Dan Gobble

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Dan is Currently Reading

Dan Gobble is currently reading

God: Stories: An Anthology

by C Michael Curtis

bookshelves: currently-reading, fiction, owned-books, prayer, theology, short-stories

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Dan Gobble said: " I found this passage in Andre Dubus' short story, "A Father's Story". I like it's description of how ritual help us interface with mystery. Here goes:
Do not think of me as a spiritual man whose every thought during those twenty-five minutes is at one I found this passage in Andre Dubus' short story, "A Father's Story". I like it's description of how ritual help us interface with mystery. Here goes:
Do not think of me as a spiritual man whose every thought during those twenty-five minutes is at one with the words of the Mass. Each morning I try, each morning I fail, and know that always I will be a creature who, looking at Father Paul and the altar, and uttering prayers, will be distracted by scrambled eggs, the weather, and memories and daydreams that have nothing to do with the sacrament I am about to receive. I can receive, though: the Eucharist, and also, at Mass and at other times, moments and even minutes of contemplation. But I cannot achieve contemplation, as some can; and so, having to face and forgive my own failures, I have learned from them both the necessity and the wonder of ritual. For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love. And, while my mind dwells on breakfast, or Major or Duchess tethered under the church eave, there is, as I take the Host from Father Paul and place it on my tongue and return to my pew, a feeling that I am thankful I have not lost in the forty-eight years since my first Communion. At its center is excitement; spreading out from it is the peace of certainty. Or the certainty of peace. One night Father Paul and I talked about faith. It was long ago, and all I remember him saying: Belief is believing in God; faith is believing that God believes in you. That is the excitement, and the peace; then the Mass is over, and I go into the sacristy and we have a cigarette and chat, the mystery ends, we are two men talking like any two men on a morning in America, about baseball, plane crashes, presidents governors, murders, the sun, the clouds. Then I go to the horse and ride back to the life people see, the one in which I move and talk, and most days I enjoy it. (pp. 40-41)

And another paragraph a few pages later, still hitting on this theme of ritual:
It was not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment. What creates despair is imagination, that pretends there is a future, insists on predicting millions of moments, thousands of days, and so drains you that you cannot live the moment at hand. That is what Father Paul told me in those first two years, on some of the bad nights when I believed I could not bear what I had to: the most painful loss was my children, then the loss of Gloria whom I still loved despite or maybe because of our long periods of sadness that rendered us helpless, so neither of us could break out of it to give a hand to the other. Twelve years later I believe ritual would have healed us more quickly than the repetitious talks we had, perhaps even kept us healed. Marriages have lost that, and I wish I had known then what I know now, and we had performed certain acts together every day, no matter how we felt,and perhaps then we could have subordinated feeling to action, for surely that is the essence of love. I know this from my distractions during Mass, and during everything else I do, so that my actions and feelings are seldom one. It does happen every day, but in proportion to everything else in a day, it is rare, like joy. (pp. 42-43) ...more "

Nov 05, 2026 05:45AM · see review

Dan Gobble is currently reading

Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage

by Hazel Rowley

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Jun 02, 2025 06:46PM

Dan Gobble is currently reading

Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

by Jan L. Richardson

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Dec 24, 2024 05:49PM

See all 73 books that Dan is reading…

Dan’s Notes & Highlights

Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson

14 highlights

I’ve always maintained that the enactment of science in our world is an undertheorized attempt at an alternative political economy and value system. This is something that my character Carlos talks about in this novel. He points out that ...more