Teenaged Existentialist #19: Catch 22 and the Immortal Soul.

Lying in order to be Honest

All this anger and dissociative cognition was cemented into place when I read Catch -22 at the age of 14. I didn’t just read it, I devoured it, I read it four times in about 6 months. I’d never re-read a book before, but I could not resist hauling myself through it again and again. What I remember about reading it was that I previously had this pristine vision of the American role in the Second World War. I had ignorance a-plenty, there was not a lot of counter-narrative going on to utilize critical thinking skills vs. the accepted cover story. I mean, let’s be clear, that was maybe the last time we fought a war for the right reasons. We were the good guys, right? But everything I was learning about Viet Nam was worse than the last. And Catch -22 made the making of warfare look entirely insane. And that’s the crux of it:

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to, but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.” (p. 56, ch. 5)

This echoed down the hallways of my raging, angry, bitter hormone-ravaged mind. I was taught to be honest, but because I was honest about not believing in God I could not accept the Eagle Scout award.

But let’s take a step back to when I was 13 and I had lied to get confirmed. I was confirmed in the faith that taught me not to lie, and I was only confirmed because I lied. I had to meet with the pastor, Rev. Julius L. Ranum, who had a powerful basso profoundo voice and a strong faithful presence. He had built a successful suburban ALC Congregation by knocking on doors and inviting people to his home for services. He build a small church which became bigger and bigger; it was in Edina, a classic wealthy suburb. The town’s nickname was “Cake Eaters” like Marie Antionette. The joke about their name was “Every Day I Need Attention.”

So you had to be interviewed by the pastor to be confirmed, and I asked him one honest question: if someone doesn’t believe in Jesus, are they going to hell? Like the Indians in the Amazon? He said, “If they never heard of Jesus, then no; but if they’d had the chance to know Jesus and rejected him, then yes, they would be held accountable.” I didn’t buy this at all, it seemed so merciless, but I had no training in rebuttal. I did what I had learned to do, which is to say nothing, and pretend that I agreed.

In my head I thought of Gary. Now Gary loved Church, every Sunday, till the day he died, and it was a great thing for him. But I knew there were many people of varying degrees of consciousness that would not the able to discern the subtleties of that theological argument. I knew there were many who would not get it, or many who would not be able to make sense of it in their cultural context. I wasn’t very old, I was 13 and probably being very contrary, very oppositional, very teen-agery. But I knew in my heart that this red line of faith, that I had to believe in the literal virgin birth (actually a virginal conception- they can’t even be accurate about their mythology) and literal resurrection from the dead, this was something that was a little hard to handle, and that many nice people would not make the cut. I was beginning to have my doubts, as I knew better about the literal 6 Days of Creation. I didn’t buy it, and I was expected to swallow it whole.

And so I went against my conscience. I felt like Huck Finn covering for Jim. lied to get confirmed, so that I would not put my mother to shame and raise my father’s anger. I had to go along to get along. I became very dissociative from everyone. I felt like a fraud, like a liar. I had a secret that alienated me from the center of our culture, the Norwegian Lutherans. This was my spiritual home. The holiness of Christmas in the dead of winter; the joy of Easter as spring arose, the Sunday habit and the social life that came from a deep sense of shared values and a shared sense of mission -including very positive things like the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement and advocacy for people with disabilities- for my parents and all the generations before me, church was the center of life, the place where family was nurtured, where “hello” was given and received, where potential spouses were vetted, where art and music and culture and literature and community came together, where ethics are taken seriously. You had a conscience, and it mattered. You had a soul, and it was enriched. I had been baptized by Rev. Sidney Anders Rand, President of St. Olaf College and Ambassador to Norway, and by the time I got to confirmation I was an apostate. I knew both that I was doing the wrong thing, and I knew I was right to do it. All Truth is Paradox, but I did not know that at the time. All I knew was that I was conflicted. And everything was pretty fucked up.

The Church and the Boy Scouts both presented themselves as seemingly altruistic but harmless resources for education and training, especially in the context of the immigrant farm community; and even though it was my great-grandparents who came over, we still very clearly thought of ourselves as an immigrant community. Dad spoke Norwegian at home until he went to school. Immigrants wanted to blend in. And here I was, Ruining Everything. I played along for confirmation, I lied, and I felt like shit. I had compromised my personal ethics, and I refused to do it again, this time I was true to myself, I told the truth and turned down the Eagle, and I felt like shit.

Then I read Catch-22 and found a kindred spirit. Yossarian knew it was crazy to keep flying, it was crazy that his commanding officer made them fly more missions than anyone else in the Army Air Force, it was crazy to keep going up there as each of his pals got killed in one way or another. And it was crazy that this book was published in 1961, before Viet Nam was even a thing. I read it in paperback in 1969, and it felt like it was written on the dark pages of my soul. Nixon was in charge, and the war was becoming worse all the time. He had lied to win, he had run as a peace candidate, he had gotten the racist vote to help him, the Southern Strategy, and he was paranoid of the Russians and the Chinese and the Democrats (“First, you have to win” he said), and he wasn’t going to back down in Viet Nam. Just like LBJ. And I looked up the line of my brothers and their high school buddies, and if you could not pay for college, you were drafted into the infantry and shipped out. My safe suburban home, in my leafy midwestern small town-become- suburb, it was hung with dread, despair, and anomie. It seemed like it was supposed to be perfect, The Suburbs were where people wanted to be- or so we were told- it was a Potemkin Village made of cardboard and drywall and sheetrock, no building was older than 40 years, there was no history, no floor, and it felt like a drag, and I faked it every day.

The only way out, the only real escape that you could count on, was Music.

#30#