Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, Vol. 40, May 23, 1936

May 23 – Saturday
There is no royal road on which a man can travel in search of God. Those rare moments when I feel surrounded by His presence, when I feel full of thankfulness for life, are apt to be deluding, for I fancy at such times “Now I have found Him,” and it will always be thus, nothing can destroy this bliss.” – But days of indifference & doubt follow, and the capacity to feel again that oneness with the ‘Creator has to be built up again slowly & painfully. Gradually, in past year or so, the mystery of Christ has been forcing itself upon me. I advance hesitantly, and retreat, fearful of abandoning my reason, again & again. Sometimes I seem almost on the point of grasping the significance of his life, and able to accept it as contrary to natural laws, without the loss of my grasp on facts, but it always eludes me, I can’t seem to let go. But this I know, faith cannot be argued or reasoned. Those who believe have not manufactured it themselves out of creeds. Nor can I construct my own faith by my own will. However, I should be in a receptive state of mind; I should want to believe. That I can’t quite bring myself to do.
Reading in my diary of 1914, I often mention God in my rambles in the fields & woods at that time. This is like a revelation to me, showing how poorly our memory serves us, for I imagined that my cutting loose from a belief in a divine being to have taken place much earlier; or in fact I never really admitted God as a possibility. It gives me pleasure, and my thought was as I read these early rhapsodies of mine “I believed then, wholly & joyously, and I can again, it is in my nature” – And it seems to me, that the only way to experience again that glad rhapsodic delight in life, to see nature with a pure, innocent eye, is to believe wholly and unreservedly in God, a god of goodness, not simply an all-powerful spirit composed of equal portions of good-evil, but one wholly good.
Like “Barbelion” – I am vexed in these early diaries of my preoccupation with Nature, instead of the more interesting human contacts, family activities, or office doings. The least reference to these latter is full of interest now, whereas my over minute description of natural events are tremendously tiresome.
Another flaw I find is an all too frequent lack of sincerity afraid even in the seclusion of my diary to be honest with myself. A paragraph written first in fulsome praise of a friend I loved, I later scratched out, or re-wrote, tempering the praise to a stilted non-committal appraisal. I find myself-criticism always embroidered with little smug rebuttals.
Charles E. Burchfield, May 23, 1936