after the rapture by michael bolerjack

7/29/2019 After The Rapture by Michael Bolerjack

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After

The RaptureMichael

Bolerjack


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After The Rapture 2013 Michael Bolerjack


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Table of Contents

Preface

Alpha and Omega

God and Writing, or How We Might Have Failed in Our Arrival

will have been a book

Symbols

September of my years

Pi Critic is Me

Peace

Letter: March 26, 2012

Letter: June 5, 2011

h2o

Flores de Monterrey

Arts Rest

Argumentum

Letter: April 2, 2011

All Souls Day

An Icon for the Church on the Mercy of GodAt Harvest Time

The Virgin Martyrs

The sovereignties she is

When I Look Into Your Eyes

Ten Thousand Times

Beyond

Immutable

If He Crowned YouThousand These


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AFTER THE RAPTURE


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Preface

Years ago, when I was starting out as a writer, I did a bit of journalism, writing and editing,

designing and even selling ads. Of course, in the newspaper business the reporter is taught to tell

the readers the five Ws and the H: the who, what, where, when, why and how an event occurred.

To introduce the work to you I think I should do something similar. I will begin with the how.

How was this written? It would be true to say that it was by the grace and mercy of God and not

by my own will and effort, and I happily admit that fact of faith, but I want to say something too

about the manner of the writing. In 1981, one of my first college teachers, on encountering some

of my early fiction, said that I wrote like Faulkner. I think it was a compliment, though later,

based on the opinions I heard voiced by students, it might not have been. Faulkner is he of the

long sentence, the rolling period, the labyrinthine style that mirrors a complexity of thought and

reality. If I write like Faulkner, it is perhaps because the way I say the thing exemplifies the

thing that is said. Late in my career, the idea of the arrival came to me, the promised arrival

that one must search for. Perhaps my writing is that search, simultaneously in theme, style, etc.,

of the looking forward to arrival. In about 1988 two teachers made diverse comments on my

writing. One said that I wrote like Gertrude Stein. The other said I had a perverse rhetoric of

authority. I found out recently that to write like Stein means to be gnomic, repetitive and

illogical. Again, this may not be a compliment as to style. And I must admit I tend to be

elliptical or epigrammatic, with a fragmentary pretense to aphorism, and that sometimes I assert

plain contradictions as true. So be it. As for perversity, I confess as well that then, at the peak of

my infatuation with everything to do with deconstruction, I was both morally and intellectually

perverse. But God took care of that in His own way. I have often argued from authority, which is


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a sin in a philosopher, but not in a theologian. If the authority is experience, the poet may well

use the same method of logical argumentation. In 2006, as I was studying Joyce, a teacher again

said that I wrote like Faulkner. At least I have been consistent. I might add that the same

Joycean teacher made me rewrite a 15 page paper into a five page one, and that the second paper

was better than the first, and that I learned from the experience. So much, then, for the how, but

what of the who? Nietzsche was perhaps correct when he said that when one reads something

one must ask just who is writing the text. So perhaps you will ask yourself rightly along the way

that question concerning me and this work, but I think the things I have to say do not depend so

much on me as on the matter at hand, and therefore I will not preempt what each of you may

variously find or the conclusions you may draw by giving you any more information on the

author, which will at any rate be found on the pages passim. The where is Houston, Texas, and

the when were the war years. This leaves me only the what and the why. And thats really the

heart of the matter. The what is what happened as a result of my encounter with deconstruction,

my agon with Derrida, and others, as well as my conversion to Christ, and the dialectic that

developed out of the placing of these two in relationship. The writings attempt and achieve a

synthesis of many apparently, and I think absolutely, contradictory beliefs, ideas, methods. I did

not, many years ago, consciously set out to perform the synthesis, but in these latter days found it

possible to do, though whether it works or not will be for others to decide. I have been told that it

was not likely to be able to be done, by a former professor, Samuel Southwell, who knew me

when I thought I was a deconstructionist, and I have harbored some doubts myself whether it

was the right thing to do. Yet, it seems to me I have been uniquely called to the task. The work as

a whole, that is, the project of my career in writing which I call The Thirty Years War, is a

journey that started from deconstruction in terms of both philosophy and literature. In 1989, at


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the point just before my conversion to Christ, the decisive idea happened to me in the context of

a reading of the Anaximander fragment and Nietzsche and Levinas, in which I recognized an

exterior eternity limiting infinity. This led to the thinking through of the contradictory essence of

truth, lived as the real dialectic, in the late 1990s, and on to the limit of Hamlet in arrival, around

2006, followed by the recommendation of self-limitation as a way out of the dichotomy of

fantasy and necessity in which we live, to gain freedom and reality, in my writings on the novel

in 2007 and 2008. This led to the ideas and logic this year that can reconcile all differences,

ideally and therefore really, in order to fulfill the gospel injunction to be perfect. It is the logic

of the impossible, and implies distantly that before the beginning there was an infinite

nothingness which contracted, creating a limit, the eternal, God. All else flowed from this event

before eternity, when the infinite was stopped. Much of the problem with thinking today is the

virtual renewal of the infinite nothing which has occurred since the so-called death of God. I

believe that God has proceeded by a series of contractions to limit himself again and again, down

to Christ on the cross, down to the bread on the altar, down to the word on the page, to reach

each one of us in our narrow, crowded worlds. He asks us to do likewise, to deny, renounce,

follow, suffer. That this applies to the enormous Catholic Church is all too obvious, and I foresee

a great limitation coming on the institution itself, but not on the message, which is life for the

world. I have found that all creation occurs as a series of painful contractions, a labor in the artist

similar to that of the woman in childbirth. God experienced this pain. It is essential to him. The

Church too may give birth to a new world, but only as the result of the contractions that have

been unfolding for many years. Which I think brings me to the why. Why did I write this work?

A man once asked me why I bothered at all. As Faulkner said in Stockholm, it was not for

money, nor even less for glory. Let me say I was seeking the truth, and that I found it, or rather


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He found me. I was given the talent to write, as in the parable of Jesus, and it became clear to me

that I was obligated to make good use of the talent that I have been given. I wrote in the end

specifically to the Church, which is not necessarily Roman but global, and about the subject of

mercy, as will be seen from the way God has led me out of the wilderness to the promised land,

and as he has guided the thought of the work to the point of the reconciling of oppositions, in me,

in the Church, and in the world, while directing me toward the findings concerning the

apocalypse which I disclose at the end. That we now and will in the future all need such

reconciliation is without question, and the Church most of all, for whom I write, and which I

love. I think that through this work steps are taken toward the reconciliation of Christian practice

and theory, calling readers to truth, to love, to holiness, to responsibility. We must find the truth

whatever the cost, even though it means a breaking. As I say at one point, as bread is broken, be

broken, too, and yet after the breaking there is still the communion. The fact that God allowed

me to preserve a record of my search for the truth, and then gave me the thing itself, an answer to

questions we have all longed to know, and sometimes asked about, humbles me and makes me

thankful.


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ALPHA AND OMEGA

Apocalypse to come will come, is coming. The weeds and the wheat are being

separated. The city of God and the city of the devil are being torn apart from each

other. That other city is falling into the abyss at 32 ft ps ps, as Joyce waking said. The

city of Jerusalem ascends in raptures, ever up, as Joyce in Odes said. Ode to

wandering, owed to the abyss, but songs of ascent. It is not the church in the

modern world but the benediction church against the world, ever against that

world we are in but not of and which we are coming out of.

We will be and all shall be well. We will be disclosed, He will be disclosed. The

Appropriation has been Disclosed. Closure rapture ruptures. A hermeneutics of

continuity, a hermeneutics of rupture. The council occurred amid the disruption of

the sixties. And as I grew toward it the Church was deconstructing until JP II put a

stop to deconstruction in the catholic Church. In the world the Soviet empire

deconstructed, and capitalism deconstructed but the Church did not. End of story

but not the end. Priests? Some fell, but not all. Same story. Not even one out of

twelve. Always a bad one in the mix. They said look to it yr self. They always do itfor the money. This temptation, against innocence, against sobriety, against purity,

will pass. The city of God will rise, and Jerusalem will descend for heaven would

have all Israel saved. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for Her to come with

God. Next year in Jerusalem.

At first there was a wanderer who found his abyss. Then a man found by God, found

by woman, found in time, while waiting for eternity. All of it written in a book. Allin all, unveiled, apocalyptic, disclosed.

You are either going up or down, you cannot stay where you are, though that

would satisfy most people.


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Obscurely it has been said that the way up and the way down are one and the same.

Now I know. They are, so: a city rises, built by God and martyrs, a city falls,

witnessed by the rest. Between them nothing at all. The first was and is and will be.

The second only seemed to be, but counterfeit, was taking by the many for the fittest

world. But fit what is. Only one. Semblance only ghosted, while souls were saved.

Few found it. I pray I was one.

Where do you stand, to what do you kneel, if you kneel at all? On the day of

transformation where will you be? Some say taken, some say left behind. He said the

last will be first, the first will be last. You choose.

The Spirit of God moved over the abyss. Once. The Spirit of God filled the church.

Twice. Now the Spirit of God I pray will come again against the world to save

Gods city. To not defer the differences but in order to discern them. To tell the real

from the unreal city. It is almost the end of the long night of manmade light. The

dawn approaches, a light that will never set, a son returns. Where will you be, on his

right or left?

Do not be afraid. Stay in your room and pray. Let the word grow in you. Know that

God has chosen you to be alive at this time. It was 50/50. Half the people who have

ever lived are alive today. He will come to judge the living and the dead. He is the

just judge, His mercy is that too. One act. One time. All in All.

Love and fill the world you are in with it. Two cities. One world. The church in the

modern world. Lucky world, after all. Just get to the city on time. Departure is near,and dear to us all. Apocalypse to come. Christ, come quickly! Though we are not

finished yet, Christ, come quickly! Though there is more that would be done,

Christ, come quickly! Though the world will pass away, Christ, come quickly!

Though the judgment is certain yet uncertain, do not delay, Christ, come quickly!


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Though some may not be saved yet, Christ, come quickly! So more will not lose

their faith, we pray,

Christ, come quickly!

God and Writing,

or How We Might Have Failed in Our Arrival

True Word, True Bread, Christ came down from Heaven: to heal us. From

ourselves. Wallace Stevens sat on the edge of his bed and heard the bird sing at

daybreak and thought it was reality, the thing itself. But dark Stevens in darkness

heard a bird sign only and so ended his lifes work as a Greek by divination of a sign,

not with the thing itself. Dark Stevens, in his hard reality of fiction, knew the death

of evil as a tragedy, and perhaps was that and nothing besides. But hear the poor man

say, we are what we are to God, that only, and nothing besides. And what are we to

God? What can we be but an idea? We are but ideas in the infinite Mind of God. Healone is that which is. We simply are not. So some far-fetched fiction would tell

allegories of how we sleep and only think we wake. Far rather, God dreamed, and

dreamed of us. What will we be when He awakes? Since there is no composition in

God, as Aquinas says, no parts, no accidents, no movement, we are but the ideal of

substance, already eternal, already one. Derrida, in his writing, would substitute

composition-less composition for God. How? By destroying writing as he writes, by

interdicting steps he cannot take. He makes writing One. As he wrote: Nothing

outside of the text. Composition-less composition. A new God. Utter complexity so

enormous it is sublime virtual simplicity. Rather, monotony, as my nephew Justin

Martin said, nowadays everybody is the same. What we once were, our idea of

God, or better, a dream our God enjoyed, became a limitless possibility without an


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act, an actor, an action, an actuality. To make us infinite, as Mallarme said. But we,

instead, felt indefinite, and fell, abyss on abyss, with only that one direction,

gravitys, which our light could not escape. The totality of knowledge as possible

became the thing that drew us. And the light of the idea, that shape, that form,

though insubstantial as a dream, died. We did not arrive. We dived. We plunged.

We did not climb, we did not aspire. Without Spirit, in a material more dense than

the quickest quicksand, we expired. This we though is merely our country and

our culture, two supreme fictions. Individuals instead have climbed out of the abyss

and scaled the mountain to the altar of God. Looking back they see the abyss in

flames, the burning in the waste, the fire that may consume all in the chasm, while

those on the mountain escape the fate of fire. The Church has never been in the

abyss, so the we is not the Church speaking. It is gathered at the throne on high,

where someday all can find a place. Let us then speak of all rather than we, for

all are called. God and writing at first did not seem opposed, and surely God has no

opposite. Knowing this, the deceit had to be at once brazen but clandestine, and the

contamination but oblique. The way of light is strait and narrow, but there is no end

to the windings of the serpentine line of the writers indefinite traces. God has

written, has already written, on our hearts, and it is a pure writing, a pure love and a

pure timelessness that is at the heart of the human race. Climb the mountain, retreatinto your hearts, find the purity inscribed there, a kingdom, eternal, waiting for you

and me. When we stop writing, when we fall silent, when we choose understanding,

when we become real, without artifice, but with art in life, with creation in love,

thoughtful, we may listen to the words of others, learn discernment through a

listening and a putting into practice, testing the spirits, to find what is right and

pleasing to God, to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, through meaning

that is neither excessive nor repetitive, but simply delineated, like the edge of adiamond, that creation of the form and pressure of the time: sharp, hard, bright, rich.


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will have been a book, filled with many signatures, at least three or four,

or seven or twelve, but never simply two or one, for then there will be no

signature and no end to the signatures, for the cuts and the wounds to

heal, not in schizophrenic fashion, as the symptom that produces its own

fore-healing, out of the play of forces that exert us within and without,

making us both hyper sexual and hyper textual in the same instant of

madness, overloaded with desire, overly attentive in our reading, trying to

discern the indecipherable, circles of selves to fit the square hole of the

abyss on the page and the stage, that framework of tech city, that un

natural un shaped form less form beyond the simplicity of the curve of lifethat distorts our being into the one multi-task of living and dying in the

same

interrupted, as I met my age and did shoulder I knew not what, but God

knew, when I knew Him not, and in the seeming interregnum of the

vacant dethroned disfigured decapitated deconstructed I sought theabsolute, and held that we should go from nothing to everything, and

against the grain, and despite the triumph of the will and the eclipse of

reason and the ebbing of faith and trust, I was a seeker, but I was found,

and though it seemed I was struck by genius and by magic and by the

muse, yet I did strike a blow, not against all that, but at the giant Goliath

in the way, and what my rock was you should know, and what the sword,

that too you shall know, for there was a behemoth, call it what you will,

a thing I sum post-modern, that can in principle, of its own terms, neverbe summed, no summa yet possible, yet summation required, and that

theological, and a synthesis, to appropriate and not to be appropriated,

and to give and not to count


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moment, like the supposed, like the word itself, which gives itself away in

speech yet retains itself in the graphic shadow of a drawn and quartered

neo-nor, the syn- despised, the thesis suspended, the trace of something

that escapes both wisdom and foolishness, a kind of hilarity that is the

death of serious work and building, dwelling and thinking, for a

wandering polysemy, polylogia, a bare hymen of meaning between

ourselves, our frail consciousness and the abyss of nonentity, that ISBN

said is sacred yet tainted with vice, and in the taintedness, dreams of our

yet un written pages flowing with no restriction to the falls of hymeneal

aggravations and abusive abysses, the assault of the letter A on all we are,an aggregation of insubstantial structures,

the cost, and to shoulder like Atlas, and not to merely shrug, and to stand

under God when all around me the world was falling, not searching, but

despising, and rushing, in economy, to spend all the capital of ourinheritance, to waste the rich deposit of faith and reason so carefully

built up by work and sweat of men and women over 4000 years, the

great remainder of all dwindling to almost nothing, and then on bare

credit to live, the future consumed as well, with nothing left for children,

not even a generation to come, all it seems we have destroyed, even the

possibility of action itself, the void invaded, the abyss and the gravity of

it, the black star our hearts wed, the river she ran into no sea, and bells

did ring always from morning till night, at dawn, at dusk, matins and

vespers, weddings and funerals and a few more baptisms, but always in

the church in the world, and in a tower that did not babble, though it did

seem about to fall, and some supporting it, as


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unlike 1, 2, 3, 4: but more like Nietzsche on the square, overcome over-

man, over a flogged and dying beast that was no thing but the wretched

point at which his mind collapsed under the weight he could not support

of a lifetime of the power of the open, but in order to arrive, in another

way, without madness, yet still to find love, and this not in profits of

extremity, but in the prophecy of catholic economy, when all will be not

the glory globalizing but de-capitalizing, when the church of the new

after the apocalypse, the time from 1945-2010, will emerge, a pure white

nothing, a reconstructed theory and a reestablished practice, a Virgin,

married to both God and Man, union of fecundity and yet with no actualrelations with the world, a gift, a prayer that is apart, a part of the world

I and what we knew symbolically as 1000 points of light, as Francis did

hold the church from falling, in his time, to make firm what was

tottering and to do as has been said, we were all re-sponsible, though Iwas more responsible than the rest, as the priest told me that I was that

man, as God called me, I lie not, and told me that I was doing it for the

church because they were confused and did not understand His mercy,

and that my vocation was true, and He does love me, and said so, and

another priest said work on and risk and do not be discouraged, and as

the King said, though 10,000 fall yet I will trust in you Lord, and there

was no inter-regnum at the throne though the see may have been vacant,

I do not know, but that the corruption of the time did reach even into theChurch and did fell the world, and all, but at the same time in symbols,

in signs, the real dialectic did prove that every action is every other

action, as every other is holy other, despite the will to


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that transcends the world at the same time it absolutely transforms it, from

both the inside and the outside, without force, yet traversing by a work

the fantasy and the necessity of the lack of production for a reality

promised but undelivered by the fasces, by the face of the veiled and the

unveiled, by Jews and Moslems and the still Christian, by atheists and

athletes of wealth, by a realm of morals that is being but transubstantiated

to mysticisms without reserve, and finding in this the word of St. Sartre

for the building up and tearing down by the anti sculptor Giacometti,

who would with unceasing labor create and destroy the synthesis of art

and religion and philosophy in the dialectic of the search for what anothercalled the SA: as savoir absolute, in you, yes, therefore

dissipation, and the will to deceive, and many there are who have been,

we did still love and believe, and hope for the coming of the great day of

our liberation from wealth and poverty, and all that goes with that

economy, for an economy of grace and mercy that has always been andwill always be, let it be done on earth as it is in heaven, dear Lord, I

pray, that those who laugh will cease and those who mourn who will

have a ceasing of their cause for mourning, and that in the age of

analysis, we made something of our world, against it and for it at the

same time, as was the Church, which despite the lack of holy attention

still was mindful in missions and in charity and said so much right and

did so much right and did so feed the millions with words and

sacraments and breaking even in their daily bread, so done for thatChurch, a work stood, not torn down, though not one stone will be left

atop another, as the Savior said, we may at last find the paradise throne,

a temple interpreted as thee


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SymbolsThe speculative begins and ends in the realm of thesymbol, which as has been said, gives rise to thethought. That every symbol implies an explication meansthat in the folds of things that have meaning arepossibilities that both open and close ourunderstandings. Open because they allow reading and

therefore the possibility of learning, and close becausethe limit case of comprehension is a grasping that cannotgrasp itself, on the one hand, and which must let go, turnloose, of itself, in order to be grasped, not by any andevery other, but by the one truth, the incomprehensiblethat comprehends us as we are, making us

comprehensible to ourselves in principle, thoughsometimes knowledge is deferred or denied. That thesymbol divides itself in two, in the etymological sense ofthe word symbol, indicates a brokenness, anincompleteness, in fact, which in principle is alreadycomplete and whole. Symbol systems are always derived

from other systems, which seems to deny origins, as doesour understanding of language, which cannot beincomplete, but which as has been shown, and incontradiction to this, has some radical incompleteness


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lodged in the heart of every state of affairs. We did notinvent the remedy that God provides. We sought Him,hidden in things, and have perpetually found and lostHim over and over again, the Absolute, the cause andgoal of the search, the guard and guide of life, that thanwithout which nothing can be conceived, in which welive and move and have our meaning, making symbolicactions, which we sometimes dimly perceive in truth, but

which we believe have a definite value for God, wherewe hope our works will always be written in the book ofeternal narrative, a place in which our roles, written, areread, by all of us, actors and audience, at the discretionof sole Authority.


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September of my years

When I was 21 it was a very good year and I and a girlloved or tried to, and listened to Jackson Browne sing ofthe pretender, and we cried and felt the pain, but I do notthink we understood what we were grieving for, but now

at 53 I look back and know. It was not just that our littlelove would not last, but something like the crisis ode ofWordsworth, in which he remarks the passing away of

the glory and the dream, the gleam of vision, from theearth. I have lived and I have seen, in the 1960s and

since, the death of the ideal, which made one lastdesperate stand back then, all you need is love we said,

and then the death of the real, as well, in our virtualage, until this time we endure of the nothingness, themere show, the pretense, the less than zero. The thingthat happened, the act of the deconstruction of the ideal

and the real that led to the nihilism of today, can only be

cured by the prescription of faith. As another singercried, Lets make it real one more time. The thought onwhich we depend is one that goes back to the twin source

in Greece of Plato and Aristotle, of the ideal and the real,the two indispensable sites of philosophy, which themoderns, Kant and Nietzsche, destroyed in the

deconstruction of the ideal and then the real, leaving usonly nihilism, which was always implicit in the tradition

but which had not been unfolded until the modern era.Platos critique of his own ideas showed what wouldhappen someday. But there is something else implicit inthe tradition, thank God, and that is the thought outsidethe Greeks idealism and realism and implicit

nothingness. That thought is one that was born in Israel,


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and which Jesus Christ fulfilled. We may say it is grace.Grace and faith are already contained in the folds of thisJew-Greek Greek-Jew world, the other of metaphysics

that completes metaphysics, rather than destroying it.Logic was the law, and Christ came not to destroy it butto fulfill it. This involves the contradiction of which I writein the work, the theory of the truth of contradiction, the

reversal of the nothing to reach everything. It was thething I saw as early as 1988, because, despite it all, Iwas never a nihilist, though I was a pretender. As the

singer said, say a prayer for the pretenders, who try tobuy happiness, rather than make real the way to it.

Nothing, not even a church, especially the Roman, can dothis for us, for the machination has long involved even

what we thought was holy, but let us instead stand orkneel and pray, in ones or twos or threes, little churches,and thus more truly catholic, and say I love thee whom Ihave not seen, whom money cannot buy, though some

think to sell you. I look back and see the way to wisdom.

He will lead us into deserts and strip us naked andespouse us there. We must thus be exposed, and Romemost of all, to wed the God who is ideal and real and

more. Until we became nothing, we could not be saved,but now he must make us realize our very ownnothingness. I see robots, animals, and devils in the

streets, but few men. Someday men will walk the earthagain, if God wills. I believe he loves us enough to

change us, correct us, chastise us, unmask our hypocrisy,with the judgment beginning at Rome. Be not afraid. Painand death are not the very worst things that can happen,and are necessary. The end of the world is thisrealization, and we will go from nothing to everything,

when we realize we are nothing, nothing but an


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insubstantial and merely virtual thing like a dream. Butfirst we must become aware, even as we dream, that weare dreaming, in order for the good God to therefore

wake us up. Our dream is a nightmare, and we now mustawake, arise, arrive. I will awake thee O sleeper I said, Oyes I who await thee will yet awake thee.


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Pi Critic is Me

We, wilderness-wed,wail-rode, form-finding,neither deferred nordeterred, denying death,and dying to desire,a way kings realized,along aside a bridesproductionshe, allinnocence, all absolutes,all wise, in relativity,he but blinded in the

still blessing, allowingconsciences benediction,she altogether really realand he but idealized,in the nihilistics, camethe ring of grace, camedeath knells and kneelingat altars, given temptation,given grace, the mysterynot known yet not to be

denied, under theprocession of the triumphof life, became the precession,the return, the shift of anaxis or axle, bedded,abetted, but we connected,all in the whirl of turningstime, that is, of times standstill, still standing as thetime arrived.


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Peace

God did not start,

God did not cease,

Yet the work is done.

Ye bastards:

Save it for your wives.

Rough bests the worst,And to sea would I ride.

I have not yet begun,

I have already done,

For God in me still hides.

The birds will sing,

The night will chant,As you and I abide.


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Michael Bolerjack

3230 S. Gessner Rd. #115Houston, TX 77063

March 26, 2012

Your Eminence,

I am a graduate of a catholic seminary, where I was a lay student

who obtained an MA in theological studies in 2005. I also

obtained an MLA with a concentration in English from a

catholic university. I was baptized in the catholic church in 1991

at the age of 34. My wife and I were married sacramentally in

2001. I write you with the hope you will read what I havewritten with concern for the church. It is much of the time a

difficult book to understand cognitively and substantially it will

probably be disconcerting to you by the conclusion it makes. I

send it to you, then, as my responsibility and as restitution to the

church I care for.

Sincerely,

Michael Bolerjack


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June 5, 2011

Michael Bolerjack

3230 S. Gessner Rd. #115

Houston, TX 77063

Dear Sir,

In May, 2007, I sent you a few pieces after you spoke at The

University of St. Thomas in Houston, and you were kind enough

to review them and recommend a couple of places to forward

the work. I didnt find a buyer that year, and then did not pursue

publication again until this year, after having written the book I

am sending you now. It is a literary text, though it is concerned

with theological and philosophical topics. The styles, especiallyin the second half, take off from Joyce, each chapter in a

different technique, even using poetry to make my point

concerning the Catholic Church. I set up the conclusion by

working out what, in the first half, is a logic reconciling the

contradictions in the world by saying the whole is true, not any

one side or party, and then afterward I show the big

contradiction that the Church at Rome represents. The work

received a favorable review from Harpers in San Francisco, a

letter I will attach. The material is timely, concerning events this

year, and is the best and really only important thing Ive ever

written. Though it is non-fiction, it is, I will repeat, literary, and

the book has not a single footnote. I think readers will find it


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both controversial and written in a manner that convinces them.

This, because it is not an off-the-wall diatribe about the rapture

or some such. I believe in the work itself, and in the vocation I

have concerning it, and was encouraged especially by a priest inthe confessional to pursue publication, and as he said, sell it. He

told me not to get discouraged, and even relieved me of the

obligation to work a regular job, so that I could stay at the task. I

did not set out in the beginning to find the facts I present, and

was surprised by my conclusion, having been in the Church

since 1991, and having even earned a masters degree in

theology at St. Marys seminary in Houston in 2005, before my

MLA at UST in 2008. Einstein once said, you have to be willingto follow the truth wherever it leads, even if you wind-up

proving yourself wrong. If, in the end, I find that Derrida was

right and John Paul II was wrong, so be it. There is much more I

could tell you about myself and the way the work took place, but

I think if you read it you will see the worth of it for itself, as

well as for the church and the world. I said in a letter I sent out

two months ago, no one will have ever written of the things I do,in the way I do, with the conclusion I make. I think there is a

chance this book will make news, and sell well, because you

never know what the people will find interesting. I hope it is not

too late to get it in stores by the end of the year, if you choose,

because it is timely. I enclose the requisite envelopes for your

response, if there is any, and for the return of the manuscript,

otherwise.

Michael Bolerjack


27/61

h 2 o

riverrun hearcalitus said, and joyce waking

second says it all flows, as the sound of many

waters, the voice, and god in it all, forgiving,

reigning over me, past all membrance, past even

the harvest moon shining tonight, aftercompletion after the law after the church after

words, he sees me, she knows, I am not the

grass, but the water for it to grow, and two parts

logic and one part literature, find me humbly

waiting bath. I have had my baptism, yes, in

thee Ive been made clean, washed, worshipped,

rains song, son reigns, yes is thee.


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Flores de

Monterrey

Once I said,

I knew not why,

Petals to dirt,

Stem to sky.


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ARTS REST

Wherefore art thou?

Art at rest? To pause, to remain, to support, art.

Rhythmic silences. Steps at starets. Sartres

stare. The rest is silence. But art at rest re-starts,

again and again. The books I have written restand re-start, not hesitating like Derrida, or like

he says Freud does inBeyond the Pleasure

Principle, not taking the step. I take the step, of

faith, of hope, of love, of arrival, of action,

positif, still possible, against the deconstruction

of the ideal and the real, when nothing became

possible, and the possible became impossible.

The books are St. Sartres re-start, reclaiming

both the existentialists freedom and the

dialectical critique for today. It may be thatJean-Paul will make it in before John Paul II. It

is up to God, but Christ says the prostitutes and

sinners make it in before his opponents in the


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official church of His day. The gospel does not

pass away, because it always applies. Our

situations (Sartres word) never change. Thechurch needs change. The church needs Christ.

But like the young man at the seminary told me,

Gods hands are tied. How can the One with the

whole world in His hands not be free? He hands

us freedom without losing His. As long as He

has hands, there will still be a world to hold.

He is free and we are free, radically free, free of

Popes and popularity, of politicians, and of

history, since that ended sometime during the

last fifty years. With the end of history in the

post-modern period, an abrupt thing faces us:

we do not have to be tied to the time we are in,

we are no longer historically conditioned.

Therefore:

Re-start the arts. St. Sartre would. Stress theTessera, the era of fragmentation, in order for

the mosaic to be made. I do not give a rats ass

how you do it, but put the pieces together again.


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Establish the stars. As the poet said, nothing will

have taken but the place, except perhaps for a

constellation. He conceded the power ofimagination to still make patterns, despite the

deconstruction latent in his poetry, which

Derrida found and expounded. Poetry in arrears,

as we all are, and myself especially, let us give

the word.

Arrest, art rest, then re-start, begin again, like

Finnegan, waking, say yes, say thee and thou

and thine, not I and me and mine. Buddha said

he was always at the beginning. To connect the

end to the beginning, a very hard thing to do. To

sign, without resignation, to name, not for fame,

to put words in books, like they did in the

nineteenth century, before, ere, erstwhile,

previous to motion pictures, records, radio,

television, computers.

Rasters, scatter patterns. Rather, Easters,

homeward, by the book, for why not then be of

another time? Time itself has ended as such. It is


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time to begin again, beginning with time. The

world still turns at the same speed, though there

is no world to turn.

Rare stars, rear yourselves, rise up sires, roses

risen:

The rest is not silence, but fire.


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Argumentum

It rained all night,

The day I died;

As Bottom dreamed,

Therefore did I.

And so, what happened to the world today? It is

the feast of St. Jude, apostle and patron of the

hopeless and the desperate. Gabriel Garcia

Marquez died, the greatest writer of my

lifetime. My wife looked for work. The nation of

Mexico slid further into chaos. The people of

the U.S. prepared a turn away from the future

to the failures of the past. The Catholic Churchcontinued to be rocked by scandals that

threaten not just the nation of Vatican City

state, but the faith of millions of people. What


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happened to the world today? In the symbolic

life of the globe, much, in every way, and the

torch was passed to a new generation. Whethermy colossus will be put into print is something I

have come to care less and less about the

better the writing became and the closer I felt

God draw near to me, as a catholic, as a writer,

as a husband, as a man. Now, there seems little

left to do. I could tell you how to figure out just

who the hell 666 is. Multiply the six times the

six times the six. Then do a little reckoning. I

think he must be doing that himself. What does

it mean that he and I and you are all here at the

same time? I know not. But God is here. And he

knows. That God only knows is enough for me.

If you can pray, then pray. If you can think, then

think. If you can still feel, then thank God, and

then think and pray. The symbols were never

notated properly. The system existed to do so,but fell into disuse, due to technological

fascism. The third Reich did not pass away, as

was thought. To find that is to find part of the


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secret of the world that happened today. That a

world still happened today. That a world

happened. Be still. The work does not speak ofthese things, but prepares a future out of the

disaster. We are out of time, and yet I had to

find a way to re-found, re-fashion, re-model, re-

make what had been made impossible in

principle and in fact. He said if you have faith.

I said I do but not without you. He could have

saved us alone, but he wouldnt have it

otherwise.

Otherwise, we would not be saved. The world

may have already ended, otherwise. It may be

the whole of the enigma of the postmodern age

is contained in this word otherwise. The end

of things really took place otherwise than what

good men and women could have conceived.

This was because the end could not be withoutthis theoretical thought of the Otherwise,

which made the symbolic end of things

possible, in making the literal impossible, in


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making the spiritual otherwise. The otherwise is

itself the perversion of the sign, which made

the symbolism of the Book of Revelation sohard, really impossible in days past, to

comprehend. Because it is a mirror of today.

Oh, for days of future passed. Oh, for the time

when Glaswill have been, in the future perfect,

and mourning in America will be over. They say

it is morning on election day, but they cannot

elect themselves, and neither politicians nor

prophets can elect themselves, but must be

chosen, must be called, and vocations are

given, not made. Otherwise, Derrida was

prophetic. But not in truth, for he mixed truth

with lies, and contaminated the pure,

symbolically, with the taint of the trace, as in his

Glas, the Immaculate Conception, or IC, is

violated, if that be possible. But the virgin she

was the whitest winter remains, and virginssaved the world, not celibacy or celebrity, nor

the celebration of mass, nor mourning for the

dead, but I think instead by the virgin purity of


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the dance of King David before the ark of the

Lord. He may have done impure things at one

time, but his dancing was purely done, for theglory of God, for all to see, and he sang too, and

sang his songs prophetically, as a priest would,

if the priests were indeed prophets. Such

vocations, I have found, are few. It may be that

technology has en-framed and en-slaved us, as

recent films depict. That something not

conscious could do so, would only be because

we too were no longer conscious, were not

mindful, but through sheer mindlessness,

allowed the subjection of freedom by our

desire for a limitless play, rather than to do the

work of true vocations, with limits set by God

alone, not by a vacated, borderless ingenuity,

invented otherwise.

In all, I remain Catholic, though what thismeans is not clear. That I am not in communion

with Benedict XVI is clear to me, and this

because I believe the see of Peter is vacant. At


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what historical moment this happened, I know

not. It could have been after the forgery of the

Donation of Constantine, or the declaration ofInfallibility, or the stashing of Nazi loot in the

Vatican bank, or the murder of John Paul I.

There are some things we cannot know, now,

but there is nothing hidden that will not, in the

end, be revealed. Almost any and all of the

millions who sit in the pews of parishes around

the world are more Catholic than the pope in

Rome, so I must be, too. The Church was not

invented by Christ, but rather it was invented by

itself, at least the way it is today. Christ told the

apostles to preach to all nations, but not to

accuse men of heresy while excusing crimes of

the clergy. As Kierkegaard said, it is tragic

because it is perishing, comic because it goes

on. He spoke of ancient Greece and of the

modern world, while I refer to the Romanresponsibility and the Roman irresponsibility,

the Mystery yet inscribed.


39/61

The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged

sword. It was with God in the beginning, and

shall be the instrument in Revelation thatconquers evil and the enemies of God. I believe

the events of the Apocalypse have been

unfolding for many years now, and that in fact,

it is nearly finished. You say, where? And,

when? The reason we look and do not see, hear

but do not understand, is that the Book of

Revelation is symbolic, in the sense that it is not

an allegory but a simultaneously literal and

mystical prophecy of today. This can only be

true because the events in the world that are

now taking place are symbolic as well. The first

beast has already come and gone, and the

second recommends him. The sixth is reigning

now, with the seventh to come. Rome will

always be Rome. Jerusalem will always be.

Fallen is Babylon, symbolically, which the wholeworld witnessed. I believe that primarily the

destruction is about the Church, which did not

deconstruct like the Soviet Union, but which


40/61

could not escape corruption morally and really

in doctrine as well, because of what is known as

the trace. The taint of the trace has hollowedout the Church and a fortiori the world while

the world still stands, empty, hollow, void,

virtual. As Peter says, if judgment begins at the

House of God, where does the poor sinner

stand? It seems the death culture we have been

warned against by recent successors of Peter

was unavoidable, and that deconstruction in its

texts furthered the death drive to the abyss.

The repetition, the return, the circularity, the

vicious circle, the step not taken beyond, the

logic of the abyssal text can be broken by the

logic of the impossible, that is, by grace,

because God alone can do the impossible, and

has, and does, and will. The battle between

love and death remarked often in Scripture is

being enacted today, and occurs in my booksfrom beginning to end, a kind of miniature

mirror of the drama of the ages we are

experiencing, but too often, without meaning. I


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myself have been a coward toward Gods Word,

shown but little charity, little patience, wanting

it all, and right now. But healing followschastisement. Though I have done next to

nothing, though Israel has betrayed God, that is

the Church has not practiced the theory of

Christianity lived by only a few, yet God can

work salvation for many. But we, I think, must

believe and turn around, not simply spinning,

but breaking the circle and marking out a

straight path, narrow, hard to find, but true.

Ask, seek, knock, give, love, pray, believe. Tell

the truth. That the end is not only near, but

almost over, who could have guessed? Where

the corpse is, there the vultures shall gather. If

you need Him, He will be there. He said so.

Trust in His mercy. Turn away from the world

toward the Good, and be transformed by the

renewal of your mind. The Church tried reformand renewal, but failed, and now we will see

what God does or allows to happen to it, and to

the world. Yet, the Word of God will arrive, the


42/61

Sword, and in truth defeat death,

deconstruction and all who make a lie. We need

not worry about the contradictions in Scripture,in theory and practice, or in our own selves. But

let us admit the truth and know what we are,

what our world has become, what the Church

has, too, sadly become. What we are we should

know. But who we are to God, that we do not

yet know, and so we may hope in His goodness

and mercy, which is under the control of no one

else but Jesus Christ. We have been given time,

given temptation, but shown mercy. Rome may

not understand, may never know, but you and I,

we should try to understand, the drama of our

own unfaithfulness, while God stood faithfully

by. Our return is not eternal, but takes place in

time. Prodigals, Magdalenes, let us return.


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April 2, 2011

Michael Bolerjack

3230 S. Gessner Rd. #115

Houston, TX 77063

Dear Sir,

It seems to me that no one will have ever written of the things I do in the

way I do with the conclusion I make. If you can further the cause of the

work I send you, by all means do so. My financial situation and other

matters are precarious, and you may not be able to reach me directly at

the above address in the future. If you should decide in some manner to

act on this text, feel free to do so at your will. I think once you have read

it, you will see the seriousness of the work, and be able to decide for

yourself what should be done.

Sincerely,

Michael Bolerjack


44/61

All Souls Day

My Lord,

I would sing Thee,Of Your grace I would sing,

Of mercy and love and kindness,

And of the chastisement that

Heals after correction.

Of Thee I sing.

Corrected, completed,

Of Thee I sing.

My Love,

My Life,

Yes,

I did sing Thee.

There was be-bop and hip-hop,

And rock and soul between,

And country and blues and gospel,

All along the way,

And many who sang,

And many who knew not the words,Without sometimes a tune at all,

Yet in the end You were sung,

By one and all,

Even when we knew it not.

And amazing to me,

Was the grace I found,

Not only, that while I sang of

Thee, yet, Lord, yes,

You sang me.


45/61

An Icon for the Church on the Mercy of God

You be like you ever, my beautiful one, my beloved, my Sabbath, my peace, my way to

break the circle of God and Church and World, icon makers not iconoclasts, not idol

worshippers, but in the twilight of the idols at high noon, in the midst of an error, we stood

single, you and I, and did break it, did break the text, did step back, not out of the word,

but out of all implication, by the prayer of the supplicate, the tare torn, debt cancelled, the

call of tessera, pieces of a sweet life we loved it crazy, but not so: we did but live it. You

were ripe and I was ready and we arrived, later. We heard our callings and we responded,

choose us Lord, yes be taken. O my peace, yet you could not rest, and looked beyond,

while I, a solitaire, a promontory, looked at you and saw the sadness of late tales, of

tombs, of toil, of the undone. You were the passage, not the goal of it, and I passed

through you, like the poet said, and I saw through you, not with you, and did arrive beside

you, not as if to be. The icons came down, so that one could be built, strange, I did not

know. I did not destroy them, but despite the theory of contradiction, when the thing

denied itself, I denied it too. An icon now is, and you in it, and others too, if they will

break the deadlock, and allow in their gratuity a freedom to God, to affirm all. Effracting

God-Church-World, a system made on the bones of the infinite, by limit stand, ever, and

be like you, come the Sabbath. I speak to you and to the world and to God all at the

same time, and so make no sense to anyone, I ever the incomprehensible. And yes, not

yet, even you, you did not understand, and the world I contradicted must not understand,

or else I was wrong, but as long as God alone understands, the icon was not in vain, and

I did not falter, pulled down vanity in myself first of all, and put back more than I took.

God gave all, all must be returned. I give you all, for all of you.


46/61

At Harvest Time

I lay down my weary tune beside you sleeping

As you stirred and turned and almost not quite

Opened your eyes and almost not quite heard

Me whisper:

I finished, I finished.

By the banks of Marinela, by the sound of many

Sleeping, I did not hang up my heart, but sang it.


47/61

The Virgin Martyrs

To do more than one can do

Is a flat contradiction,

So it must not be I that did.

While you smoke the cigarette,The cigarette smokes you,

Almost not without a fire.

Joan of Arc amid her voices,

Telling her what to do; yet

It was Joan, Joan, ever Joaned,

Ever sainted, ever crowned,

Every girl who ever was,A virgin to her wedded day.


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She was my one true

Sentinel, my guardian,

Loves embodiment

Of duty and faith and work

With out end, world without end,

Words without end, but enough!

She became my one

Limit and limitation,

And in her precincts

I did thrive and grow in truth,

Grow in Christ and him in me.

What else is there but

To thank and bless her in herUncomplicated,

Graceful, simple, entire,

Perfectly, completely, and

Without a stammer

The complete that I have found

And without which I

Would have been incomplete, and

God does not like incompletes.

She has more than one

Name and her number unknown

Yet knowable, still

She is not a summation,

She is not a citation,

A little one, she,

And more to me by what she

Made here in words that

Seem to be mine, but are in

The sovereignties she is.


49/61

When I Look Into Your Eyes

When I look into your eyes I see glaciers

falling, light sparring, momentum gathered,

earth at her zenith, no dejection. The fire in

you rises, your clothes loose in the wind, a

breath of God on your hair, and stars

around to abet your half-smiling lips, now

serious, now laughing. In your transitions is

abiding, a certainty next to durableunknowns, that make the thorns of the

heart easier to bleed, the tears not

awkward to drop.


50/61

Ten Thousand Times

Ten thousand times

I have loved you

In your presence,

In your comings and goings,

And found refugeIn your gaze;

Where others glance and

Look away,

You see me.


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Beyond

Beyond the gaze

Of the old man in his bed

She saw something

No one could name,

For only moments,But still impressed in her,

As if he had seen the gift,

And she, in his look,

A blessing,

A glance ofThe glory.


52/61

Immutable

Immutable

His breathing,

His passing,

His song;

DepartureHad its

Reasons;

Making greater

Himself,

He did those who

Stood there.


53/61

If He Crowned You

If he crowned you,

If he made you an ever-

Lasting, imperishable

Sign, I would still

Read to you and

Need you as I do,Speaking poverty to

Holiness,

Artless,

Poetic.


54/61

THOUSAND THESE


55/61

Thous and Thees

For God and For HerI wrote on the

25 Years in theAnd bricks and mortarTo dedicate

Told, mind you, they sent a calf, young andfoolish,To defeat HCEThe Highly Compensated EmployeeFrom Howth Castle and Environs,

cause the course of the ricorso does not,never can, will not by any means

Circle back aroundTo an Apocatastasis,No de capo,

Not again again, neither do I hope to,

For thouendstheeAnd every good poet must be ste set tse stetagainst the wake,


56/61

Away alone along

The

Thing we call world ends more likeYes

Than it

Aint

Is to a T, the tt, the anti- the tain, the taint?Reading,

For it is all teletyped

Cept the stakes

And putting it all in the machine was the bestthing I could do,

For look at what became of written reading andLanguage,

And the world, it too in a,


57/61

I mean lThe bender,

I lean,And rememberHer,

She knew something we didnt,

But Susan knew,

And I will not forget her or our sins,

For God put me,Hear to remember

Her,For you,ForEver,

ForMan is the animal that makes mistakes,And he came to be,

Leaving after he wrote his Apocalypse,


58/61

That the world does not end with a whimper, but

set his mightOn that

They repeat the lie, nowSoonerEvery fire shall rise to

Linger notIn wasteOfThe shoring of runes butA temple not built by hands

ButOf some finer thing

Of something fine to finish

Knowing,

YetElegant,So


59/61

Intelligent,

And mixingMememoremee and desire,Like the graduate students saying Chaucer andEliot to me in Recital,

Around the table knowledgeable,

In seminar,

And I disseminating on the de-Limitation of the working of

Art symbols of,

That it we neither intend nor un-Intend,

Like

A process of the organic,

One you know allToo well,


60/61

And the professorGlared,

And the studentsLaughed,

But I was surprised at the un-doing,

For I had neither intended itNor not,

That was to have been my exemplification.

And so I was, and quit what they did not requite,

Quieter,

Qui etre,

Being the one more sinning than signed,

Having in my confused way shown them, thoughI knew it not,


61/61

that God is already doing an infinite numberof things simultaneously,

As Thomas Aquinas mentions at the end of theeternity of the World as we know it,

And that, being the burden,In a virtual argument from design,

Even if it looks like we are in the l bender, l bent,

Truly,We are not,

We only look like we are when we watchourselves in each other.

Therefore,

Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, andcontinueth therein, he being not a forgetfulb d f k

after the rapture by michael bolerjack

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