But why does talking about God feel so tacky? Strange how the grammar of damage is so vivid and precise, endlessly inventive—torched, shanked, concussed—while the vocabulary of peace remains squelchy and limp, reduced to cloudy words like serenity and bliss. I do not know how to speak about faith without feeling embarrassed, annoyed at the saccharine pitch in my voice. Language fails. Hell can be described a thousand ways, but heaven remains impossible to grasp.
Whenever I think about taking a leap of faith, a fork in the road appears: I’ll either become a wild-eyed zealot who wears a sandwich board, or I’ll have the self-satisfied smile of the public radio listener who speaks of energies and crystals. Agnosticism, atheism, nihilism, and even cosmic horror are more appealing than these options. So I turn away from the path and retreat into the familiar, even easy, life of doubt.
Yet the craving to become spiritualized persists.
