Sunday school clichés

Today in church it occurred to me that our endless mantras to read the scriptures, pray, cultivate love, etc. are really invitations to have a deeper interior life. Pondering words of wisdom and sincere prayer are forms of meditation after all; and it takes someone with a Buddha-like core to care for another over the self. It made me think of a funny passage I read the other night in Infinite Jest about someone newly arrived at a halfway house raging against living life by the cliché adages of Alcoholics Anonymous. Allow me to quote at length and keep in mind that the humor here is so dry you might as well be in the Sahara:


"Both Pat Montesian and Gately's AA sponsor like to remind Gately how this new resident Geoffrey Day could end up being an invaluable teacher of patience and tolerance for him, Gately, as Ennet House Staff.
'So then at forty-six years of age I came here to learn to live by clichés,' is what Day says to Charlotte Treat right after Randy Lenz asked what time it was, again, at 0825. 'To turn my will and life over tot he care of clichés. One day at a time. Easy does it. First things first. Courage is fear that has said its prayers. Ask for help. Thy will not mine be done. It works if you work it. Grow or go. Keep coming back.'
Poor old Charlotte Treat, needlepointing primly beside him on the old vinyl couch that just came from Goodwill, purses her lips. 'You need to ask for some gratitude.'
'Oh no but the point is I've already been fortunate enough to receive gratitude.' Day crosses one leg over the other in a way that inclines his whole little soft body towards her. 'For which, believe you me, I'm grateful. I cultivate gratitude. That's part of the system of clichés I'm here to live by. An attitude of gratitude. A grateful drunk will never drink. I know the actual cliche is "A grateful heart will never drink," but since organs can't properly be said to imbibe and I'm still afflicted with just enough self-will to decline to live by utter non sequiturs, as opposed to just good old clichés, I'm taking the liberty of light amendment.' He gives with this a look like butter wouldn't melt. 'Albeit grateful amendment, of course.'
Charlotte Treat looks over to Gately for some sort of help or Staff enforcement of dogma. The poor b---- is clueless. All of them are clueless, still. Gately reminds himself that he too is probably mostly still clueless, still, even after all these hundreds of days. 'I Didn't Know That I Didn't Know' is another of the slogans that looks so shallow for a while and then all of a sudden drops off and deepens like the lobster-waters off the North Shore. As Gately fidgets his way through daily A.M. meditation he always tries to remind himself daily that this is all an Ennet House residency is supposed to do: buy these poor yutzes some time, some thin pie-slice of abstinent time, till they can start to get a whiff of what's true and deep, almost magic, under the shallow surface of what they're trying to do.
'I cultivate is assiduously. I do special gratitude exercises at night up there in the room. Gratitude-Up, you could call them. Ask Randy over there if I don't do them like clockwork. Diligently. Sedulously.'
'Well it's true is all.' Treat sniffs. 'About gratitude.'
Everybody else except Gately, lying on the old other couch opposite them, is ignoring this exchange, watching an old InterLace cartridge whose tracking is a little messed up so that staticky stripes eat at the screen's picture's bottom and top. Day is not done talking. Pat M. encourages newer Staff to think of residents they'd like to bludgeon to death as valuable teachers of patience, tolerance, self-discipline, restraint.
Day is not done talking. 'One of the exercises is being grateful that life is so much easier now. I used sometimes to think. I used to think in long compound sentences with subordinate clauses and even the odd polysyllable. Now I find I needn't. Now I live by the dictates of macrame samplers ordered from the back-page ad of an old Reader's Digest or Saturday Evening Post. Easy does it. Remember to remember. But for the grace of capital-g God. Turn it over. Terse, hard-boiled. Monosyllabic. Good old Norman Rockwell-Paul Harvey wisdom. I walk around with my arms out straight in front of me and recite these cliches. In a monotone. No inflection necessary. Could that be one? Could that be added to the cliche-pool? "No inflection necessary"? Too many syllables, probably.
....
"Gately often feels a terrible sense of loss, narcotics-wise, in the A.M., still, even after this long clean. His sponsor over at the White Flag Group says some people never get over the loss of what they'd thought was their one true best friend and lover; they just have to pray daily for acceptance andthe brass danglers to move forward through the grief and loss, to wait for time to harden the scab. The sponsor, Ferocious Francis G., doesn't give Gately one iota of s--- for feeling some negative feelings about it: on the contrary, he commends Gately for his candor in breaking down and crying like a baby and telling him about it early one A.M. over the pay phone, the sense of loss. It's a myth no one misses it. Their particular Substance. S---, you wouldn't need help if you didn't miss it. You just have to Ask For Help and like Turn It Over, the loss and pain, to Keep Coming, show up, pray, Ask For Help. Gately rubs his eye. Simple advice like this does seem like a lot of cliches--Day's right about how it seems. Yes, and if Geoffrey Day keeps on steering by the way things seem to him then he's a dead man for sure. Gately's already watched doezens come through here and leave early and go back Out There and then go to jail or die. If Day ever gets lucky and breaks down, finally, and comes to the front office at night to scream that he can't take it anymore and clutch at Gately's pantcuff and blubber and beg for help at any cost, Gately'll get to tell Day the thing is that the cliched directives are a lot more deep and hard to actually do. To try and live by instead of just say. But he'll only get to say it if Day comes and asks. Personally, Gately gives Geoffrey D. like a month at the outside before he's back tipping his hat to parking meters. Except who is Gately to judge who'll end up getting the Gift of the program v. who won't, he needs to remember. ...
At some point in here Day's saying, 'So bring on the lobotomist, bring him on I say!'
...
Gately, who's been on live-in Staff here four months now, believes Charlotte Treat's devotion to needlepoint is suspect. All those needles. In and out of all that thin sterile-white cotton stretched drum-tight in its round frame. The needle makes a kind of thud and squeak when it goes in the cloth. It's not much like the soundless pop and slide of a real cook-and-shoot. But still. She takes such great care."


Church can sometimes seem like bouncing around the echo chamber of another system of clichés but every once in a while a mantra will open up and drop off the continental shelf.