I just finished a long book by famous author Leon Uris called, I think (I dropped it back at the library already) Battle Cry, a fictional account of his time in the Marines during WWII. Guadalcanl, Tarawa, Saipan - we were there with all the blood and guts that a real Marine close in time to a real war would have to relate to read true. Limbs flying, bloated, stinking bodies in the ocean, tough pros almost running for fear...it was there, with no punches pulled. Much like Tolstoy's War and Peace, the peace time romances of the soldiers weren't nearly as interesting to me, and as this was Uris's first book, well, the love scenes seemed a little stilted. But the battle scenes were not, and we the readers were told two things of importance.
First, what we all know: that although some of the Jap (I use the terminology of the time) brigades were brutal, others were made up of plain, scared soldiers who were as human as we were. And two: that under fire, the love between the Marines was as intense as any between even parents and their children. This is a love that most parents know - that one really and truly would lay down one's life for the other just because. With the Marines, once the fighting began, they would not leave the battle scene unless physically unable to fight off being taken away, because their buddies depended on them. How could they leave? Yet, how do we describe this love to those who have not known it?
For me, describing spiritual awareness is just as difficult, so much so that in attempting to do so, people soon get bored, either because they have known it and know that comparisons are futile, or because they have not, and the experience is impossible to relay. Recently, though, it occurred to me that most of us have had a tangential experience of this sort, whether they have fought in battle, have been drawn in to their children, or no. This is the passion of young love.
The memories make me wince, because sooner or later, this passion becomes unrequited, unless we are old enough to settle the issue with marriage. It makes me wince because when the object of our passion does not return in kind, you become the fool. No one understands your obsession. The object snubs you as if you were the ugly puppy in the litter, and your friends tell you to just get over it - hell, there are lots of girls way better than her, they say. You are left alone and miserable until somehow, like magic, the spell wears off. You look back in wonder at the idiot you were. You join your friends again in scouting out babes for a tryst and make crude jokes about it. You are, in a way, out of the sacred, where only one ephemeral thing mattered, "this thing called love," and all else was nothing, and back into the profane, the world of commerce and prestige and bad humor. The "you" you were before becomes a stranger even to yourself.
Going into and out of the spiritual mind is different in many ways, of course, but also the same in that one goes beyond the world of others for a while, and then returns, just as one was before, with no coherent explanation to give. Only the memory of it as "real" persists, but memory is not the same thing; in fact, memory in our daily routine can only be from the perspective of our daily routine. All we can say is that something special happened, but we cannot say exactly what. In a way, when we try to explain it, we become as stuipid to our friends as we were when we fell for the little tease from biology class.
Another analogy, another inadequate reach, I know, but one everyone can relate to. Pop songs are almost exclusively about this silly little thing, but poets throughout the ages have long known of the similartites of sexual infatuation and spirit - thus the great love sonnets and Divine Comedies that were really about much more than young love. And thus the sometimes creepy references (for men) of followers of Christ as "the betrothed of the bridegroom." It is all analogy because young love is the one transendental experience that most of us have had where we live in another world, where our perspectives have been totally altered, where money, friendship, status, where nothing has meaning if it does not inclulde the beloved. This is how it is in the spiritual frame of mind, although there is no gnashing of teeth, for the beloved - however the spirit may be envisioned - will never jilt us or mock. Rather, we ourselves somehow lose the feeling and long for it and try to tell others of it. We hope and pray it comes again, and then, maybe forget about it after a while as if it were something a little crazy, like that teen-age crush. It is the same, but different, however, for it never ever really goes away, and never fades or becomes jaded through time. It is, and will always will be, our Beatrice.
FK
First, what we all know: that although some of the Jap (I use the terminology of the time) brigades were brutal, others were made up of plain, scared soldiers who were as human as we were. And two: that under fire, the love between the Marines was as intense as any between even parents and their children. This is a love that most parents know - that one really and truly would lay down one's life for the other just because. With the Marines, once the fighting began, they would not leave the battle scene unless physically unable to fight off being taken away, because their buddies depended on them. How could they leave? Yet, how do we describe this love to those who have not known it?
For me, describing spiritual awareness is just as difficult, so much so that in attempting to do so, people soon get bored, either because they have known it and know that comparisons are futile, or because they have not, and the experience is impossible to relay. Recently, though, it occurred to me that most of us have had a tangential experience of this sort, whether they have fought in battle, have been drawn in to their children, or no. This is the passion of young love.
The memories make me wince, because sooner or later, this passion becomes unrequited, unless we are old enough to settle the issue with marriage. It makes me wince because when the object of our passion does not return in kind, you become the fool. No one understands your obsession. The object snubs you as if you were the ugly puppy in the litter, and your friends tell you to just get over it - hell, there are lots of girls way better than her, they say. You are left alone and miserable until somehow, like magic, the spell wears off. You look back in wonder at the idiot you were. You join your friends again in scouting out babes for a tryst and make crude jokes about it. You are, in a way, out of the sacred, where only one ephemeral thing mattered, "this thing called love," and all else was nothing, and back into the profane, the world of commerce and prestige and bad humor. The "you" you were before becomes a stranger even to yourself.
Going into and out of the spiritual mind is different in many ways, of course, but also the same in that one goes beyond the world of others for a while, and then returns, just as one was before, with no coherent explanation to give. Only the memory of it as "real" persists, but memory is not the same thing; in fact, memory in our daily routine can only be from the perspective of our daily routine. All we can say is that something special happened, but we cannot say exactly what. In a way, when we try to explain it, we become as stuipid to our friends as we were when we fell for the little tease from biology class.
Another analogy, another inadequate reach, I know, but one everyone can relate to. Pop songs are almost exclusively about this silly little thing, but poets throughout the ages have long known of the similartites of sexual infatuation and spirit - thus the great love sonnets and Divine Comedies that were really about much more than young love. And thus the sometimes creepy references (for men) of followers of Christ as "the betrothed of the bridegroom." It is all analogy because young love is the one transendental experience that most of us have had where we live in another world, where our perspectives have been totally altered, where money, friendship, status, where nothing has meaning if it does not inclulde the beloved. This is how it is in the spiritual frame of mind, although there is no gnashing of teeth, for the beloved - however the spirit may be envisioned - will never jilt us or mock. Rather, we ourselves somehow lose the feeling and long for it and try to tell others of it. We hope and pray it comes again, and then, maybe forget about it after a while as if it were something a little crazy, like that teen-age crush. It is the same, but different, however, for it never ever really goes away, and never fades or becomes jaded through time. It is, and will always will be, our Beatrice.
FK
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