Chapter 26

    I sense a need to continue with quotes from John of the Cross. This time the longest of them so far, paragraph 34 of the commentary on the third stanza of the Living Flame. But I will not deliver it in one lump, but rather take it one sentence at a time - perhaps even a phrase at a time - not only because it is long, but because it is for present intentions utterly packed with the great intensity that must occur where the divine confronts the human with an absolute will for making the human conform. Taken as a whole, in the manner of careless or shallow reading, virtually inevitable in the presence of so much wisdom not actually punctuated by the extremities of grace necessary to a full understanding, this paragraph can glide by without its real significance actually registering with the reader. (We are always so capable of imitating the Pharisees, even though they could plainly see and hear Jesus with their very own eyes and ears.) And in the case of such a simple slipping along like a chip in a passing stream, the point of the Spirit in the soul of Toby Skinner would be quite obscured. We really do need to wrestle, with impeccable scientific historicity, with the concept of the natural as confronted by, or partnered with, the supernatural, the latter concept of which is much dealt with in this paragraph. Sentence one:

    "Since God, then, is communing with the soul by means of simple and loving knowledge, the soul must likewise commune with Him by receiving this loving and simple knowledge and awareness, so that knowledge may be united with knowledge and love with love."

    Now the thing about the doctors of the Church is that they got their recognition because they were the successors of the men that received the revelations of Scripture. What they say is virtually Biblical. It merits, it demands, the most intense respect, submission, and concentration that a devout and searching soul can bring to the study of it. But this is not an unpleasant task, because the very act of so concentrating thrusts the soul into the bosom of wisdom, even though the intellect only grasps a hint of the genius beneath. There lies the ultimate light, the ultimate heat, the ultimate truth and therefore the ultimate consolation. And consolation, from God, means strength. If we are surrounded by men who are weak in the real meaning of the word, it is because they refuse to look for this kind of consolation. Spiritual illiteracy, not drink, is the real curse of the working class. And, should we not add, the common man?
  
    At least in the case of Tobias Skinner, the common man is an image to be considered carefully, because he had allowed himself, as a student writer, to be far too much affected by what the common man was supposed to be allowed to adjudicate. One of the reasons he had been sent north, no doubt,
was to get a thorough dose of the limitations of the common man, if only in himself, and discover, in an extremely threatening situation, how useless the concept could be. He had been absolutely backed into the cul de sac that has to recognize that mankind really has only two options, sooner or later, and they are the spiritual man or the unspiritual man. That is his "Yes for yes, no for no, and all else belongs to the devil."
 
     Every courting couple has to deal with elements in each that challenge the complete harmony of the romance. In Jelena's case, Toby's continual reference to what the common man should be expected to like or dislike had been a regular sore point. She simply had no patience with such a tyrannical concept and could only wonder where he had picked up such a part of his vocabulary, or why it was still hanging on after so many years at university. It was so much in contrast with most of what he said or did or was interested in that she was puzzled at how he had come by it. Was it some sort of writer's predicament, because he thought he owed something to some branch of his potential readership? Or was it simply because he'd come rather late, all things considered, to a formal study of philosophy? Certainly, no common man who'd ever walked the face of the earth knew the internal joys of someone who read and thought and reacted to the most ordinary things of life as Toby did, let alone the more sublime.
  
    And just who was this common man? Certainly not the reasonable man that the law spoke of so regularly and with such good purpose, when analyzing legal problems. There was a point to him, the point of keeping the law sensible, of in fact rewarding the man who used his head, or common sense, when confronted with a legal predicament. Toby had explained this to her. Clearly he'd got something from his legal studies. But the common man Toby talked about didn't seem to like using his head very much, especially when confronted with cultural problems, or even the basic salvation of his own soul, which would seem fundamental enough for anyone to want to pay attention to. He didn't have to like poetry, or good music, or philosophy. So what was there actually to enjoy in life? And how could Toby allow to be completely happy those who had not made the same effort he had? Was he simply foolish, like a priest who, though reformed and out of mortal sin himself, would not insist that his flock had to be in the state of grace to go to communion?
  
    His parents must have something to do with it. She had met them enough to realize that they did not have, like her own mother and mother, a very strong automatic relationship with culture. Her parents loved opera and classical music, and hung original art and good prints on the household walls. There were numerous literary classics in the household library, and her mother had acted in and directed plays, and when she was younger, had been devoted to dance. The Skinners had neither known nor sought such experiences, even though Toby's mother had an excellent singing voice. She would have made a very good church choir alto at the very least, even a soloist, had she decided to take such a role. But her husband, as Toby had explained early on, had no use for churches, and she had followed his lead.
  
    This was by no means the same with her own mother, though she was also married to a man who would not go to church, even though he'd had much to do with church when he was young. Her mother had clung to her faith, too much a proper product of a convent education, and quite incapable of believing that the world and all its concerns had the answers. Toby had seen this in her from the start and respected her for it. He had also accepted a rosary from her, given to him when she'd heard he'd dropped in on the clergy. And what else had he said? That she was the first adult female he'd known, other than his teachers, who had a co-natural relationship with the arts. But how else could that happen, unless through a university education? Her mother had attended two post-secondary institutions: UBC, and another in San Francisco. Toby’s mother had graduated from high school only, and with a concentration in cookery, not the arts, in spite of her unfulfilled teen-age passion for ballet. What would she have been like as a ballerina? Possibly quite fierce, Jelena had thought. That might seem like an odd adjective to apply to a ballerina, but in this case it also seemed possible. Toby could be fierce.  Did he get this from his father or his mother?
 
     But Toby read - all the time - so his fierceness took an intellectual bent, and could be verbalized within to later come out in written words, so he could dance through the literature of the world as his mother had not been able to dance across the stages of Europe and North America. But she was very good, along with Toby's father, as a ball room dancer. Toby had told Jelena a neat story about this, from his very provocative childhood. So she had not been totally frustrated from expressing herself through a dance form, and thus escaped some of the extreme rigours of a puritanical Protestant sect that both she and Toby's father grew up with.
 
     Toby, the lucky little wretch, had grown up in the best of two worlds. He'd had his grandparents' faith, and his parents' affection for natural common sense. So he wasn't perfect, by any means, but he had no apparent hang ups - except for the common man nonsense - especially since he'd gone to talk with the clergy.

    So what was happening in the north? Had he had a chance to sing, and charm the socks off the local girls? Some women were such suckers for musicians. Fortunately, Toby hated that aspect of his hobby, but so far away as he was, especially if he was not happy in his job, he might lose some of his resolve? Oh, probably not. That was just an idle thought. The sort of thing the devil sends around to try to destroy your peace of mind.
 
     The important thing, really, was what the devil was up to try to destroy Toby's peace of mind. Old Nick certainly couldn't be happy with this decision to turn Catholic. That young man's brain turned against the ways of hell was not a pleasant concept for him, most certainly. He was sure to try anything to confuse and dissuade him. He'd been successful in the past, at a certain level; now he was sure to attack in other, possibly deeper, areas. In Toby's own soul, or in others who could affect his thinking. His own father, in fact, had tried on the "crazy" label when Toby had left home back at the beginning of March. This hadn't affected Toby much, not only because he knew his own choices were sound, and in a general way providentially arranged, but also because he had read many of the classics of real psychology when his father knew only a manual or two of industrial psychology. Sometimes she wished she had known Toby in the months when he decided to leave law school for the first time and study on his own. He always spoke of them with so much conviction and excitement, and so much gratitude for the friends who had inspired him to make such a choice. Possibly even too much gratitude, because she knew from her own studies, especially of Saint Teresa's autobiography, how much God had to do with major vocational decisions. Well, she had seen him once, two or three months after his leaving the legal world, at a New Year's party where he and his roommate seemed to be the only ones having a thoroughly good time. But that was not the same as having been able to talk on a daily basis with him while he was going through his schedule of inspiration and, surely, fear and second thoughts about his decision. And none of the friends they had in common had known him at that time. They were all younger than Toby, and had turned up later, after he had settled into his new choices. And his roommate at the time had moved to the Caribbean a few months before she and Toby got together. Life had arranged things so they only way she could find out about those months was to ask him herself. But with him up north, when could she do that? In letters? Possible, of course, but looming as tedious. Did he know himself well enough yet to be able to make such an exchange worthwhile? When he got off on a tangent, he could babble at an alarming rate, whereas face to face, while he could still roar around in his own fashion, he was capable of listening to counter arguments.