And a 'thank you' to Claudia for the suggestion for a link to tell people of a new entry in the blog. I will do that as soon as my resident expert, my wife, takes the time to show me how. Claudia is a published novelist with her own website, Humoring the Goddess, which is well worth the read. FK
Today, a new essay, "Nova Scotia," under "Essays" in the website.
And a 'thank you' to Claudia for the suggestion for a link to tell people of a new entry in the blog. I will do that as soon as my resident expert, my wife, takes the time to show me how. Claudia is a published novelist with her own website, Humoring the Goddess, which is well worth the read. FK
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The last post, "Allegory," brought me back to one of the seminal problems addressed in this blog: are we nearing the end of our cycle, to crumble and begin anew from the ashes, or are we progressing - that is, evolving into something new and never before lived? The movie that was showcased would see hope, of course, as long as we all turn back to Jesus. But the caption that it sparked for the blog "Allegory," made me think again. What is it that happened in the Enlightenment (Age of Reason) that made Western society, and now much of the world, non-spiritual in its impulses? We will not discuss that here, except for this: were the perennialists right, then? Did they have it right when they said that our greater culture has actually declined since the Renaissance because it brought us to look to the individual ego and Man rather than to the spiritual and God? For it does seem so: we have lost allegory, the framing of everyday life in greater meaning, to novels of action or character development. We have, in our social media, traded greater meaning for economic development and celebrity worship. With all our technological advancements, haven't we buried the essential seed, the spark that makes life really worth living? And is this not a downward spiral?
As a final nod to August vacations - at near end now, alas - I picked up one more novel to read for general distraction, a science fiction work written by Jack Anderson, a journalist who was famous in the 1970's and 80's. Sci fi is often so bad that I thought that, at the very least, a journalist would know how to write. But I have been pleasantly surprised that this book, "Millennium," (written in the early 1990's about the millennium of 2,000) is not only written well, but is thoughtful beyond expectations. Briefly sketched, it is about alien surveillance of our society, and a critical look at our society and nation itself. In it, an alien - big head and eyes and all - comes to earth roughly disguised as a human to give the President a message: that the Galactic community has quarantined Earth as a moral hazard, and has now decided it must be cleansed of intelligent (human) life for the safety of the greater cosmic community. Our alien, called "Victor," is a renegade, though; he is not supposed to interfere with this human experiment, and by trying to get us to change our course, he is risking his membership in the community. He does not initially succeed. He is turned back by the guard at the White House (of course) and is then mugged by a street gang, one of whom steals a bit of alien technology that allows one to control the memories and actions of humans. Without this device, he is as helpless as any human, stranded and incapable of helping humanity. Ah, but coincidences abound, a secret government agency gets wind of him, and so on. A good thriller, but it has its surprising depth, too. Nearing the end, the alien comes into contact with a famous journalist who has a well-read column. It is to him that he explains the situation: First, he tells the agnostic, cynical old columnist that the Galactic community does not believe in God - rather, they KNOW that God exists (what a surprise from a journalist!). Further, that moral thoughts and actions have a direct material effect on the world, and by extension, the cosmos: that is, that immorality (in a greater sense) is out of tune with a moral universe and thus causes catastrophes, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and, had it been written a little later, probably Global Warming. It is for this reason that humans must be cleansed. But if we can change our attitudes to one of hope and care and integrity, we can change the future instantly. To quote the alien, if we rid ourselves of our "puerile arrogance," we can be saved. I have not quite finished the book, but it strikes at the very core of what has been discussed so frequently in this blog: that it is our inner spiritual life that controls our outer world, and our destiny. Here, Anderson gives us a quick, final opportunity to change our ways before the aliens cleanse themselves of our fouled presence. And it could be that these aliens do exist - not as we understand existence, but as Anderson has us understand the power of morality. Perhaps it is through our inner moral being that we create what we believe to be our selves, our bodies, as well as the material presence of other beings. Perhaps, then, alien beings are a projection of our inner development - no less real than us, but seen as they are as a reflection of where we currently stand. Perhaps, then, aliens define in some inscrutable way what we have alienated from ourselves - and in the juxtaposition, stand in judgment as to whether we are worthy of continued development. This is, in the final analogy, what Allegory is all about - that life is embedded in a reality that is much greater than our limited perceptions would have us believe. The partial understanding of this greater moral reality, as Jack Anderson alludes to, is what causes our suffering, even though we cannot see this ourselves; at least not until we have embraced the moral purity which is the essence of universe. And so what of the future? Shall we go back to the drawing board, or progress - to something perhaps as marvelous as membership in the Galactic community? We see that Anderson thinks we have a chance, but it is against all odds. We are sinking, just as the content of our novels is sinking, from allegory to realism and "puerile" fantasy. So the question still remains, but Anderson's tentative answer is this: if we try to change it, we will, but we must look to the spiritual before all else, because that is the essence. And so we must, regardless of the odds. That much is not science fiction. FK Last night I had one of those special dreams, one that reaches beyond the usual run of events and anxieties to a deeper level. Still, at first it was a mishmash, although it reached back in time. I was on an overgrown altar in a jungle, Mayan style, and was with the woman with whom I did fieldwork in the Venezuelan lowlands. We were at the end of our research, and as we climbed the old structure of alien stone, I said, "we are at the end of it. Thank goodness we had this as a focal point, or we would have been lost in the jungle."
Then I was canoeing down rapids, then on a rocky pinnacle covered with ice, skis on my feet. Those with me were below yelling, "just slide down. It will be all right." I did, and it was, and at the bottom, again I realized that I was at the end of the journey, the people I was with those from my year abroad in Mexico when an undergraduate, those with whom I had gone on pilgrimage to Rome with, among others. I was standing then across the street from them, alone, while they waved goodbye to me from the canoe, about to continue down another river without me. I wanted to be with them, but it was my time to leave, and I waved back, with one hand first, then with two. But it was not enough. I wished to convey in my wave all the trip had meant, at first the fellowship of it, and then the deep meaning of it; how our trip was one of not only companionship, but the sharing of hardships and with that, the learning of the meaning of love. I wished to make a signal with my hands that meant all that, but couldn't quite. I wished to show them what it meant, what our journey really was, even though they knew. When I awoke, it became clear - life is a journey to learn about love. It is not a new idea, but in the context struck deeper than mere words. It was fact in deed. And that is what allegory is: not the day to day stuff of our reality, but what is meant in the overall passing of reality. It is the meaning of life that is beyond the incidentals of life, although not exclusive of them. Allegory does not direct us to, for instance, focus on our argument with our wife over who let the toilet run overnight, but rather what the greater meaning of the marriage is and has been. Jorge Luis Borges wrote that allegories are no longer written, lost to the modern novel form after the Age of Reason. I forget why he said that was, but to me it is obvious: we no longer see the bigger picture for what it is, but rather insist on reality, or on fantasy that satisfies a desire. Although I did not know it at the time of writing, my book, "Dream Weaver," is an allegory, a subliminal memory of what that section of the past meant in a sense beyond the immediate circumstances. And so was the movie we saw last night, "God's Not Dead." In the first 15 minutes I had a sinking feeling about the movie - it was a set-up of harshly materialistic people against a few brave Christian believers. The star was a college freshman who was challenged by his vehemently atheistic professor of philosophy to prove that God was not dead. Through it he loses his girlfriend, but he sticks to his guns. You know who is going to win. Others, too, are abandoned because of their faith or are attracted to it by their circumstances. But as I started to grimace, I realized that it was an allegory - not as real life proceeds, but as real life means to one who sees it through the eyes of faith. This movie might be offensive to those who are not Christian, and this is certainly a shortcoming, but it should be taken as allegory, and in this it is true, as my dream told: life is not about the immediate impressions of things, of strict reality, but of the meaning in which it is embedded. To understand this, we must have an openness to see, just as the music or art lover must be open not only to sound or the colors of the paint, but what they mean as overall works. This applies to all knowledge of this world, whether it be scientific or sociological or what have you. In what is this knowledge embedded? And this is what the sacred is all about, whether it is Christian or Native American - to see the greater meaning that is meant for our minds - and what our minds are meant for. Allegory - in it is the background to give us the words and the art and the meaning of the everyday. In it, we see beyond life and death to an eternal that is open to us. In it we find inspiration to live, even through hard times. A dream is usually just a dream until it is given life through coherent meaning. And life is just life without the same deeper consideration. For this the movie is good, for if it does not point exactly to your way, it points us all to use the gift of allegory, to use this gift of finding greater meaning which gives life to life and life to death and to all that surrounds and permeates them. FK Being in vacation mode, a few nights ago we rented "Heaven is for Real," a very successful movie about a very popular phenomena - visions of heaven by the ill or those who have clinically died (Near Death Experience). This case, based on a true story, was more compelling because it involved the visions of a 4 year old boy who had nearly died (nearly, not clinically dead) from a burst appendix. His father, a protestant minister, was intrigued and disturbed by the visions that slowly came out of the boy - how Jesus looked, how he met his father's grandfather (who had died long before the boy was born), how he met a sister who was never born due to miscarriage, something the boy had never been told. It was this last that convinced the mother, although the father had, by this time, come to accept the visions. That they had come from a 4 year old made it certain that this was not made up for a hidden motive.
There is so much in the story it is impossible to cover in one blog. For instance, Jesus blessed those who believed without seeing - and yet, the boy's parents only truly believed after given proof of the boy's unknown dead relative; and the congregation was split between those who would believe in just about anything and those who were deeply disturbed by the weirdness of it all - even though they professed to believe in a living Jesus and life after death. Not in THIS world, they insisted. This latter attitude is what strikes me most; it is as if our view of the world is entirely correct, even if all the facts aren't currently in place. This perception usually continues for most of us even as we all experience weirdness in our lives, even as every night we drift into an alternate reality; and even if we believe in a god-man who rose from the dead. Many of us have had out-of-body experiences, just as the boy had before he had his vision of heaven, and although this is not life-shattering like a near-death-experience, it can alter one's vision of reality forever; for if one can BE without body, that is, observe as a point of reference apart from the body, what then is "ourself?" If it is more than our solid body, what else is it? Many religions, including Judaism, Islam and Hinduism, talk of many levels of heaven, which is how we got the expression, "he must be in seventh heaven." These are envisioned as hierarchical levels of awareness, with the higher of each (or, alternatively, those closer to the center), being more inclusive of the Great Totality. If we are to accept this concept, then the visions of others become much easier to understand. In the movie, we have a scene where the father goes to a non-spiritual psychiatrist for her explanation of her son's visions. "Yes," she says, "all of this is very common. Severe trauma causes the body to produce endorphins, which cause a sense of euphoria that the mind links with elements from the cultural background. Muslims will see Mohammed, Jews, Moses, and Christians, Jesus." In other words, these visions, because they differ, are proof that they are only the end products of chemical changes in the brain. Case closed, go home and let the boy get over it. Not to mention the paranormal aspects of the visions the boy had, we might also suggest to the psychiatrist that our normal experiences are ALSO only the product of chemical combinations. Going on along this logical axis, we can then say that even our concepts of the body and of chemicals themselves are an illusion - and we can continue with this ad infinitum. This logic is not an explanation, then, but rather a blind shot into the scary world of open reality, a soothing fairy tale in itself. Rather, we might better say that this level of reality is largely confined to what we witness as the material. Seeing reality in terms of levels of inclusivity, we can understand that what happened with the boy, and with many others, is that they became aware of another level that was more whole. It was, in affect, more "holy" as the religious might put it. And because it was beyond the scope of common material reference, the materially- situated ego had to dig up material world references to the holy. To the Jew, that reference might be Moses, to the Hindu, Vishnu, and so on. What seemed like a negation of fact through plurality to the psychiatrist was only a shift in reference frames from different cultural perspectives. None of this is really all that odd; for instance, music, mere manipulations of sonic waves, is used to elicit a huge variety of emotions, including the holy. It is a bridge between dimensions, so to speak, just as our religious figures are. Jesus for the Christian encapsulates certain levels of the holy experience. He IS, then, as the person ascends to the higher level. It is not that odd after all. But it is our fear of realities beyond our own that keep us from experiencing them or accepting them. Why this is so, as terrifying as this world can be, is in itself something of a mystery and another story in itself, but that was the working principle for the people of the boy's community. As the movie shows us, for those who were able accept this other reality, their daily reality became that much richer. FK It is slow on these dog-days of summer, vacation time weaving its way into the slight yellowing of leaves, plans already being made for the return to college, and much needed yard work contemplated - the brush, the cutting of firewood - and canning. Another week until canning, the tomatoes and peppers coming in in too-rapid abundance, threatening to rot on the ground even as we eat more and more, peppers and tomatoes becoming not side-dishes but the main fare, digestive systems expressing alarm that even the dog notices, although she never disapproves.
Peppers; the ones in greatest number are the hot ones, Santa Fe orange and jalapenos and various kinds of chili, each to look so different when ripe that I forget and, with all that there is, sometimes pick the unripe, which I know are unripe by the seeds in the pods. Sometimes they are barely formed, little white mites in a sea of pulp, or sometimes there are no seeds at all, just the pulp, waiting, as it were, for the seeds to miraculously form from this nothing, this inedible and useless looking mass that is critical to the pepper plant's continued survival. As one such unformed one split open to the knife this morning, the question came: how the heck does the pepper know how to form the seeds from this nothing, seeds that contain all that is needed for another complete plant? Botanists know; they have photographed the process and they can name every phase, and the micro biologists can position their electron microscopes and show the unwinding and realigning of DNA as it positions itself for its call to action, its one duty in existence: to continue life. But still, it is an order come from nowhere. In Amanda Gefter's book, "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn," she talks to a well-known physicist about something forming from nothing, the very question that every school kid asks and what set her on her quest. Barring the grand stroke of the word "God," she wants to see the proof, the DNA of the development of an" it," of something from nothing, and the physicist has his answer: with a pause in the quantum (I forget the details and will not look them up now), an instability could arise that brings about something from nothing. But there is a problem: first, there must exist, somewhere out in nothing, the basic laws of physics that somehow exist outside of something. We are, then, back at the drawing board. Physicist David Bohm had a grand idea, although he, too, cannot locate the beginning of that nothing that makes something. Instead, he draws a picture that is easy for us who had trouble passing first year calculus: he calls that place before something, if we can call it a place, the "implicate order." It is an endless, timeless sea of potentiality that constantly reaches beyond itself, like solar flares from the sun, to produce realities, whole universes of laws and even life, whose time is as limited to the Great Potential as a solar flare is to us. Up it rises from infinite energy, and then it is gone, another cosmos burst forth and swallowed in the great sea. This idea has even been used by Sci Fi writers to explain faster-than-light travel, for by accessing this great sea, the infinite energy needed for such speeds is readily tapped. Of course, the problem is in the doing. But this has long been reached by the mystics, who call this implicate order the "God-head," the font of creation, an element (but only an element) of that which cannot be defined. In it are not only the laws of being, but of morality and of meaning, the physics of God that no physicist of today dares to tackle in its totality. It is the "plenum," the fullness, and no aspect of life however lived can escape it, no aspect of experience can be beyond its scope. It is the All and it has been granted, as a curse or a blessing, to humans throughout time because we want it; because we are made for it, whether we know it or not; we are made to seek the ultimate. It is in our pulp, in the potentiality of our being just as the pepper seed is in the potentiality of the pepper plant. We see the pepper - or death and birth - and wonder why. We see the laws of the universe and wonder, how? We can go round and round about it, slice it and dice it as our cultural climate sees fit, but in the end, it is the same: we want to know. In the plenum of our being, we will know. The potentiality must be made actual. "Tiger gotta hunt, bird gotta fly, man has to sit and wonder, WHY WHY WHY." So Kurt Vonnegut wrote, but he was more cynical. He thought it was useless - "Tiger gotta sleep, bird gotta land, man got to tell himself he understand." Man, to him, had to make a religion, any religion, so that he could be at peace. But it doesn't stop there and never has. There are always a few who know, who really know, and try to tell us. And in our 'pulp' we listen and learn and someday, or sometime beyond time as we know it, we, too, will know. Bird gotta fly, yes, and man gotta - and will - know. FK Ah, the vacation is over! After reading a novel, I have picked up a brain-twister: "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn," by Amanda Gefter. It is written by a woman who claims to never have had formal mathematics or science training, taking up writing at liberal arts colleges, but whose father's passion to understand "nothing" brought her into the scary realm of state-of-the-art physics. She parlayed that into a gig as a science writer, and now has turned that skill into this book.
I have had some higher math and lots of science courses, and I am dumbfounded with this stuff. Shroedinger's (sp) cats? The double-slit paradox? Bent space and time? Chatting as if on a lark with some friends, the author will suddenly drop a bomb like, 'at the quantum level, gravity increases as one approaches an ultimate smallness, such that it would tear the universe apart were it not for something limiting a further decrease in size' (my paraphrase). Oh, yeah, I get that. Welp, no I don't, not really, but what is coming out in this book is how physics - and science in general - is not about "reality" but about a philosophy of reality. Newtonian physics was not accepted or understood at first, nor was or is General Relativity now by most - but they are both philosophical pictures of reality. With quantum physics (that on the small scale of the universe), the relatively new relativity theory does not work, either. So: we have learned to see Newtonian physics, that of an objective observer over an objective reality, as OUR reality. Einstein's relativity diminishes the objective observer, making perception relative while still assuming a general overall picture of a single, shared reality. To focus on this as a new picture of reality, we come to see that this uniform but relative universe is made possible through the curving of space by gravity. Gravity, then, is not something that holds us too the earth, but rather is the universal force that homogenizes relative perspectives into one greater reality. In other words (as Gefter put it), what we understand as gravity is really the one unifying force in the universe. Get it? Nor do I, really, but I do get what she is saying: that what we see and experience as rational Newtonians is a great over-simplification - not reality, anymore than Zeus and the Olympian gods are a reality. Our reality is a metaphor, an allusion to a greater reality, not the real one. Pagan, Christian, physicist, we are all in our own illusion of reality. This becomes much more obvious with quantum mechanics. In contrast to relativity theory, quantum mechanics, as Neils Bohr said, depends entirely on the observer. That is, something is NOT until it is observed. This angered Einstein, who insisted that such things were "spooky" : that the moon he sees is the moon we all see; in other words, that behind relativity is a true reality, not a subjective one. But relativity theory does not work at the quantum level. Gefter's reading of current physicists working on this problem has this emphasis in place: that they are attempting to redefine the observer so that even the observer is integral to the system, not something "outside." I will read until the end and perhaps be able to clarify this and the purposed unified theories (unification of relativity and quantum), but will stop now with this observation: Occam's Razor would call for the most minimal of explanations necessary; the most minimal necessary would arrive at the conclusion that there is a god, a creator or forever-isser, who stands either outside creation or is fully part and partial to an infinite reality that subsumes creation. Unified theory solved. Of course, not to the satisfaction of scientists, which is a world view of reality unto itself. But the ancient philosophers understood what the physicists' quandary is thousands of years ago, and they formed philosophical worlds that encompassed their thoughts and observations, just as scientists do today. Both they and theoretical physicists, then, are philosophers arguing for a particular world view, both of which will never be complete. However, there are two differences: science has greater physical tools for measurement; but philosophers can also use another tool that science will not: the emotion, or feeling of reality. So while we could say that our modern physical philosophers have a greater grasp on physical reality, we might also say that they have a lesser grasp - if any at all - on the reality of being, of direct human experience. The mystics see, as poet William Blake said, 'an entire world in a grain of sand.' They are not kidding. This observation comes with a certainty that is more certain than the grain of sand itself. Science, on the other hand, uses mathematics as a substitute for the language of the philosophers, both of them limited tools for understanding. Who among them really knows and who is only trying to know? But I would like it both ways, to have my cake and eat it too. I am cheering for the physicists to finally find a mathematics for God. It seems impossible, but so does quantum physics. Maybe, just maybe a meeting of the minds - of ecstasy and understanding - can come within that whispered hair-space of one to the other. In that we would have some kind of evolution. FK For the people of The Book - Christians, Jews and Muslims - judgment is again and again given over to the Lord. Jesus famously steers us clear of judgment in the parable of the adulteress: He who has not sinned cast the first stone. And yet we make judgments all the time. Personal judgments are often way off-base: there is the Zen parable of the monk who is seen scavenging for food in the kitchen, which is soon reported to the others. The students naturally snub him until the master stops them short: Do you not know? He has not eaten the regular food that you have, but takes out what has been left in the drain after cleaning for his food. That is why he is in the kitchen late at night." Shame on you all!
Yet judgment is absolutely essential for an ordered society. Perhaps even the harsh rules against adultery were necessary for a close-nit people who were prone to take vengeance into their own hands, and certainly our laws against murder and rape, among others, are just. We have to judge, which brings us again to the paradox of the parables of Jesus - but this blog is not about that today. Instead, it is about personal judgment of others on the heals of Robin William's suicide. I have to start by saying that I would not be one who would or could pick up that first stone. Lets take drunk driving - the cries for harsher penalties in Wisconsin resound off my ears like so many hypocrites. Anyone, especially men (who usually do the driving), who drinks has probably driven when over the limit. The people filling the newspaper rooms and political halls crying for harsher punishments should all, I think, subject themselves to that punishment first to see if it is just, even though they were lucky enough to not have been caught by the police. Yet we need some laws to reduce the likelihood of drunk driving. And then there are the social laws, those prosecuted only by the public. One shouldn't be a jerk to the check-out girl at the grocery store just because you can. One shouldn't scream at one's children or wife because one's had a bad day at work. One shouldn't humiliate another, even if what is said is true, simply for the sake of humiliation. These laws, too, are essential for human society, and we judge those who break them just as harshly as criminal offenses. Yesterday, a Jehovah's Witness came to the door - sigh - for the 100th time and we got on the subject of his health. He has had several open-heart surgeries (his reason for being a JW, but that is another story and a good one) and he told me something I already knew: that heart surgery radically changes the personality of the person, at least until recovery. I know this to be true personally. My mother, who in the finest of traditions I will call a saint, had such surgery and for nearly a year after, she was a crafty curmudgeon, figuring out tricks to win arguments and making shocking observations that, although mostly true, hurt more than helped. She returned to normal, but I have always kept that in mind. People who are sick or old and dying cannot be expected to keep up the social contract as the healthy must. They have an excuse and I accept it. The Jehovah Witness did not: with an almost grim determination, he said we must be cheerful despite our feelings. I could only answer that this was too much a burden. Give them, and us eventually, a break. The same may apply to suicides, although this is a horse of a different color. The grumpy old man is soon dismissed as a grumpy old man. To take his nasty comments to heart is to be overly sensitive. Let it pass. But the pain and harm of suicide to a family is incalculable. The hole it leaves, the guilt, the doubt, the loss, especially for the parents, is beyond the average ken. It should and must be judged by society as a wrong and an evil. Whatever one's idea of god might be, there is not question as to the pain it creates, one of the worst there is, for it is not from circumstances but from the will of the one who was loved and is missed. It is a betrayal as well as a loss. But even if society must condemn it, here is where judgment on the personal scale should be left to God. I do not, for instance, find anything wrong with the terminally ill patient who is in terrible pain - especially an elder who really has absolutely no chance of a cure - to take his own life. Most know this happens all the time, although this is not usually spoken of. A bit too much morphine or heart medicine taken by "accident" is rarely reported as such; rather, doctors have the compassionate good sense to report the loss as due to 'natural causes.' For those suffering from mental illness, who knows the pain they are enduring? I can say that in my wild and crazy days, I had way too many mushrooms on one occasion and felt that I simply could not live anymore. It was the luck of the timing of the trip, I suppose (although I'll never know), that kept me from a fatal step. Had I done that, I would not have been in any state to judge how my actions would affect others. Rather, it would have been a wild flight for release from an unbearable situation. There are certainly those who kill themselves to get revenge. I think the punishment for that might just be in the astounding stupidity of the action. But I would think that most others have done so because of the unbearable pain they are enduring, one even worse because the wounds that cause the pain are not visible to society. Few will give them the sympathy that they personally deserve. I cannot judge Robin Williams or anyone else who finds themselves in such straights. However, the manner of death must never be eulogized, just as the person should. Suicide is far more painful to those who are left behind than it is to he perpetrator. We must allow society to judge, and judge even harshly the general act; but as for the individual - only God knows or knew his pain. For me, personally, there is only the sadness of loss - and the chilling gratitude that I do not fill that same mental space. FK The ending to the book, "Clowns of God," was clear: the "end" will come, there will be no evolution, but rather a complete remake - unless. The 'unless' was very small. This is how it was presented:
The former pope writes a book of letters supposedly written by a clown who beseeches man and God to come together: man to be more humanitarian as he has been told, and God to understand the beauty and hope in His creation with more tolerance. This seems odd, but it is conclusive; in the end, our pope and other main characters wind up in a secluded valley in the Bavarian Alps, an old mine shaft present to protect them from the initial wave of radiation, and an enclosed valley to sustain them afterwards. We find that the valley was pointed out to the son of one of the main characters by a man who calls himself Mr Athos. As we are introduced to Mr Athos, it becomes clear that he is the Christ, come again. He has gone around the world and collected His select - including all races, deformities, the high but mostly the low - and ushered them into similarly protected areas. His will be done - the world will nearly end in a bang with only a few survivors, and that is that, like Noah and his ark in distant days. But on learning of Athos's true identity, the pope argues with him: give us more time, he says; let us try one last time to work it out. And in the end, the fingers on the red button pause; we are given more time, but not much. We can, in effect, bargain with God. I will not take up with that argument just yet, although I will say that I have often bargained with God and generally lost - or was simply not heard. But we learn that God favors most his clowns, for it was a child with Down syndrome that turned the trick with Christ. It was not the pope, or the leaders of the world or the high and mighty for whom the world was spared, at least temporarily, but the least among us. These, said the Christ, were the only humans who had not displeased him. But what, I have to ask, of the rest of his human creation? Most of us were born for critical intelligence, and crafty manipulation to maintain our survival. This gift, and that impulse, were not, as far as we know, our choice. Why then should we suffer for being as we were made? Yesterday, Robin Williams, the world's clown, killed himself. Like many baby boomers, I had first seen him on Happy Days and never forgot. He was like nothing I had ever seen. Younger people, if they have heard of him at all, might take him for granted, but we elders know better - he was an original, a comic genius far beyond the likes of Lenny Bruce. He was there not to impact civilization, or to damn the powerful, or to do anything more useful than entertain and, in the movies, pull the heart strings, for a clown has tears as well. The tears of a clown are pure pathos, without thought; they are the tears of the mongoloid, pure, reflective of the moment. And that was Robin Williams strength - he was, as they said, "always on." He could not help it. His was no act, but a mania, a need, a calling; he was God's fool. And he killed himself. Seeing his manic life, I don't doubt why - I couldn't take that stream of energy for more than a few hours, let alone a life time. And yet, if anyone was made to be who they were, it was Williams. But God's fool could eventually find no way out of himself. Why? The child with the mental handicap usually lives for far fewer years than the rest of us. He is often beset with frustration, for he just can't keep up with the rest of us. He does indeed suffer. Even God's clowns, his favorites, suffer. Again, why? It is one reason that the world seems more and more estranged from something in me. It is home, but only temporary. Not the world as it is in total, but as we see it, for we are given certain ways of thought that can only, or usually, see one way, and that way leads eventually to problems. To the mentally feeble, to the animal kingdom, joy is joy and sorrow is sorrow, and all fits for that moment. For us, almost nothing fits, not for long. We were born, as the saying goes, for trouble, for that is our application of our intelligence; that is what our intelligence is for: to survive; to struggle; to overcome beasts and other men. It is the same old question: how is this our fault? But we can see how, for, as far as we know, we DO decide. We DO have and make choices. But what of the children, of the impaired, of the clowns? It is hard to put in words; it is hardly enough to say that we are born into the physics of this place and that is that. What needs to be added is that there are other possibilities, some perhaps functioning even as we live here, a sort of doppelganger existing in another, or several other, worlds with different laws of time, of death, of space. This, here, is ours to suffer and delight as it is presented. It is ours to grow in, or shrink in, as the physics of our beings and choices dictate. Even the children and clowns must suffer here, and so much the pity. Why so remains the great moral mystery, but I am sorry for the children and the clowns. Farewell, Robin Williams. Perhaps the greatest decision we can make is to ask Mr Athos for another chance, if only for the children, the fools and the clowns. FK What is it about long drives? Another one up north this last week, and another of what I come to expect and hope: a peak into another dimension of reality, or so it seems. Is it the isolation, the hum of engine? Or is it the music?
Perhaps it's all, and it starts like this: I am somewhere north of Juneau on State Highway 26, on the last few hours of the long trip home. Playing with the buttons, an old favorite, or a new favorite comes on, and then memories are touched, their reality almost as real as the present. One leads to another, and then from many comes one theme, one whole that ties my entire life together in a theme, and that theme is directed, not arbitrary, but not pushed either. It is rather pulled, pulled towards an ecstatic completion that I have known all along and am in great compliance with, even though I didn't realize it. The pull appears to get stronger as the memories add up to the whole, as if time and age bring me closer to the source of the pull, its presence like a silent, brilliant vacuum cleaner, its pull an implied, and then perceived great light. And then closer still, until the actual ecstasy starts, a rush of heat energy and joy that flashes brilliant and then trails off like the dying embers of a giant firework. In its place is not a recess, not a silence, but another world, a new sight. I can almost switch it off completely at will, enough to compare the difference: this new world vs the standard personal and social world, this new world, the standard world. It is not hallucination or dissociation, or if dissociation, one that can be commandeered, and the difference is of the finest subtlety. Everything looks the same - what has changed is meaning. In the new world, there is depth, meaning beyond comprehension, fullness, completeness; in the common social, there are discrete entities, one not attached to another, no continuity accept that as accepted: a house is a house, a car a car, the definitions known. The new thrills; the old is commonplace. I do not want to return, but then there is always something. Yesterday it was man on a riding mower, cigarette burning, doing his job of cutting the lawn. So everyday that the greater view is overridden, my social conditioning back to full gear. The greater vision then seems an anomaly, and as any social scientist would, I must ask: is there brain damage here? Is it merely the consequence of boredom, of the hum, of the intrusion of the music in an opened mind - a fabrication? But the reality was so much more complete. The mystics call their visions "more real than real," and these are such when experienced, but not when gone. Instead is followed the question: What the ---- was that? Is it what is says it is in its wordless way? Or is it a mirage? Which is right - almost all of humanity, or the singular vision? As I near the finish of the novel, "Clowns of God," by Morris West, I am reminded of this question and embarrassed. In the plot, the Catholic Pope of a fictional near future has a sudden revelation, complete, of the 'parousia' or End Times, first of apocalypse and the Antichrist, and then - I do not yet know, but it is a compelling and complete vision. He is urged to warn the world by a god who is not described. He tells the cardinals in the Vatican and they force him to abdicate. The reasons are two-fold: on the one hand, he could very well be a madman; on the other, this would put a kink in the whole business, the whole structure of Mother Church. Their social reality and all they value would dissolve. Of course we eventually side with the deposed pope. And here is the embarrassment: my vision has no great significance beyond the personal. It may be the reflection of a genetic glitch or a chemical imbalance. I am most certainly not anything like a pope, either a good one or a bad one, or one of the chosen few. But what of it? Perhaps I am not as alone in this as I think; and what's more, we have the title to the book: "The Clowns of God." I, we, have been named. Still, if I am only a mere toy of God, it is a blessing to be played with once and a while. To be a clown of God is still to be in touch with God. And the man on the mower smoking his cigarette - for what he represents to me, whatever his actual thoughts are - is so much less than the vision, however dumbed-down it is, than that of the old toy. Something got me up early this morning - probably the cat - and I grumpily went to get the paper, to be greeted by fog settled in the low valleys in the light just before sun rise. There is always something about this time of year that calls for nostalgia, the yellowing of leaves, the cooling mornings of fog, although in most years this comes a little later. I love it, but also don't, which is how nostalgia works. It can be as beautiful as a caress or as painful as - well, as the memory of a friend now dead, or long-ago family gatherings, or just a memory of hacking around doing nothing before the start of another high school year, things gone forever. What strikes me most on these days is how casually we treat our daily experiences, and how treasured so many of them may become. We seldom know what we have in the present, or we put value on the wrong things. It is trite to say that one never looks back and wished he had spent more time at the office (instead of with family and friends), but even then, we often miss the value of the better experiences. I know I do. Of how a breakfast with one's wife on a sunny morning, with conversation of plans for vacation, or an evening conversation on a dock with friends might be grasped years later with nostalgic pain. Pleasant at the time, it seems we miss the heart of it until years later, when it is gone forever. And that is the pain of nostalgia - the little things, the small wonders and friendships gone or radically changed forever.
It was within this insight that I felt a disembodied peace, and then another insight: it is pain of some kind or another, whether physical or emotional, that forces our focus, that makes us realize not only the importance of what we had, but of what we have and might have. My ancient grandfather used to say, just about every day as we rolled our eyes, "You ain't got nuthin' if you don't got your health." That can only come from someone who has experienced several bouts of bad health. The pain of nostalgia is another that makes us realize what we had, and helps us focus on what should be important. And that is the thing about pain, for as I felt good about the morning, I had no other thoughts until that thought of pain came, of the opposite of what I was experiencing. It was then that I understood that if everything were pleasant, I would never understand a thing; that if everything were just fine, I would not try to delve deeper into the reality, the preciousness of what we have in life. I would simply be and pass on to other pleasantries. I do not like pain, not in any way. I fear dying worse than I fear death for the pain. I hope that my death is quick and relatively painless, a stroke in the middle of the night, but that is my fear speaking. Without the loss of friends through time, wouldn't I value them less? Without sickness, wouldn't I value health less? And with a guarantee of a quick and painless death, would I bother to seriously contemplate life? It is, it seems, our enforcer, what it takes to make us think. In the classroom, some teach that human intelligence is coincidental, an accident of our tool-making capabilities; a liability, even, for without reflective thought, we would not worry about the pain of the past or the possible pain of the future. Of course, I disagree. Human intelligence is, simply speaking, astounding, and in that, has a purpose. With nothing but fun and frolic, would we use it? I would like to think so, but I know differently. I would play and sleep and die, as mindless of the greater realities beyond pleasure as the day I was born. There may or may not be a far-reaching destiny for humankind, couched in spiritual evolution. But there certainly is personal evolution, brought about primarily through unpleasant experiences. It is through these that we can find true value and appreciation beyond mindless pleasure. I wish it were not so, but I know myself, and it is true. Pain is necessary for growth, just like your coach said in middle school. FK |
about the authorAll right, already, I'll write something: I was born in 1954 and had mystical tendencies for as long as I can remember. In high school, the administrators referred to me as "dream-world Keogh." Did too much unnecessary chemical experimentation in my college years - as disclosed in my book about hitching in the 70's, Dream Weaver (available on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Noble and Nook). (Look also for my book of essays, Beneath the Turning Stars, and my novel of suspense, Hurricane River, also at Amazon). Lived with Amazon Indians for a few years, hiked the Sierra Madre's, rode the bus on the Bolivian highway of death, and received a PhD in anthropology for it all in 1995. Have been dad, house fixer, editor and writer since. Fascinating, frustrating, awe-inspiring, puzzling, it has been an honor to serve in life. Archives
December 2024
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