TOMMY TIERNAN

contemplates the devil

I’ve been thinking about the Devil again. I didn’t want to be — just one thought kind of led to another, and before I knew it, was contemplating the nature of evil, not only in the world but in the universe, too. That’s how much time I had on me hands.

Oh, to think that all these worrying meditations might have escaped me if only I’d had a decent day job to occupy myself. Even if I busied meself around the house doing chores, I’d be a happier man, but each man according to his nature, so here I am lying on the bed at three-thirty in the afternoon, as I have been doing since a quarter past eleven this morning, just thinking...

The devil is real alright, real as wind, and as woven into me as he is into the world. I’m vulnerable to him. I’m wide open, you see — a playground for his intentions. And his intention would be that humankind destroys both itself and the planet it’s living on, and when we do, he’ll turn to God and say, “Ha! You’ll not try that again,” in a told-you-so Cavan accent.

Heave-ho

I don’t think you could put a face on the Devil no more than you can put a face on God either, and it’s an eternal heave-ho between the pair of them inside in you and me and the world.

And how do you bate the devil? By not fighting him. Going to war with the devil only makes him stronger. You have to realise that you can’t bate him. All you can do is learn to live with him. Spot him in the room, identify his presence, and ask him is he alright, and would he like a cup of tea.

He’ll take to the couch and sulk if you’re nice to him. He’ll almost seem harmless, shrunken to the size of a little worm — but don’t take your eyes off him for a second, for he’s nothing if not relentless, and before you know it he’ll be anaconda-sized again and circling you with intent.

And if the Divil is real, then so is God, right? Aye, maybe. And where would you find him? In every moment, in every goodness. Yes.

But especially in churches and Catholicism? Well, I’m tired of that. Weary of it. Tired of the effort of believing. Seems like a big old circus to me, a circus of faith. So many saints and prayers and rituals. So many statues and colours and rigmarole. So common and numb, and the spark has gone out of it. So hard to fit Mass-going into the day. Prayer is a game I’m not able to play. Your head’d be a like an imaginary train station with all the invented commotion going on inside of it.

I was out running the other day, up the country road by the side of the house, and I noticed the bushes and twigs and tiny flowers bursting out of the ditch, and I thought to meself, “Jaysus, you’d be better off being thick”. And what I meant was that the mind can interfere with the experience, distort and destroy it, classify it in order to feel some sort of control over it. Me mind was in the way of me and the ditch. Better to just reach out the hand and feel the flowers, or just stand there gawping at them.

Zen lads

I might go back to the Zen lads. There’s a group of them here in Galway and they just sit on the ground and stare at the wall. Don’t have to believe in nothing. It felt good the last time I did it. The times of their sessions don’t fit in with my day, though. Too awkward to get to, and I don’t have the discipline to just do it on my own.

I’m not part of any community. I’m of the tribe of the tribeless. I have the mat and small shrine down in the shed, but I know meself I’d do it for a month or two and then the work of it would get to me, and I’d leave it. What’s the point in starting something you know you’ll not continue?

No, I’ll just lie here on the bed. Maybe throw meself up for a cup of coffee before the kids get back. I might go for a run later, and that’ll be about the height of it.

“The devil is real alright, real as wind and as woven into me as he is into the world”