WINTER LIGHT 1963

Give us salvation, O merciful Lord. Lead me then, my dearest savior. Take me to the land divine and where earthly woes are ended.

Everyone feels this dread… to some extent.

I understand your anguish but life must go on. Why do we have to go on living?

“God’s silence. God won’t speak.” God has never spoken because God doesn’t exist. It’s as simple as that.

“We find it difficult to talk to each other. We’re both rather shy, and I tend to retreat into sarcasm.”

That’s why I’m writing. I melodramatically demanded that you do it then and there.

Your compliance enraged me, and I tore off the bandages.

You remember the rest. The sight of those open sores affected you greatly.

You couldn’t pray.

The entire situation disgusted you. I came to understand you later but you never understood me.

We had lived together for some time at that point. Almost two years… which at least represented some capital in the face of our emotional poverty.

Our caresses and our clumsy attempts to evade the lack of love between us. When the rash spread to my forehead and scalp. I soon noticed how you avoided me. You found me repugnant, though you tried to spare my feelings.

Then the rash spread to my hands and feet and our relationship ended. That came as a shock to me. I had to face the fact that we didn’t love each other. There was no way to hide from that fact or turn a blind eye to it.

I have never believed in your faith. Mainly because I’ve never been tortured by religious tribulations. My non-Christian family was characterized by warmth, togetherness, and joy.

God and Jesus existed only as vague notions.

To me, your faith seems obscure and neurotic, somehow cruelly overwrought with emotion, primitive. One thing in particular I’ve never been able to fathom: your peculiar indifference to Jesus Christ.

And now I’m going to tell you about answered prayers. Laugh if you feel like it.

Personally, I don’t believe the two are connected. Life is messy enough without taking the supernatural into account.

You were going to pray for my weeping hands, but the rash left you dumbstruck with repulsion, something you later denied. I went berserk and tried to provoke you.

Be quiet!

Since you can’t pray for me, I’ll do it myself!

God, why have you created me so eternally dissatisfied?

So frightened, so bitter? Why must I realize how wretched I am?

Why must I suffer so hellishly for my insignificance?

If there is a purpose to my suffering, then tell me. So I can bear my pain without complaint. I’m strong. You made me so very strong in both body and soul but you never give me a task worthy of my strength.

Give my life meaning and I’ll be your obedient slave.

This autumn, I realized that my prayers had been answered. I prayed for clarity of mind, and I got it.

I realized that I love you. I prayed for a task to apply my strength to, and I received one.

That task is you. This is what the thoughts of a schoolmarm might run to when the phone refuses to ring, when it’s dark and lonely.

What I lack entirely is the capacity to show you my love. I haven’t a clue how to do that.

I’ve been so miserable, I’ve even considered praying some more.

But I still have a shred of self-respect left in spite of it all. When you were in my arms. I love you.

And I live for you.

Take me and use me. Beneath all my false pride and independent airs,

I have only one wish: to be allowed to live for someone else. It’s so terribly difficult.

Do you see, Jonas, what a monstrous mistake I made? An ignorant, spoiled and anxious wretch makes a rotten clergyman. Every time I confronted God with the realities I witnessed, he turned into something ugly and revolting.

The only person I showed my god to was my wife. She supported me, encouraged me, and helped me. Patched up the holes. Our dreams.

I’d better be going.

No, don’t go.

I want you to understand, why I talk so much about myself. So you realize what a wretch I am,

what a poor beggar… If there is no God… Would it really make any difference?

Life would become understandable.

What a relief and thus death would be a snuffing out of life.

The dissolution of body and soul. Cruelty, loneliness, and fear… All these things would be straightforward and transparent. Suffering is incomprehensible, so it needs no explanation.

There is no creator.

No sustainer of life.

No design.

God… Why have you forsaken me?

Now I’m free.

Free at last.

I had this fleeting hope that everything wouldn’t turn out to be illusions, dreams, and lies.

I have to get ready.

You sound so unfriendly.

Sometimes…

Sometimes you sound, as if you hated me. You’re dissatisfied with life, but most of all with yourself.

And here I am throwing myself in your arms, clouding the issue. I’m tired of your loving care… your fussing, your good advice, your candlesticks and table runners. I’m fed up with your shortsightedness, your clumsy hands, your anxiousness, your timid displays of affection.

You force me to occupy myself with your physical condition, your poor digestion, your rashes, your periods, your frostbitten cheeks. Once and for all, I have to escape this junkyard of idiotic trivialities.

I’m sick and tired of it all, of everything to do with you.

Why didn’t you tell me this before?

Because of my upbringing.

I was taught to regard women as beings of a higher order, admirable creatures, unassailable martyrs.

And your wife?

I loved her.

You hear me? I loved her.

And I don’t love you, because I love my wife.

When she died, so did I.

I couldn’t care less what happens to me.

Am I making myself clear?

I loved her, and she was everything you could never be but insist on trying to be.

The way you mimic her behavior is such an ugly parody. You can’t make it on your own. You won’t survive, Tomas dear.

Nothing can save you. You’ll hate yourself to death.

The passion of Christ, his suffering.

Wouldn’t you say the focus on his suffering is all wrong?

What do you mean? This emphasis on physical pain. It couldn’t have been all that bad. It may sound presumptuous of me, but in my humble way,

I’ve suffered as much physical pain as Jesus and his torments were rather brief. Lasting some four hours, I gather?

I feel he was tormented far worse on another level. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong.

But just think of Gethsemane, Pastor. Christ’s disciples fell asleep. They hadn’t understood the meaning of the last supper or anything and when the servants of the law appeared, they ran away, and Peter denied him. Christ had known his disciples for three years. They’d lived together day in and day out, but they never grasped what he meant. They abandoned him, down to the last man. He was left all alone. That must have been painful… to realize that no one understands… to be abandoned when you need someone to rely on. That must be excruciatingly painful but the worst was yet to come.

When Jesus was nailed to the cross and hung there in torment, he cried out, “God, my God. Why hast thou forsaken me?”

He cried out as loud as he could. He thought that his heavenly father had abandoned him. He believed everything he’d ever preached was a lie. In the moments before he died, Christ was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship…

God’s silence.