Life on Salinger

I have an urge to write with a dirty mouth that only JD Salinger can remind me of. Why is he haunting me? Did he write my life, or am I living his writings? I was handed Catcher in the Rye in high school, and there was my entire being. There is and was something comforting in finding such a testament to those feelings. Who could explain my frustration, my anger, my judgement in those days? Only Salinger it seems, and not that he really explained or justified it, but the simple act of marking it down was a divine (and I don't use that word flippantly) grace. When the statues and statutes of the world make no sense, it grates on a man's soul - why am I the freak? What's wrong with me? Where is the man who makes sense? Still not forthcoming, one finds the same frustrations in JD Salinger. Knowing how he lived his life, perhaps I shouldn't take him as a guru, not that I was planning to, but something stops and makes you think when someone suddenly illuminates and brings such dramatic and respectful attention to problems you thought were your own unique living curse. It's humbling. What the hell am I living? What are these questions? This divine discontent?

Franny and Zooey is hardly less foul-mouthed than Catcher, yet it's filled with a more mature discontent. I would call it a religious book; it is certainly about the seeking and the inherently judgmental and egotistical pursuit that is the spiritual life, or rather what begins to build the foundation of the spiritual life. Did Jesus lack such discontent? Buddha certainly didn't. He walked out on his family, starting a seven year quest that ended with him sitting under his tree until he gained enlightenment OR his bones scattered. What but discontent could lead to such a decision? And the teaching starts with, Life is suffering (unsatisfactoriness). I think of Jesus sending tables flying through the temple. And yet, this journey ends with him silently accepting all. Kabir: "How humble is God? I wept when I knew..."

So Franny and Zooey is far truer a testament to the spiritual quest, as I have experienced it than any I am told in popular culture or the churches. Jesus came to baptize with fire. He's wielding a god damned ax. I use that profanity and blasphemy with all the angst and frustration I've known since I was a young boy dreaming of fighting with God. And do you know what? I no longer fear the punishment of a wrathful God for using it. Do you know why? Because He placed me into this paradox. He put these desires within me. He gave me the knowledge and judgment to question teachings about Him, until there is only a silent quivering. What sort of God could place me into such straits and then hypocritically punish me for the effects He caused?

Some would talk to me about agency, free will, damnation, salvation... But as I begin to see God as I was taught to see Him - the immutable, the I AM, the omnipresent - there is little room for a mistake in creation. Semantic arguments offer profuse explanation of the possibility of damnation in our small little world. But in such a small world, musn't damnation be proportionately small? If Jesus took on the sins of the world and suffered three days, how minuscule must my be judgment be? If He made me, then my works are His.

"Concerning the Gods, there are those who deny the very existence of the Godhead; others say that it exists, but neither bestirs nor concerns itself nor has forethought for anything. A third party attribute to it existence and forethought, but only for great and heavenly matters, not for anything that is on earth. A fourth party admit things on earth as well as heaven, but only in general, and not with respect to each individual. A fifth, of whom were Ulysses and Socrates, are those that cry: 'I move not without Thy knowledge.'" -Epictetus