Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 61
find a church. In the provincial cities and towns of Europe I attend
the Roman Mass. I am a croyant—I detest the use of French words
in English, but in this case I can think of nothing better—and as
croyants I’m sure we share the knowledge that to profess exalted
religious experience outside the ecclesiastical paradigm is to make
of oneself an outcast; and by that I mean to hear the cruel laughter
of those men and women to whom we look for love and mercy; I
mean the pain of fire and ice; I mean the desolation of being
buried at a crossroads with a stake through one’s heart. I truly
believe in One God the Father Almighty but I know that to say so
loudly, and at any distance from the chancel—any distance at all—
would dangerously jeopardize my ability to ingratiate those men
and women with whom I wish to live. I am trying to say—and I’m
sure you will agree with me—that while we are available to
transcendent experience, we can state this only at the suitable and
ordained time and in the suitable and ordained place. I could not
live without this knowledge; no more could I live without the
thrilling possibility of suddenly encountering the fragrance of
skepticism.
“I am a prisoner. My life follows very closely the traditional lives of
the saints, but I seem to have been forgotten by the blessed
company of all faithful men and women. I have prayed for kings,
presidents and bishops, but I have never once said a prayer for a
man in prison nor have I ever heard a hymn that mentioned jail.
We prisoners, more than any men, have suffered for our sins, we
have suffered for the sins of society, and our example should
cleanse the thoughts of men’s hearts because of the grief with
which we are acquainted. We are in fact the word made flesh; but
what I want to do is to call your attention to a great blasphemy.
“As Your Grace well knows, the most universal image of mankind
is not love or death; it is Judgment Day. One sees this in the cave
paintings in the Dordogne, in the tombs of Egypt, in the temples
of Asia and Byzantium, in Renaissance Europe, England, Russia
and the Golden Horn. Here the Divinity sifts out the souls of men,