THE FAILURE OF SPIRITUAL COUNSEL (FATHER FINE'S FOLLY)

The passage below is taken from Andy Nowicki's new publication, Ravages of the 'Rough Beast,' now available on Kindle, and in paperback.

The priest with whom I scheduled a meeting about my "demon" problem was—I am convinced--- a man of personal decency and theological reliability. I do not have an easy time opening up to people, particularly if they strike me as fundamentally unserious in nature or disingenuous in temperament. It is not enough to intuit genuine compassion in another person, though compassion is, of course, a desirable, indeed, a necessary characteristic in a confidant.

But I find it foolish to seek spiritual intimacy based merely on the sense that a would-be adviser seems “well-meaning.” Good intentions are a good thing… but they are also known to pave the road to a certain loathsome place which I have visited all too frequently, one I very much wish to avoid taking up as a permanent residence.

"DEMON IN THE ROUGH"

The passage below is taken from Andy Nowicki's new publication, Ravages of the 'Rough Beast,' now available on Kindle, and in paperback.

I write with the consciousness of a man who strongly suspects he has acquired a demon.

While not feeling himself to be overtly possessed by said demon, your faithful interlocutor nevertheless struggles to comprehend his current psychic state in absence of rhetorical recourse to citation of the doings of the denizens of the infernal realm.

I am not possessed, I don’t think. Nothing unknown has invaded my body or breached the borders of my consciousness. Still, my mind is demon-haunted, and my heart is devil-bedeviled. An infernal element has entered my interior line of vision, and I can’t seem to avoid glimpsing him; he is always in front of me, though often merely in my peripherals. At times I can forget that he is even there, but then, with a wash of dread, I remember him again.

And once I recall him, there he is before me again.