It is small kindnesses that redeem history, W. says. Small kindnesses – that’s all we have left as the great machines grind on all about us. The great political machines, the great economic machines. The great machines of regeneration …
Small kindnesses, W. says. The miracle of goodness, which appears only in isolated acts, in stupid, senseless generosity, in gratuitous altruism, as you’d find a Russian novel, like that shown by the characters of Dostoevsky and Grossman, by the holy idiots of Dostoevsky and Grossman …
He wishes I were a holy idiot, W. says, and not just an idiot. He wishes I showed a Dostoevskian innocence or a Grossmanian selflessness. He wishes I was an unworldly man, instead of being all too worldly, extra-worldly, W. says.
Sometimes, in a reverie, I step forward in a new way in W.'s imagination. Sometimes he imagines me wandering barefoot and almost naked in the severest frosts, driving away all self-love and pride, living out my life in prophetic service. He imagines me voluntarily taking on humiliation and insults to achieve the proper depth of humility, meekness and goodness of heart.
He imagines me rejecting all dignity and composure of mind, seeking to evoke nothing but contempt in my fellow human beings, all the while cultivating love for my enemies and persecutors. He imagines me as a fool for Christ, homeless and half-naked, living in humility, patience and unceasing prayer …
And when he comes to? There I am, before him again, a fool for no one, who has rejected all dignity, all self-love and pride, a man who has voluntarily accepted humiliation and insults, and who evokes nothing but contempt in his fellow human beings because he could not do otherwise …
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