Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

"You mean "Man's extremity is God's opportunity"?"

"Exactly. Of course, there are extremities at either end; extreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery."

I told him I'd never thought of that. He helped me to some more

madeira, then said:

"In addition, I think religion has a chance of a look-in whenever the mind craves solace in music or poetry-in any form of art at all.

Personally, I think it is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt."

"I suppose you mean communion with God."

He gave such a snort of laughter that his madeira went the wrong way.

"What on earth did I say that was funny ?" I asked, while he was mopping his eyes.

"It was the utter blankness of your tone. God might have been a long, wet week- which He's certainly treating us to." He glanced at the window. The rain had started again, so heavily that the garden beyond the streaming panes was just a blur of green.

"How the intelligent young do fight shy of the mention of God!

It makes them feel both bored and superior."

I tried to explain: "Well, once you stop believing in an old gentleman with a beard .. .

It's only the word God, you know-it makes such a conventional noise."

"It's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about."

"And do religious people find out what it's all about?

Do they really get the answer to the riddle ?"

"They get just a whiff of an answer sometimes." He smiled at me and I smiled back and we both drank our madeira. Then he went on: "I suppose church services make a conventional noise to you, too--and I rather

understand it. Oh, they're all right for the old hands and they make

for sociability, but I sometimes think their main use is to help

weather churches- like smoking pipes to color them, you know. If any-

well, unreligious person, needed consolation from religion, I'd advise him or her to sit in an empty church.

Sit, not kneel. And listen, not pray. Prayer's a very tricky

business."

"Goodness, is it ?"

"Well, for inexperienced prayers it sometimes is.

You see, they're apt to think of God as a slot-machine. If nothing

comes out they say "I knew dashed well it was empty"--when the whole secret of prayer is knowing the machine's full."

"But how can one know?"

"By filling it oneself."

"With faith ?"

"With faith. I expect you find that another boring word. And I warn you this slot-machine metaphor is going to break down at any moment.

But if ever you're feeling very unhappy- which you obviously aren't at present, after all the good fortune that's come to your family

recently--well, try sitting in an empty church."

"And listening for a whiff?"

We both laughed and then he said that it was just as reasonable to talk of smelling or tasting God as of seeing or hearing Him.

"If one ever has any luck, one will know with all one's senses--and none of them. Probably as good a way as any of describing it is that

we shall "come over all queer."" "But haven't you already ?"

He sighed and said the whiffs were few and far between.

"But the memory of them everlasting," he added softly. Then we fell silent, both of us staring at the fire. Rain kept falling down the

chimney, making little hissing noises. I thought what a good man he

is, yet never annoyingly holy. And it struck me for the first time

that if such a clever, highly educated man can believe in religion, it is almost impudent of an ignorant person like me to feel bored and

superior about it--for I realized that it wasn't only the word "God"

that made me feel like that.

I wondered if I was an atheist. I have never thought of myself as one, and sometimes on very lovely days I have felt almost sure there is

something somewhere. And I pray every night, though I think my prayers are only like wishing on the new moon -not quite, though: I pray just in case there is a God. (i haven't prayed about my misery over Simon

because I mustn't ask that he shall love me, and I won't ask that I

shall stop loving him--I'd rather die.) Certainly I never felt any

sense of communion with God while praying- the only flicker of that I ever had was during those few minutes I wandered round King's Crypt

cathedral at sunset, and it went off when I heard our head-mistress's voice droning on about the Saxon remains. Sitting there with the

Vicar, I tried to recapture my feelings in the cathedral, but they

merged into the memory of the cathedral-like the avenue I saw when I

was describing Midsummer Eve--and then the cathedral, the avenue, my

love for Simon and myself writing about all these in the attic were in my mind together, each enclosed in its own light and yet each one part of the other. And all the time, I was staring into the Vicar's fire.

I didn't come to earth until the church clock struck the half-hour.

Then I jumped up to go--and got invited to stay and lunch;

but I felt I ought to get back to cook Father his meal.

While the Vicar was helping me on with my raincoat, he asked me to look in at the church in case he had left the vestry window open and the

rain was driving in. Actually, we found the rain had stopped, but he

still wanted the window shut;

he said it was sure to start pouring again, probably just as he was

beginning his after-luncheon nap. He stood watching me as I ran across the churchyard- I gave him one last wave before I went into the church by the little side door. As I closed it behind me, it struck me as

almost funny that he had sent me into a church, even advised me how to get consolation from religion, without having the faintest idea I was in need of it.

The window wasn't open, after all. As I came from the vestry, I

thought: "Well, here you are in an empty church --you'd better give it a chance." I was close to the altar so I had a good look at it. The brasses and the altar-cloth seemed quite extraordinarily meaningless to me. The white roses were fresh but rain-battered;

they had the utterly still look that altar flowers always

have--everything about the altar seemed unnaturally still.." austere, withdrawn.

I thought, "I don't feel helped or comforted at all." Then I remembered the Vicar's nice, fat voice saying: "Sit--listen." He had told me not to pray, and as looking at an altar always seems to turn my thoughts to prayers, I sat on the steps and looked towards the main

body of the church. I listened hard.

I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch

scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: "I am a restlessness inside a stillness in side a restlessness."

After a minute or so, the enclosed silence began to press on my ears--I thought at first that this was a good sign, but nothing interesting

happened. Then I remembered what the Vicar had said about knowing God with all one's senses, so I gave my ears a rest and tried my nose.

There was a smell of old wood, old carpet hassocks, old hymn books--a composite musty, dusty smell; no scent from the cold altar roses and

yet there was a faint, stuffy sweetness around the altar--I found it

came from the heavily embroidered cloth. I tried my sense of taste

next, but naturally it only offered a lingering of madeira and

biscuits. Touch:

just the cold stone of the steps. As for sight- well of course there

was plenty to see: the carved rood-screen, the great de Godys tomb, the high pulpit- which managed to look both particularly empty and slightly rebuking. Oh, I noticed dozens of things, many of them beautiful, but nothing beyond sight came in by the eyes. So I closed them-the Vicar