Disciples of The Stan · Posted Jan 31, 11:09 AM by Todd Babiak
On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, a very talented and accomplished writer came to town to meet with a television producer and me. We were supposed to work on the outline for the pilot episode of The Book of Stanley — the television series. But, but, early Tuesday morning, mere hours before we were set to begin, my daughter and I were walloped by a virus.
I am most likely to believe in a higher power when I have a stomach virus. First, the comic timing; I have been waiting for two months for the writer to come to town. I haven’t been sick, at all, since the summertime. What are the chances that the ONLY TWO DAYS I AM SICK are the two days this writer is here to work with me?
When I am nauseous, I am given to prayer. I understand I am talking to myself, in these instances. Even if I were to have faith in God, I would not be so arrogant to believe He would spare me from throwing up. Some people, as the poet says, have real problems. That said, please, please, God, make this stop, please. I’ll do anything! I’ll touch a spider, anything.
On the radio a couple of weeks ago, I heard a woman from Bathurst, New Brunswick discussing her son. He was one of the basketball players in that horrific van accident on the icy highway. Unlike many of his friends that day, he survived. The seat he had been sitting in was crushed and he survived.
Outside the memorial service for the children who died, she addressed the media. Was it a coincidence that her son was spared? Had they seen the wreckage? Clearly, she said, God had intervened on her son’s behalf.
And I wondered what the other parents thought, when they heard her on the radio that night. God had chosen to save her son, for obvious reasons. He is handsome and talented, meant for great things. He is her son. Her love for him is immeasurable. God, obviously, understood.
In her statements, what was she saying about the other children? Of course, she would never say directly that her God chose to murder them. No one would. Here we enter the realm of the unknowable.
We know God when he is virtuous and loving.
However, we admit the limitations of human reason when he chooses, one morning, to kill seven children. When he designs or permits genocide and holocaust. When he engineers murderous diseases.
There is humour in these contradictions, as long as writers shy away from the inherent darkness. Even with the nausea, I was able to join the writing team, to complete a draft outline of the pilot episode. It’s not hard to find the warm and funny in all of this, really. Humans are flawed in mostly beautiful ways.
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If humans are flawed, then who/what is the flawless thing that we must compare ourselves against?
It’s cheating if the answer is “god”, as you have already pointed out his virtuousness and lovingness and bizarre malevolence – all of which are human qualities, too—and therefore flawed.
Whatever flawed is.
— french panic Jan 31, 02:37 PM #
“How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?”
(Woody Allen)
— Mike Feb 1, 12:56 AM #
“That said, please, please, God, make this stop, please. I’ll do anything! I’ll touch a spider, anything.”
That’s desperation, touching a spider. I couldn’t do that.
I’ve just started reading 10 Garneau and I’m enjoying it.
— deb Feb 2, 11:40 PM #
My bad, I’ve just started reading “The Garneau Block”, no 10 Garneau, but I’m sure you knew that.
— deb Feb 2, 11:59 PM #
I’m really not as stupid as I appear to be but I do make a lot of typos. Not 10 Garneau.
I’ll quit now. I promise. And back away slowly from the computer.
— deb Feb 3, 12:01 AM #
I read this earlier today and then had an epiphany while cleaning up our taco dinner tonight. See there is something unique about Maritimers and the way so many people from the East coast interpret God or value God. The assumed converse of ‘God spared my son’ is as you have alluded: God chose to murder the other parents’ sons. But I am willing to bet that a handful of these parents (I can’t presume this of all of them) is clinging to the idea that God chose to take their handsome, talented sons for a reason. Murder is a vicious word. This God had a worthy purpose beyond human understanding. Their children were too gifted for this Earth. Which appears to the observer to be just as incomprehensible but at least removes some of the ‘Why?’ from everyday thought. I am from the Maritimes so I know this attitude, even if I can’t fully relate to it.
I am descended from the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, referred to on page 93 of Mean Boy as ‘a breeding ground for Baptists’. Which is bloody true (and damn funny). I’m not Baptist, but Grammie Halliday sure is. And while I can visit her and sit on her porch and drink Red Rose and terrify myself for fun reading books like ‘20 Most Frequent Questions Of the Bible: Answered!’ I have to be impressed, because the phrase ‘Lord willing’ has gotten her through the good and the bad of her 89 1/2 years. And when she tells me from three time zones away that she says a prayer for me at night I feel relieved. Interestingly, as pervasive as religion is in the Maritimes (and maybe I am idealizing things) the people seem less overtly faithful than the religious population out here. Less vocal. More quietly resolute. But I guess that is another discussion.
— Becky Halliday Feb 5, 12:49 AM #