She laughed at this. “You really need not apologize to me, Father.”
“Then let us return to the subject at hand.”
She nodded, saying, “All right. We scientists do require some sort of current belief to make it-”
'To make life palatable? To make chaos orderly? To create the next best toothpaste?” He again laughed boyishly at his own words, causing her to smile.
'To make connections. In seeing the connectedness of things, we learn. We can only learn when we see-own-the relationship between and among things. And one generation guides the one after. And what's wrong with that? Some singular scientist generally leads the way. Remember Galileo? Newton? Leonardo, Michelangelo, Einstein, and-”
“Newton was a fool!” He did not stop to explain this. “I don't abhor science or scientists as a rule, really, dear. But we mere mortals become too easily impressed, too easily swayed and convinced by the magic and incantations, the smoke and mirrors of it all. We are too easily accustomed to regard scientific knowledge as Truth with a capital T, when in fact what scientific knowledge is, is the best available approximation of the truth in the judgment of the majority of scientists in a specified field.”
“Touche,” she offered.
He continued, and she thought about Luc Sante's detractors who said that he loved to hear the sound of his own voice. Then again, so did she. “This is so whether it's paleontology, psychology, or pathology, or any other-ology, you see?”
“Do you include ideology in this overstuffed basket of approximations of the truth?” she asked.
“Aha, now we spar and parry. Have you ever fenced, my dear?”
“Coincidentally, I have recently taken lessons.”
“Fencing with words can be just as diabolical and can cut just as deeply. As to your question, yes, most ideologies are as insipid and leaky as any sieve.”
“But hasn't it always been true and necessary that throughout the history of mankind's search for truths, that with each step, we require some railing, some bedpost, some lamppost to hold on to? In order to further the search for understanding, growth, learning? That each science or philosophy must suffice us, in order for us to move on, to nurture growth to the next level of being and light and godliness, that place where our young generation today points us toward, absolute understanding and coexistence?”
“Of course, you are right, my dear, but not to the degree that science be taken as a Holy Grail, child.”
Calling her child made her smile. Coming from anyone else, it would have been insulting. Coming from Father Luc Sante, it felt comforting.
“I simply ask that you not allow science to overtake your faith, my dear.” He continued sipping his wine, the waiter continued filling their glasses. “And if you dispute me, my stand is shared by every psychotherapist worth his fee.” He stopped to acknowledge her furrowed brow before going on. “And make no mistake about it, psychotherapists are in fact 'faith healers' in the sense they restore one's faith as much as anything, for their concern is not with science but the soul of a man and the innocence of a faith often lost in childhood.”
She nodded boisterously. “Most scientists want to prove some truths exist in a world in which the ultimate truths are always going to be elusive. I think that's what you're saying. That while such things as, blind faith are viable, they have no identifiable variables or mathematical equivalents or formulas attached, that blind faith is the ultimate in freedom of choice. That's just the way it is. Reality's a bummer for the scientists as well as the rest of us.”
He took her hand in his again, smiling as if she were a student who now fully and finally understood. “Indeed, truth is not something that we are bom with. It is not something we possess, but rather a goal toward which we strive.”
“Well, I understand that we scientists are little more immune to jumping to an unsound conclusion than anyone else, but in the absence of any other physical-”
He threw up his hands, waving her down. “We are simply too anxious and too content to let our scientists and anyone in authority do our thinking for us, Doctor. We are too easily led, too readily compartmentalized and departmentalized and happy to do it. Happy to live the life of ants scurrying across gingham tablecloths without the slightest notion of the whole. Seeing only that part of the floating opera of life confined to one's limited, single perspective, a world of colloquials. We accept that the business of God, time, and space are all questions best left to those in charge whose job it is to explore these testy areas. So we can go about doing our mortal accounting and following the one precept of God's which pleases us most-bearing children.”
“Whoa, now hold on. Not everyone on the planet is-”
“I tell you, there is a profound tendency in the civilized world to make our scientists 'philosopher kings' whom we ask to guide us through every intellectual labyrinth, when indeed, they are just as lost as we are. The blind king leading the blind cave dweller out of the cave and into a larger cave- the life of a cerebrally unmotivated, uninterested, disinterested peasant…”
“But Father… Dr. Luc Sante, you're a scientist. How can you say we've not progressed from the cave one step in all these many years on this planet?” pressed Jessica, defending with her own verbal joust. “There've been tremendous strides in psychotherapy alone.”
Luc Sante cut himself a thick slice of cheese that had been brought to the table. He chewed and spoke all at once. “Oh, we in the brain factory have indeed progressed, so true, now that we're through bandying about Freudian terms and have at very least begun to convince people to acknowledge the existence of the sun-conscious-sorry, sub-subconscious mind and its power.”
“I agree, but-”
“God smile upon us,” he interrupted her again, “we've even got people taking responsibility for their unconscious minds these days!”
Jessica laughed at his runaway enthusiasm, so rare in the aged, even more rare in the young these days, she thought.
“You laugh, but this taking of responsibility for our dual nature, it may well be the portal to the way of true salvation for this race of ours, Doctor. Listen to Beethoven.” He stopped to let the music waft over them. “There lived a man who instinctively knew. Perhaps due to his own personal dualism, his deafness, and his obsession with harmony, sound, reverberation.”
'Taking responsibility for our dual nature? Really? Through educating the masses about their own unconscious minds, you mean?”
“Think of it, a return to intellectual responsibility-all this time, the seed to our salvation turns out to be our own damned subconscious minds.” He giggled at his own summation of the origin and end of the problems of the world.
“The blossoming interest in the subconscious will lead us back to God? Is that what I'm hearing?” she asked. “Absolutely.”
“Why didn't this revelation play a part in your book?”
“It will, in the sequel, you see. My thinking is ever evolving, never static; besides it's not The God but the godliness within us.”
“You've only recendy come to this conclusion?”
He shrugged. “It has been as elusive as the smallest of butterflies, yet there before my eyes the entire way. Think of it. Dreams are gifts of God, our subconscious is the voice of God working through us. We don't always recognize the voice or understand the symbols, but there you have it.”