Chicken Little: The Inside Story (A Jungian ... - Inner City Books

An Unveiling 53
still devout, and asked God’s forgiveness. Looking up, I pleaded,
‘Show me the way.’ Overcome by emotion, I imagined God defecating
on my head.”
“Something like Jung’s vision?” I asked, moved. 55
“Very much so,” said Brillig, “only in my case it was certainly
chicken shit.”
“Holy cow,” I said.
“Well,” said Brillig, “that was it, my epiphany. In that moment I
knew what was meant by grace. God was not dead. 56 Nor was he
out there, he was inside.”
“But . . . but the droppings came from above,” I pointed out.
“Only figuratively speaking,” said Brillig. “Nothing actually fell
on me. It was a vision. It all took place in my head.”
“I see . . .”
“Most of all, perhaps, I felt an enormous relief. Yes, I was sinful,
but I was not alone. God was with me. And to prove his humanity,
to let me in on his little secret, as it were, he graced me
with a bit of his shadow. It was also the clue to my direction.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“You see,” said Brillig, “in all the turmoil since returning from
Europe I had quite forgotten the piece of stone I had run off with in
Upper Kraznac. Struggling to make sense of my vision, I suddenly
saw the connection and dug it out of my trunk. I kissed and fondled
it and swore to honor its mystery.
55 Jung’s vision came to him at the age of twelve, while he struggled with dark
and sinful thoughts. He imagined God sitting far away in a clear blue sky on a
golden throne, judging him. He prayed to know God’s will, then realized that God
was testing him and he must think for himself:
“I gathered all my courage, as though I were about to leap forthwith into hellfire,
and let the thought come. I saw before me the [Basel] cathedral, the blue sky.
God sits on His golden throne, high above the world—and from under the throne
an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the
walls of the cathedral asunder.” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 39)
56 Brillig was alluding, of course, to Nietzsche’s famous remark in The Gay Science:
“God is dead.” In a subsequent conversation not recorded here, Brillig said
that years later, after reading Jung’s Answer to Job, it came to him that Nietzsche’s
declaration was never meant to be taken literally, but was merely foreseeing the
decay of the traditional concept of God, “due [said Brillig] to more and more people
withdrawing the projection of their inner divinity onto an external authority.”