Praise for Theodore richards

“...richards insightfully explores the roots of the current cri-sis of meaning and, using the womb and birthing as primary metaphors, midwifes us into a profound sense of the cosmos as womb....”

—Linda Gibler, Phd., author of From Beginning to Baptism: Scientific and Sacred Stories of Water, Oil, and Fire

“...richards takes us on a journey into the edge of the universe which is the edge of the human being which is the edge of God.”

—Brian swimme, author of The Universe Story

“Theodore richards is a unique and gifted social activist, one with a well nourished brain as well as a conscience. his commit-ment to inner city youth wounded as so many are by a culture that prefers consumption to compassion and preaches couch-potatoitism over creativity, he has spent years bringing alive the potential of young people in finding their in-depth selves and their place in our amazing universe....”

—Matthew fox, author of Original Blessing

“dr. Theodore richards sees the world from an ever evolving perspective that permits him, moment by moment, to see it with fresh eyes and bring what is within him out to the community, thus transforming it. Theodore has fastidiously studied the wis-dom of those who have transformed society like dr. Martin Lu-ther King, who also saw the world with fresh eyes and used his unique inner power to build community and change it....”

—Jay speights, director of The New seminary

THECONVERSIONS

Theodore Richards

STONINGTON, CONNECTICUT

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THECONVERSIONS

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all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. all occurrences in this work are fictitious. any resemblance to actual events, past or present, is purely coincidental.

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isBN: 978-1-938846-20-5Book designed by Leslie M. Browning

cover images: conversion on the Way to damascus by caravaggioThe Conversion on the Way to Damascus (Conversione di San Paolo) was painted

by Caravaggio, painted in 1601 for the Cerasi Chapel of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in Rome Italy.

The image is now in public domain.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

richards, Theodore. The conversions / by Theodore richards. —first edition. pages cm isBN 978-1-938846-20-5 (pbk.) i. Title. Ps3618.i34457c66 2014 813’.6--dc23 2014029049

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In memory of my brother, Matthew Thomas Richards

July 21, 1976 to September 23, 2013

In celebration Of my daughters,

Cosima & Calliope

~

The Attacks were made in broad daylight. They came in small, simple boats. This was not an attack upon military installations, but upon symbols, symbols few understood: on televi-sions, they would claim that the attackers were against the American Dream, against the alem-

bic through which the world’s unwanted pass to become Americans. Perhaps this was true, in part. But more accurately, these attacks upon Ellis and Liberty Islands were meant to oppose the world’s col-lective immigration into Americanness. It is unlikely that those who perpetrated the atrocities of that day fully understood these symbols themselves. But make no mistake: those who sent them did. For just as the bombs were detonated on those little islands, destroying sym-bol, dream, and flesh, men far away were plotting a deeper attack upon the myth-making apparatus of Modernity. For they knew that there would be those who could and would use the attacks to the advantage of the true enemies they sought to overcome.

If only the attackers had known that the world was about to undergo a journey far more profound, an alchemical transforma-tion that would be harkened by the end of that prima materia of Modernity: oil.

They brought with them many weapons: A young man, for ex-ample, had two knives, a pistol, and a semi-automatic rifle; another brought grenades; a third, who was gunned down before they were able to kill the guards and the tourists and take control of the great monument to liberty and tyranny, to God and atheism, had the audacity to slice his victims with a machete. But these were not the most terrifying weapons the terrorists/freedom-fighters brought that night to Ellis and Liberty Islands. After all, such weaponry could be found in any American city; such a death toll represented perhaps a couple of weeks in a city like Chicago. No. Their greatest weapon was not made with steel. It did not slice, or maul, or explode. Their greatest weapon resided in the minds of those who watched from afar, on a screen, safe of body but imperiled in the soul.

Section I: Apocalypse

America’s history, her aspirations, her peculiar triumphs, her even more peculiar defeats, and her position in the world—yesterday and today—are all so profoundly and stubbornly unique that the word “America” remains a new, almost com-pletely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun. No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.

—James BaldwinThe Discovery of What It Means to Be an American

A couple of thousand years ago, on the banks of a river not far from a land we now call Holy (highlighting the extent to which other lands are now considered pro-

fane), a man from the lowest class of laborers declared that a special time was at hand, that this was The End. He went into the water, and emerged reborn. His soul within and the cosmic dome above were shattered. This warning of the apocalypse would inspire countless imaginings in the millennia that fol-lowed. Few considered the most obvious and remarkable aspect of this event: that The End had already occurred, and will recur, if we only have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. As this poor, simple man emerged from the water, like a child through the birth canal, the question he prompted was not when the end will come—a question made problematic less because of the prepon-derance of wrong predictions than the absurd boringness of such predictions altogether.

No, he would have us ask this: How can we be present to an end of our own? How can we, too, find our birth canal and emerge from the water as something new?

11

Kant

Not long after The Attacks, Dante Kant awoke, not for the first time, with the taste of wine, vaginal flu-ids, and regret on his lips. These sensations woke him

from his semi-conscious state: first, the dry, unpleasant taste of stale wine from the night before (he wished he had brushed his teeth); then the other tastes, that no amount of tooth-brushing could have prevented, the realization that he had done several re-grettable things the night before. He never dreamt on such nights, and awoke feeling as tired as he had been when he had gone to sleep. This made him think: Is it the sleeping or the dreaming that gives us rest?

The last time, he told himself as he stared at the cracks in the ceiling. His thoughts were vague and unformulated. Whether he intended for this to be his last night of drinking too much, of hav-ing sex with women he was not committed to, or both, he could not have said.

“Dante,” purred Mirabai affectionately, expecting no re-sponse. She was the only one who called him by his first name—if she did not say it so sensually he might have protested. Why his conventional parents had given him such an unconventional name, he would never know. Kant had not had the sort of rela-tionship with his parents to ask such questions. “Don’t leave me,” she whined.

12 The Conversions

At least it was Mirabai, and not some woman he did not even like. And she was beautiful; there was no doubt. He thought back to when they had first met. There had been an immediate attrac-tion on both sides. She had been hesitant at first, but he had con-vinced her. It was her hesitancy that attracted Kant to Mirabai, as much as her beauty. But now that she desired him with such unhesitant passion, he was trying to break it off. The problem was that he liked Mirabai. He enjoyed her company as well as the sex. But he could never be the consistent, considerate boyfriend she desired. It was because he cared for her that he wanted to break it off, he told himself (and there was some truth to this).

It always seemed to happen like this with Kant. He met a woman, felt deeply for her, then lost interest. These initial feel-ings were not merely lust, nor could they accurately be described as love. They always evaporated before he could figure them out. Always, he found himself staring up at the ceiling, head pound-ing, mouth dry, thinking how he could get out of there.

He sat up in bed and looked down at Mirabai, her firm, dark breasts covered only partially by the blanket. She was smiling. For a moment, he was tempted to make love to her again. He caught himself. Mirabai is the smartest person I know, thought Kant. Why does she continue to sleep with me? There was more to it than this. Mirabai was one of the few people in this world who truly knew Kant. She understood him. Don’t we all desire to be known? Kant certainly did; but at the same time, he feared it. He was liked by so many people. So many who really did not know him. They liked what he represented to them. So much easier to like a person in two dimensions than in the smelly, ugly, bodily-fluid-included (at least not blood this time) version of these hung over morn-ings. The knowledge that Mirabai possessed was a threat to this popularity of ignorance.

Theodore Richards 13

Mirabai had just finished her second year of a doctoral pro-gram at the University of Chicago. She had not imagined she would fall in love with Kant. Indeed, she had been attracted to him, in part, because he was someone she could never imagine marrying. She had told him as much. But there was something different about him. Although he was utterly without ambition, she was certain he was headed for greatness. She envied him, re-ally. As the daughter of Indian immigrants in America, she could not afford to lack ambition. Or, perhaps more accurately, had never been permitted such an American indulgence.

Kant had rarely dated white women since he moved from his parents’ house in Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, to Hyde Park, the integrated South Side neighborhood of the University of Chi-cago. And he rarely sought women out; he was too beautiful for that. His long dark hair, and olive skin were all he needed. In Hyde Park, he found that the women who most often approached him were anything but white. It mattered little to him, at first. But he realized, looking down at Mirabai, that he had grown to prefer brown skin, just as he preferred his male friends to be anything other than white. The reasons were simple: In part, Kant was the product of an unconscious recognition of his own incomplete-ness. There was something in the other—so shunned throughout his own childhood—he recognized as another half of himself. But there was more than that. He rarely met a white person who was not a believer. In America, white people benefited so much from the structures of society that they had to believe in them. But Kant believed in nothing. In fact, Kant’s unbelief was so extreme that his only motivation in life was to be contrary. When some-one became popular, he denounced him; if his popularity waned, Kant supported him. He rejected everything he was supposed to cherish: He lacked ambition, cared little for money, was unpatri-

14 The Conversions

otic and despised religion. He dressed inappropriately and said offensive things. If the Cold War had not ended, Kant would have been a communist.

She touched his back. “Lie down,” she said softly. Her tender-ness, along with the alcohol he had consumed the night before, made him nauseous. Panicked, he began to think of an excuse to leave.

“What time is it?” he asked.Mirabai’s smile softened. “What does it matter? You got

somewhere to go?”“I do, actually,” said Kant. “What time did you say it was?”“I didn’t. Where did you say you were going?” She was irri-

tated. She hated his abrupt morning departures.Sensing her annoyance, Kant was silent. He looked around

Mirabai’s bedroom for a clock. He saw one, and although he could not actually read the time from where he lay, he said, “I should go.”

A look of hurt and disappointment came over Mirabai’s face. It was his evasiveness more than the mere fact that he was leav-ing. Kant knew all of this, but could not help himself. He felt trapped in that bedroom, felt that his freedom was threatened by her desire for him.

“Where are you going? It’s Sunday.”This was fortunate. Kant would not have been able to recall

the day had she not said it, and might have said something fool-ish. Sunday. . . “Church,” he stated blankly.

“Church? You hate church. You hate the idea of church. Since when did you start going to church?”’

“I didn’t start going to church,” he responded. “But I told ‘Still’ I would go with him. I’m not really looking forward to it.”

Kant stood up wobbily and began to dress. He felt even worse

Theodore Richards 15

now for lying to Mirabai. He dressed as quickly as he could, pecked her on the cheek, told her he would call her, and bolted out the door.

He still felt bad when he got outside, but the crisp, fresh air—it was a rare summer day that wasn’t yet hot—and the freedom he immediately associated with it made him feel better. Still, he couldn’t help feeling guilty, not so much for leaving as he did, but for spending the night in the first place, knowing how it would end. Kant began to think about his own character, weighing his good and bad qualities. He readily acknowledged his selfishness and laziness. It was not that he did not care about others, but that he seldom acted like he did. In fact, he thought more about others well being than his own. Kant was the type of man who seldom worried about himself. That, he supposed, must be some sort of fault as well. He felt only mildly bad about being lazy, however.

Deciding he was a pretty bad person, although better than most, made Kant depressed. He paused to dial his phone. Perhaps Adam would meet him in the park to smoke a joint, but Adam did not answer his phone. Of course he was not awake; it was a little after 10:00 on Sunday morning. Kant left a message and looked up to continue his walk. But before he took a step, he real-ized that there was a church directly in front of him.

Churches, by design, draw the eyes to the tall doors first, then upwards, towards the sky, diminishing the self. Kant had already felt diminished. As he stared up to the sky, his nausea intensified. He felt light-headed. Something has to change, he thought. I can’t go on living this way. Kant peered in through the doors. Church. Although not exactly an atheist—in fact, he loved the ethereal space of churches as long as none of the people were there—he had always despised the idea of Church. As a rule, Kant entered churches on any day but Sunday. He hated the antiquated, mean-

16 The Conversions

ingless hymns, the hypocrisy of the clergy, the self-righteousness of the believers. Most of all, Kant hated the joining. The very idea of joining an institution seemed contrary to all that he believed in. Or, more precisely, it was not contrary enough to what Kant had always been told he should believe in. That was why he had never attended college, never had a job, never been on a team. He believed in the freedom of his own soul. Lake Michigan on a cool, sunny day was his church. The pursuit of joy from moment to moment was his only ambition. There was no greater Truth, no higher God than this.

But on that day, Kant had begun to doubt these beliefs. Per-haps there was some wisdom to be found in church. What he had read of Jesus seemed to indicate that Jesus was not much different from himself. Did not Jesus fight against the religious structures that Kant himself despised? And did not Jesus have the same dis-regard for the worldly pursuits that everyone seemed to be chas-ing? If ever there had been a contrarian, a wanderer, it had been Jesus Christ. But Kant thought very little about these things on that day. He wanted to cleanse his soul. Although he had little use for absolutes of morality, he did feel bad about mistreating Mira-bai. Perhaps Church had something to offer. Even if it did not, he could now tell Mirabai that he had gone to church with a clean conscience. So, surprising himself even as he passed through the great, wooden doors, Dante Kant went to church.

Heads immediately turned as he entered the building. The pa-rishioners were dressed neatly in their Sunday best; Kant looked shabby and disheveled, reeking of liquor. Another thing he hated about church: dressing up. Wearing a tie seemed to have very lit-tle to do with Jesus. Kant quickly sat down in the pew toward the back of the room and looked at the program he had been handed, somewhat reluctantly, as he entered. It was a Protestant church, of

Theodore Richards 17

some sort. He had been only once or twice to a Protestant service, having been brought up with very little religion, and then always Catholic. It had a pseudo-gothic appearance, with high ceilings and cold, wooden pews. There was an enormous American flag hanging in the front, behind the pulpit, obscuring a small cross. Jesus, thought Kant, that flag is bigger than my apartment.

As the stares of the parishioners subsided, the preacher stepped up to the pulpit. He was a middle-aged white man, plain and friendly looking, his expression wavering between exagger-ated benevolence and feigned earnestness. He began to speak:

“Good morning!” The congregation answered in unison, “Good morning.”There was a ringing. Kant looked around. Everyone was

looking at him. It was his cell phone. He looked down at it with little urgency. He turned it off when he realized it was Mirabai. How can she call me when I told her I was going to church? he thought indignantly. Then he smiled at the absurdity of his own thoughts, realizing that he had been lying, and they both knew it. The preacher continued:

“It is wonderful to see so many new faces here today. I am sure many of you are here because of the recent terrorist attacks. We all need God at times like this. And our leaders do too, espe-cially our president. So before we begin, I would like to recognize our leaders for their courage.”

The congregation clapped. Since when is there clapping in Church? thought Kant. I know it’s been a while... I have heard these Protestant churches are lively but... The preacher continued:

“And I also want to take the time to reflect on the sadness of all the lives that have been lost”—a woman began to sob in front of Kant—“and remember that America is the best country in the world”—someone whistled (this is like a football game, thought Kant)—“and we will defeat our enemies!”

18 The Conversions

As cheers came up from the parishioners, Kant’s phone rang again. It was Adam. This time, he answered it, just as the organ began the prelude to “God Bless America”.

“Hello.”“Where the hell are you? What’s all that noise?”“I am at church,” said Kant calmly, as though he always went

to church on Sundays. People were staring at him angrily. Kant smiled and continued to talk as he headed down the middle aisle toward the door.

“At church?” said Adam, not sure whether to believe him, not sure whether to laugh or not. Kant was nothing if not honest, so he decided to assume it was true. “What the hell are you doing at church?”

“I don’t really know, to be honest,” said Kant. “I was just pass-ing by and decided to see what it was like.”

“So how is it?” asked Adam. “Depressing, actually,” said Kant as he left the building. The

feeling of freedom was even greater than when he had left Mira-bai’s apartment earlier. He felt no ambivalence toward church, no guilt about his treatment of it.

“So what’s up?” said Adam.“I just wanted to see what you were doing. You want to meet

me in the park?” Adam knew that ‘meet me in the park’ meant ‘get high’.

“I would like to, man, believe me. But I have to go to work,” said Adam sadly. “Still a slave.”

“You work on Sundays?” said Kant, horrified. “Damn.”“I don’t see why that surprises you. You don’t work any day.

You probably wouldn’t have even known what day it was if you hadn’t gone to church.” This was pretty close to the truth.

“Alright, Adam, call me later.”

Theodore Richards 19

“Peace.”They hung up and Kant began to walk home. He had not

expected that from church. The priests he remembered from his youth in Cicero had been so different. They were somber, aus-tere men, who seldom smiled. He had not liked them, but the service he had just seen disturbed him. Everywhere Kant had been, everything he had heard recently had been about The At-tacks. While he had originally been sympathetic to the victims (although he found The Attacks more exciting than sad or ter-rifying), he was now repulsed by the jingoism and patriotism by which he was engulfed. He saw the majority of Americans as un-thinking sheep, willing to be shepherded over a cliff, if that was where they were told they should go.

It had gotten hot, already close to ninety degrees. Soon it would be uncomfortable, perhaps another record. It was an un-relenting heat, one that made the inhabitants of the city feel as though it would never cool off, its concrete heating them from below as meanly as the sun above. The world, it seemed, was ready to catch fire.

Kant had barely taken five steps from the front of the church, heading north on Woodlawn toward 53rd Street when a he heard the blare of a car horn and shouting. He looked up to see a young white man hanging his head out of the window of his car, waving an American flag. The car slowed down as it came near Kant.

“Go back to Arabia, you fucking terrorist!” The man shouted, looking directly at Kant. The car sped away. Kant froze. He looked around for a moment. He was the only person on the block; they had indeed been shouting at him. Terrorist? he thought. Why do they think I’m a terrorist? And why would I go to Arabia (whatever that is)? I’m Italian.

20 The Conversions

Kant walked back through the doors of the church. The pastor was speaking again, concluding a prayer: “...and we pray, dear Lord, for our leaders, whom You have anointed to lead our blessed nation against our enemies.”

The congregation began to sing: My God is an Awesome God…“Excuse me!” Kant was shouting from the back of the sanctuary. The preacher held up his arm for the organist to stop playing.

He stared at Kant, as did the rest of the shocked congregation. A woman dialed 911 to report the potential terrorist attack. “W-w-we don’t want any trouble sir,” stuttered the preacher. “This is a house of God.”

Kant smiled at this. “I was just wondering,” he said, “When Jesus comes back, will they crucify him on a flag?”

The congregation stared at him in silence, except for the woman talking to the police, reporting the terrorist attack. “He looks like those crazy Muslims on the news,” she was saying. Kant broke into laughter, wheeled around, and left the church.

It was the kind of day that hid many of the troubles that faced the world. A sparkling, sunny day. Kant was struck with the juxtapo-sition of his failings, his lostness, the awefulness of the world and the beauty of this day. He felt sunshine and breeze. One could hear birds singing, even as Kant read the screen he held in his hand that told him that, according to the scientists, birds were likely to be extinct within five years. Kant read about the birds and thought how fucked up that was, how stupid people were and what a mess we’d made of things, but he didn’t really care that much. Because he couldn’t hear the birds. Had he heard their songs, he may have screamed, or cried, or done something. But instead he changed his iScreen page status:

Theodore Richards 21

Dante Kant thinks preachers are hypocrites. They should stop being so patriotic and do something about dying birds.

It was lost on Kant that he was doing no more than the smarmy preacher, just as it was lost on the dozens of Screenfriends who “liked” his status that they were doing no more than he. Each felt they’d done something by making their iScreen world a little bet-ter, though, even as the world outside seemed to be falling apart.

Back in his studio apartment on 53rd Street, Kant took a much-needed shower and brushed his teeth. After rinsing his mouth twice in a futile effort to rid himself of the tastes of the previ-ous night, he stared at himself in the mirror. He had not shaved in several weeks. That, along with his dark, Neapolitan features, made him look like a Middle Easterner. He remembered how his grandfather had told him that Neapolitans were really Arabs, re-membered his cousin’s stories of the football chants that mocked them as “dirty Arabs”. He understood now why the people in the Church had been so scared of him, and why those in the car had shouted at him. This made him quite pleased. Let them think I’m a Muslim, he thought. I am happy to be rejected by those fools.

He sat down on his mattress and turned on the television. He rarely watched, but he was in the mood to relax and watch the Bears game.

“Because the NFL games have been cancelled this week,” said a voice as an American flag fluttered on the screen, “channel five will present a special ‘Tribute to America!’”

“Shit!” said Kant.

22 The Conversions

He turned the TV off, threw the remote at the wall and lay back on his mattress. Again staring at the ceiling, tracing the cracks with his eyes, this time cleaner and thinking more clearly, more comfortable to be staring at a ceiling that was his own, Kant came up with what he believed to be a brilliant idea. In a few minutes he was asleep with a smile on his face.