The Veil of the Temple
The veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The Crucifixion
He tells me there is a veil. A thin sheet between sanity and unmanageable disorder... even death. Some of us seem unaware of the veil's presence, almost strolling through life, seeing the material as all there is, somehow unworried. Or so it appears to him. These people are simply laid back about existence. Destined not to know his worries or be plagued by his questions.
Hiding away from the veil dulls the edge off reality... it brings a fear of anaesthesia. He feels he must walk beside the veil. Always at risk of being caught up as it billows out into his existence... in danger of being suffocated by the something or nothing behind it that may wrap around his mind. Beyond the veil he suspects is nothing at all... and also everything sublime. Divinity.
"Sometimes the nothingness behind the veil seeps through and short circuits the pathways of my mind, then floods and erodes and washes away all the well worn tracks of yesterday's reason for living and leaving nothing but the memory that once there was a reason.... and no reason to go on...
"Sometimes the veil is torn open gently and I hear the birds sing, or see the stars, or feel the fresh cool of a new breeze. When I was very little I had a cold forever, it seemed. My mother told me not to pick my nose, but this night I picked and sniffed and blew when she was not there.
And finally, for the first time... my nose was clear. I breathed the cleanest freshest air... cool in my nostrils, carrying the scent of the cold winter's night beyond the verandas... It was like meeting God... Maybe it was... "
It is in these snotty little events that Easter is found, he tells me. Resurrection is in the little events that deny the lies of depression and puncture the vacuum of nihilism.
He can only walk by the veil. It is his life. Certainty and solid walls are not to be had for this man. They can never be. They are, for him, a lie. He cannot know. He can only be, and love the disease, and trust the little details that puncture the veil.
Good people.
