Darling Clementine by Andrew Klavan Page B

Father, if I recall it rightly, was Being; Jesus was Consciousness; the Holy Ghost was the world created by the interaction of the two. Each person of Godhead was necessary: Being, eternally creative, had to make consciousness by its own laws (“And God so loved the world …” I was riddled with biblical quotations.); Consciousness, by necessity, by the fact of its perception, created the big HG, which, in turn, transformed God and Free Will and Eternity into realities. When faced with Pure Being, Consciousness, by necessity , I say, saw God. This was the meaning of Moses at the Burning Bush: faced with a vision of the true nature of being as Life-Fertility-Space (The Bush) coexisting forever with Death-Destruction-Time (El Flamo), Moses immediately demanded that its voice (God) proclaim its name (I AM). In other words (words), Being, faced with Consciousness, developed an I. Professor Clementine, in her book My Secret Loves , notes that this theme is echoed in the Bhagavad Gita , no matter how you pronounce it, when Vishnu shows Arjuna his true self as Life-Death-Space-Time united, and Arjuna begs him to assume the form of Vishnu again. Einstein also had something to say on this subject, but I forget what.
    This was wonderful! I was a Catholic!
    I went to confession.
    â€œBless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
    â€œIn the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost …”
    â€œIt’s been 25 years since my last confession.”
    â€œHit the highlights.”
    â€œUh, anal intercourse with a duck playing the kazoo.”
    â€œDo three Our Fathers, four Hail Mary’s, six choruses of ‘Fascinating Rhythm,’ a buck and wing, and jump up and down swinging a rubber chicken over your head, crying ‘ Garçon, garçon, où est le château ?’”
    I lapsed.
    One Saturday, I went to see Lansky. Elizabeth let me in. Lansky was pacing back and forth across the room with the Times in his hand. The Supreme Court had just decided that it was all right to strip-search high school students as long as you beat them senseless first. It was the “reasonable torment” criterion. Lansky slapped the paper with the back of his hand.
    â€œMy God,” he shouted. “These people are Nazis.”
    â€œLansky,” I said, “I want to become a Jew.”
    â€œHold this,” said Lansky angrily. He pushed the newspaper into my hand. “Now slap it with the back of your hand and shout, ‘My God, these people are Nazis!’”
    I slapped the paper and it flew up into the air, scattered and fluttered down in a hundred pieces like a Brobdingnagian snowfall.
    A page of the business section landed on Lansky’s head, folding down over his ears like a shawl.
    He sighed. “Have you tried the Unitarians?”
    Now, the Unitarians, there is no question, have the best music: Mozart, Luther, the Vedas, anything so long as it swings. They also have the best sermon titles. “The Triumph of Walt Whitman,” “The Holographic God,” “I Am Afraid,” etc. Also, the preacher is allowed to use the word “lover.” “… more sympathetic to your husband or wife or lover,” he will say. Very promising, all in all.
    The problem was symbolism for me—or the lack of it. Around this time, I had started to read a lot of the works of Joseph Campbell—swallowing them like pills I was actually—and Joe—or, as he is known in academic circles, Big Joe, or even the Joester—has much to say on this subject. Symbols, it turns out—bread and wine, resurrection, burning bushes—are neither important in themselves, worthy of worship in themselves, nor needful of theoretical interpretation or explication. Symbols are living representations of the indescribable thing. Thus Big Joe, as I understand him. In other words, you don’t have to actually believe in the transubstantiation of bread and wine, or to