said quietly.

“Precisely. People change. Cultures change. Empires rise and fall. Shit! Geology changes! Every ten years or so, George and I have faced the fact that we have changed and we’ve had to decide if it makes sense to create a new marriage between these two new people.... Which is why vows are such a tricky business. Because nothing stays the same forever.”



For a related thought on the nature of marriage, see this post.