Quiet Nothingness

Friends, since college seminary, for 50 years, the four of us enjoyed our get-togethers over beer-and-burgers, particularly the playful, argumentative banter about politics and religion. Deacon-lawyer Dan and missionary-academic Fr. John liberal in both.  My friend Steve is even to the right of me politically. I am myself a staunch, Catholic moral conservative. Steve has considered himself an atheist since college, but he strongly supports the Church and all her traditions. As I group we are, I say gratefully, blessed with intelligence and a wealth of happy life experience. Our mutual respect, affection and sense of humor easily absorbs the passionate differences in opinion.

"What do you think happens after we die?" Dan asks. John, calm-clear-confident responds: "Quiet nothingness." Dan vigorously insists that he will be standing alongside of Jesus, Mary, the saints and angels, his beloved wife and children. Steve agrees with John, but seems to wish he saw things more like Dan. I say very little but my more metaphysical mind is thinking:

Nothing cannot be quiet. Nothing is nothing. It is not something. It is not a thing. It is an abstract concept. We can conceptualize but cannot imagine nothing. It is sheer deprivation. On the other hand, "quiet" is not a thing, but a quality that abides in a thing. We speak of a quiet man, quiet dinner over candlelight, quiet forest. When raising our kids I would often declare a "quiet time" of perhaps 15 minutes, at home or in the car. 

But "quiet" is itself a deprivation, a lack of sound or noise. It is also abstract. And so nothing, as nothing, is inherently quiet: void of noise or sound. Nothing is absolute deprivation: void of sound, sight, smell, intention, future, past, substance, accident. So, literally, "quiet nothingness" is redundant. Nothingness is just that and since it is lack of substance or essence it can contain no accident, qualifier or quantity. Taken literally, John and Steve are atheistic nihilists.

At yesterday's modest, quiet, touching memorial mass (8 of us, in a beautiful chapel, at the spectacular, iconic Maryknoll) for Dan, Fr. John recalled the exchange, which Steve and I remembered clearly. John recalled that a fellow priest had suggested that perhaps both were right, in some way.

My prosaic, lucid mind sees a clear contradiction. John...compassionate, sober, melancholic, sardonically humorous, stoic, disarmingly charming in his low key manner...is right out of Ecclesiastes: "All is vanity." Dan's faith, like his personality and especially his singing, is exuberant, vivacious, vigorous, generous, expansive. By the principle of non-contradiction, they exclude each other: we will encounter one or the other, being or non-being."

I ponder further. "Quiet" as we use the term is not just a deprivation, it also implies peace, rest, contentment. Explicitly it is a deprivation; but as used in our real language it suggests a mystical fullness, Shalom, freedom from dissonance and conflict. It is a positive, implicitly if not explicitly.

"Nothing" indicates "not a thing." But we know that God is not a thing. God is not a being, another creature alongside of all the rest of us. God is Being Itself. Pure existence. Act. "I AM WHO AM." 

I am wondering if post-modern, theology-of-death John is a better metaphysician, a Thomist at that, that I give him credit for and than he is aware. He is, I have always sensed, a mystic. A mystic of the cloud of unknowing. Steve is the same, yes in his cognitive non-theism. Both of them, in their conceptual renunciation of theism seem to be moving, in heart and spirit, towards God in the great transcendence and depth of Mystery which so far surpasses our concepts and pieties. 

As the mass continues in its simplicity and modesty, the irony is striking. Our celebrant verbally and cerebrally affirms the finality of Nothingness. And yet he offers all the canonical, orthodox prayers, along with the liturgical gestures, in a quiet, deep prayerfulness.  The readings, prayers and responses resound over and over again: Dan is alive in Christ. John believes all of it in the depth of his being...or he is the best actor in the world! Steve receives Communion. My canon-lawyer-brain does a quick calculation: he has probably missed Sunday mass about 2,587 times since his last confession. But I am glad that that is none of my business and I am glad that he receives because I somehow know that he is in communion with Christ, as is Dan, if I cannot explain all of this. The mass, as performed by John, becomes for me, a mystical experience. An encounter with quiet not-a-thingness, something beautiful and mystifying and exhilarating.

I am so happy to be there with this small, precious group. We remember in prayer, our classmates, living and dead. I gratefully recall Dan: his immense affection, his bear hugs, his striking intelligence, his zest for life, his huge faith, his extraordinary heart. He really liked me. I really liked him.

I also pray for him. He had about him a fierceness, a deep capacity (which I never really observed, but I sensed it) for anger (mostly righteous). He died angry at the Church, declining a funeral mass. He is not canonizable by ordinary Catholic standards. In the encounter with St Peter at the pearly gates and with his Savior at the particular judgment, there will be fire. Blows. Agonistic struggle. He will not back down easily. But the love of Jesus will prevail. Laughter. Overflowing affection.

May Dan enjoy the Quiet of Not-a-Thingness. May he exult in the extravagant, explosive, ferocious Fire of the hyper-mega-uber-giga-Everything-ness of God!

The