By Scott Morgan
Prompt: Write about something you believed but have changed your mind about.
You’d think I’d remember the day my certainty died. I only remember the foreshock. The night I came down the stairs and said, I think my marriage is over.
We were done, and that was fine. I don’t miss her and I never did.
But I do miss the certainty.
A year before I had that conversation, I was just so sure. Of everything. The arrogance of dying youth, perhaps. The naïveté of someone who’s convinced himself he knows things.
He doesn’t believe. He knows.
Well.
Somewhere in the subsequent two years, my worldview collapsed because my certainty died. And it was a death.
Certainty is such a cozy blanket on top of such a comfy bed. It gives you license to indulge in safe routines. To lose it feels like a nuclear bomb. The aftermath is gray and endless.
Until you consider that you might not be facing a blank void, but a blank page.
I recently read the novel and saw the movie Conclave (Robert Harris). In both, the character of Cardinal Lomeli (Lawrence in the movie) speaks about the sin he’s most come to fear: certainty.
I wasn’t expecting to be brought up out of my chair by a fictional monologue. And yet here I was, leaning forward, eyebrows properly twitched and eager.
Certainty, his eminence argues, is the death of curiosity. Compassion. Tolerance. The Church’s strength lies in its diversity and in its doubt — without which, the cardinal offers, there would be no need for faith.
Church or not, faith takes courage. Faith is vulnerable, because it’s such a gamble. It doesn’t always pay off. And while faith does walk hand-in-hand with doubt, the other hand walks with hope. Certainty isn’t anywhere to be found.
All of which makes me sound very sure of myself. But I’m only sure that I have no idea what I know. Faith has replaced certainty, and it’s better over here.
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