Good, Evil and the Dance of Life

Good, Evil and the Dance of Life August 14, 2008

I notice how today is the 445th anniversary of Michael Servetus’ arrest in Geneva based upon thirty eight allegations of heresy drawn up by Geneva’s spiritual leader, John Calvin.

An interesting case. No player is particularly attractive. Servetus appears by all accounts to be a complete jerk, full of himself, and certain of his ideas. And, why, after dodging the Roman Catholic death sentence, he would put himself in Calvin’s hands who had promised to put an end to his heresy mongering if ever he could, is beyond me. Now, Calvin, the pure one, he subsisted on a single meal a day, once he had control over the heretic didn’t want Servetus burned alive, a truly horrific death; but merely to have his head cut off.

And like a badly written play the event played out from arrest to trial to execution by flame…

One interesting defense of this event is that Servetus was the only person condemned to death for his religious opinions during Calvin’s theocratic dictatorship in a time when such deaths were all too common elsewhere on the continent…

Somehow all this reminds me of Graham Green’s meditation The Power and the Glory.

The conflict between the whisky priest and the lieutenant echos from history and, perhaps, from our human hearts.

All the lieutenant wants is to serve. He lives austerely, he is uncoruptible. And the children fear him…

The priest is unworthy of his vocation, he is an alcoholic, he has had illicit affairs, he was among the first to plan to leave when things got bad.

But he stays, putting God into people’s mouths.

Always planning on leaving.

But he stays.

Putting God into people’s mouths.

For me what makes the novel particularly compelling, and haunting over the many years, is the third story of the plaster saint weaving through these other two stories, like a Greek chorus…

Life is so complicated.

When is the bad one really the harbinger of truth? And when is the good and honest a servant of evil? And what stories unrelated to reality are we telling ourselves about what is going on?

And what does that mean to me about me and about my choices?

And, perhaps, about you?

Perhaps it’s time to return to the pillow, to sit a bit

and to find the dance of the heart

which might be nothing less than

the dance of the cosmos…


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