"Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways. You could think you were starting something afresh, when actually what you were doing was carrying on as before. He had faced his shortcomings and overcame them, and so the real business of walking was happening only now." The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, p. 156
Olive Trees With Yellow Sky, by Vincent van Gogh
Immediately after touching this bit of wisdom, Harold sits down in a cathedral. It is Wells Cathedral, which really exists and, by the looks of the website, has a marvelous Lenten season planned. In the novel, though, it is the setting for a humble and humbling moment in which Harold both reaches out to God and apologizes for not believing:
The famed Wells Cathedral clock
"He visited the cathedral, and sat in its chilled light, pouring like water from above, He reminded himself that centuries ago men had built churches, bridges, and ships, all of them a leap of madness and faith, if you thought about it. When no one was looking, Harold slipped to his knees and asked for the safety of the people he had left behind, and those who were ahead. He asked for the will to keep going. He also apologized for not believing." The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, p. 157
"I believe; help my unbelief." This cry of the father in Mark 9:24 is so poignant and is a familiar feeling to many of us. What is your relationship to doubt on your journey of faith? How do you navigate those times when belief is hard to come by?
How is Harold's walk, in its own way, a journey from doubt to belief?
3 comments:
I think it is Frederich Buechner who observed that "Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith".Doubt is the inevitable result of the finite (us) trying to comprehend the infinite/mysterious (God). Faith does not for me require certainty but hope. I would think that Harold walked in the hope that Queenie would not die but also had doubts. Like ants in the pants, doubt keeps me seeking understanding..and is thus a good thing. Bob Partlow
I think beautiful, old cathedrals inspire a lot of us to wonder about and honor the people who built these places centuries ago. A lot of us also wonder about and have tender feelings for the people who have prayed in these places, generation after generation, over hundreds of years. Thoughts like these can bring on a kind of holy hush for some of us, and even if a person doesn't have much or any faith, it wouldn't seem odd to me that he or she might still kneel and pray. I like what you said in an earlier post, Bob...something about Harold taking the risk of getting outside the confines of his smaller world and meeting people. Harold might not believe in God in a conventional sense, but he is concerned about the people he has met and is moved to wonder about people from the past who have built this place. When people are drawn to each other like this, I wonder if that's just a sign of God moving in us, whether we "believe" or not. If it's true that "where there is love, God is there," then maybe God is still doing pretty amazing things with us and in us, even when we lack conventional religious belief.
I remember once at the end of a Eurrail summer getting off the train at Canterbury on a Sunday morning, rolling my duffle, scruffy in my jeans. I just went in and sat down in a side chapel to rest, to be filled with beauty, to try to figure out where I was going next. And as I sat, I heard a rustle behind me and turned to look and find an old friend Peggy Chisholm of Mississippi and New York (via Richmond at some point before I knew her). She was staying at Lambert, I was sleeping on trains, but we had a glorious reunion that I could never have anticipated, and could only have happened in a cathedral. So I never miss a chance to go to such a holy space, especially if I am away,
and sit and wait and see what God will send.
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