New Pathways

The following is an email sent from Joe to Will and Art on 31 March 2016.

Will: Though I always knew it would be true, I must say I'm relieved you don't see my loss of Catholicism as creating a chasm too wide for us to bridge. I know what you mean by not having a reference point that would help you understand my situation, and me yours. It bothers me, but that's one of the reasons why I want to keep talking with you and Art. I'm trying to be methodical and accurate in my description of this "loss of faith"—even that phrase isn't right. Your description of Sartre likely approximates the truth. And you're right, it isn't a mystical atheism. Nothing in Greene gets at this—trust me, I checked. Negation is the right method here: I know what the loss of faith is not. And it is decidedly not John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul. There's no embrace for which I yearn.

I've changed so significantly in the past two years—in many more ways than one—I feel a strong urge, as a necessity, to go "home," to square one, to where I started before everything changed. Your friendship and mentorship has meant more to me than you can know, and in many ways is my mental home. You gave me many of the terms by which I think and write. 

It's funny, because you did teach me to think, and because you provided me with certain habits of mind that burned new pathways in my neural framework—that got me through college, that got me the job I have, that got me into grad schools—I must infer and really do feel that my thinking about God was influenced by you, as well as my thinking about the very atheism that has taken the place of my former belief. Your mentorship laid the foundation for a lot that goes on in my mental world—the stuff you surely would have intended, and the stuff you maybe wouldn't have, or at least the stuff that might have given you pause. Anyway, I'm excited and anxious to see you soon.

Art: I'd have no problem posting these wherever, and certainly have no problem with anyone in the group reading them. I'm honored (and a little surprised!) that you'd like to keep reading, and that you think others would as well.

I've been trying to write about this for the past two years.The big shift in me, the loss of faith, happened or at least was catalyzed when I went to India two years ago. A lot happened there, both on the streets of New Delhi and in the desert mountains of Leh, a city in the Himalayas, and I've been trying to capture it. The sights and sounds and smells of India are inextricably bound up with the contours of my own spiritual story. But I've never trusted anything I've put on paper about it. Now, for some reason, I feel like I can finally write about India and everything that happened after. I'm hoping our emails can provide some of the foundation for that. And, along the way, I'm hoping you and Will can read what I write and respond.