<\/p>\n
Sitting on a bench by the campus grotto<\/p>\n
where hundreds of little candles<\/p>\n
flicker before men, women, and children<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
on their knees, I wonder if things would be different<\/p>\n
had I been raised a Catholic, one of the quiet ones<\/p>\n
like Eckhart or Assisi, whose conceptions of the divine<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
were less like the horse pill<\/p>\n
pandered by suburban protestantism.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too late for me to cough it up,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
so much having already dissolved<\/p>\n
and entered my bloodstream, so<\/p>\n
I will have to wait, and pass through<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
enough foreign country<\/p>\n
to rinse the stream clean, if such a thing\u2019s<\/p>\n
even possible. That\u2019s what this foray<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
into Zen has been about, a scorched-earth experiment<\/p>\n
that so far is working, and perhaps<\/p>\n
too well\u2014something about the air here<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
is refreshing in a way I\u2019ve never known, in a way<\/p>\n
I think he\u2019d have understood,<\/p>\n
or wanted to. Shortly before dying, he claimed to be<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201ckind of a Buddhist,\u201d which might have meant anything<\/p>\n
coming from him, an AA man through<\/p>\n
and through who\u2019d skip out on church<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
but believed in an all-loving God,<\/p>\n
and prayed to Him. In those last few years,<\/p>\n
as he sat on the porch smoking cigarettes<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
with Mom, they\u2019d wave hello to his own dead dad<\/p>\n
when planes passed by overhead, his beard grown out<\/p>\n
for the first time ever, unexpectedly white.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Evan Vandermeer Sitting on a bench by the campus grotto where hundreds of little candles flicker before men, women, and children on their knees, I wonder if things would be different had I been raised a Catholic, one of the quiet ones like Eckhart or Assisi, whose conceptions of the divine were less like the horse pill pandered by suburban protestantism. It\u2019s too late for me to cough it up, so much having already dissolved and entered my bloodstream, so I will have to wait, and pass through enough foreign country to rinse the stream…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"parent":32,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-79","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79\/revisions\/80"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}