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 29 may 3, 1997 There is hope in those sudden, unexpected, breakthrough experiences that bring us a blessed spell of inwardness. A s Kierkegaard reminded his Danish fellow burghers (in “The Present Age”) and as his talented twentieth-century American disciple, Walker Percy, more than hinted in The Moviegoer (for all its humor, a deadly serious novel), we often get lost not through big moralmisstepsbutasaconsequenceoflife’severydaynessbecomeathick, blinding fog. Absorbed by things to do, places to go, purchases to make, we stop asking what it is that matters and forsake moral consciousness in favor of a host of routines, felt social or pecuniary compulsions, all the supposed privileges of a bourgeois life. Still, there is hope for any of us—those sudden, unexpected, breakthrough experiences that come upon us, bring us up short, bring us to our senses, bring us a blessed spell of inwardness, of distance from the clatter and chatter, the hurry and the hustle of what gets called a normal or busy life. A fax came to me the other day from a teaching colleague, a busy mother of three young children, a most conscientious guide for her students , a loyal and caring wife, and for all that, a civic-minded citizen who meets with others in a New England town library to discuss novels and 30  short stories. I was told some academic news in the message—the usual bureaucratic details that the head section person in a course needs to let the professor know. At the end, though, I learned of a parent’s headlong rush, day after day, to stay ahead of her family’s needs, requirements, requests,worries,andapprehensions—“racingdowngroceryaisles,racing to head off a child’s accident [a son has just learned to walk, and the stairs are nearby], racing to keep pace with all the dishes being cooked on the stove, racing to answer the phone, the doorbell, racing to get a fax or now to send one, to get to the nursery school on time, to do this and that and thenextthing”—tobethere,bethere,bethereforherfamily,herstudents, her colleagues, her friends and neighbors. But I also learned of a pause in all that motion, that constant expenditure of psychological and physical energy, a brief but big pause: “I stopped in my tracks when I heard Nicholas finish[reciting]thealphabet:Z,hesaid,andthenhewasquiet,pleased with himself but still his shy self. I was pleased, too—pleased that he’d gotten all the letters right and pleased with the composed, unassuming way he had of being pleased.” For a few seconds, she was aware of what a miracle this life is, the miracle of language, the miracle of modesty, and the miracle of meaning, when you find it in a moment. Just before that I had read a poem titled “Mysticism for Beginners,” by the great Polish writer Adam Zagajewski. The poem offers lessons learned by watching this life carefully. The narrator had noticed someone holding a small book on his lap, titled Mysticism for Beginners, and he is prompted to reflect, remember, and “understand.” He recalls “swallows patrollingthestreets”ofacity,“withtheirshrillwhistles,”and“thehushed talk of timid travelers,” like himself in Europe’s eastern countries, and “the white herons standing . . . like swans in fields of rice,” and the way dusk can erase the distinctiveness of a particular landscape and “the little  31 nightingale practicing its speech beside the highway.” These and other visual recollections are his mind’s response to that phrase “Mysticism for Beginners.” He gives us brief but ever so suggestive and telling glimpses of eternity’s scheme of things, moments of occurrence, be it that of human beingsgoingtheirvariouswaysornatureexertingitself—infinity’sunfolding —the vastness of space and time and energy become concrete, there for us to apprehend, consider, and take to heart (rather than, alas, let slip by unnoticed, unsavored). In his great moral fable, “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill,” John Cheever has the story’s protagonist, Johnny Hake, let himself into his suburban neighbor’s home, which he knew well, so that he could make off with a wallet full of cash, a middle-of-the-night theft prompted by a notice of impending job loss. Cheever dares strip him morally and psychologically, this highbred resident of one of our twentieth-century American favored communities. Hake is revealed to himself rather than noticed, caught by others. In a climactic moment of self-awareness he walks the streets, then heads homeward by train; and so doing, he is touched by grace, a...

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