It was a longer and more complex journey than expected. Flying out to Connecticut for my mother's funeral was met with an odd fear and reticence, as if the act itself would finalize the death, but there was more. Somewhere buried in it all were unresolved issues of my own, of family, of my own evolution as a person - of certain triumphs and just as certain failures or detours or dead ends. It was - and remains - maddeningly complex, this putting to sleep the earthly life of my last parent. It feels as if I have been left an old man and a struggling adolescent, both, neither one happy or settled as it is.
Amidst it were the funeral and wake, both equally dreaded, and both equally met with surprising ease as everything fell into place, as if it were all normal, which it was not. Again, a struggle, of superficial things and things laying deeper, unresolved, because, like death, they have been refused a hearing, a clearing, a final resolution, although perhaps some things cannot be resolved ever, and were never meant to be. As if life is a continuing work, a work in progress, meant to meet dead ends and new branches. What do I know?
And amidst the wake, in the last hour as only close family remained and too much wine and beer had passed uncounted as guests came and went, came the argument, the passionate discussion that told of the new beginnings and those things unresolved. Of the unresolved, let the dead bury the dead for now. Of the new beginnings, beneath it all, came the question again, the big question for our age: are we evolving or falling further from the ideal? Are we really a work in progress, or a work that was once perfect and is falling to decay?
Both are natural tendencies and I had a lot of time to think about our argument and the implications, as I was holed up in a motel by Bradley International Airport as yet another blizzard slammed the area, closing this airport as well as Logan in Boston, the entire area under a seeming permanent icecap several feet thick, as if the Ice Age were returning with a vengeance. Are we advancing as a species, or returning to some apocalypse, like the ice age? My sister argued for the first, citing gay rights, women's rights, and an opening up of the old guard to new ideas; I, being in an adolescent mood fueled by contrariness, argued the latter - oh, but look at the environmental devastation of an industrial society spreading across the world, look at the rising numbers of single parent homes, of increasing dependence on welfare, of decreasing privacy rights, of the shocking rise of dictatorships both secular and religious!
In the nearly two days alone in that motel, though, I read nearly three books and had long private thoughts. One of those books, "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being" by Delio, argued not only for evolution, but for the absolute necessity of evolution. It was a well-padded argument and one that I am favoring, regardless of the argument at the wake. But in the same book came, against the wishes of the author I believe, the seed of the other; she spoke of the meaning of education back in medieval times, how all knowledge, whether practical or philosophical, was intended to aid the student in his search for God; all of it, from math to history. Have we not fallen from those times? Even though women can vote and gays can marry, are we not further from the greatest research of all, that which involves our selves with the eternal?
Two other books, though, were written by currently young authors concerning their own search for Truth, involving at least tangentially the use of mushrooms or ayahuasca, the entheogen of South America (I have a vine from which the latter is made from my fieldwork of 20 years ago still in my attic, dusty, old and dry.) Both were atheists or agnostics at best at the start; both ended up as true believers in the end, having followed their own difficult path to a concept of God that was far more personal and active than many of those who still follow the traditional route. Is this our future? Are our young searching now for a living religion that brings them into the presence of God in ways the old can no longer accomplish? Is this, then, evolution?
The dour old man that was risen from my mother's death says no; the struggling adolescent that was risen from my buried psyche says "yes." And I am still left in death's shadow, not knowing what to believe, except that this is no dry study, this life. It is involved; it does not let you off the hook. Downward spiral or upward surge, we must all deal with our own internal demons and angels in our own time. This is not a choice. This is life for the human, the sapien, the cursed and the chosen of God. FK
Amidst it were the funeral and wake, both equally dreaded, and both equally met with surprising ease as everything fell into place, as if it were all normal, which it was not. Again, a struggle, of superficial things and things laying deeper, unresolved, because, like death, they have been refused a hearing, a clearing, a final resolution, although perhaps some things cannot be resolved ever, and were never meant to be. As if life is a continuing work, a work in progress, meant to meet dead ends and new branches. What do I know?
And amidst the wake, in the last hour as only close family remained and too much wine and beer had passed uncounted as guests came and went, came the argument, the passionate discussion that told of the new beginnings and those things unresolved. Of the unresolved, let the dead bury the dead for now. Of the new beginnings, beneath it all, came the question again, the big question for our age: are we evolving or falling further from the ideal? Are we really a work in progress, or a work that was once perfect and is falling to decay?
Both are natural tendencies and I had a lot of time to think about our argument and the implications, as I was holed up in a motel by Bradley International Airport as yet another blizzard slammed the area, closing this airport as well as Logan in Boston, the entire area under a seeming permanent icecap several feet thick, as if the Ice Age were returning with a vengeance. Are we advancing as a species, or returning to some apocalypse, like the ice age? My sister argued for the first, citing gay rights, women's rights, and an opening up of the old guard to new ideas; I, being in an adolescent mood fueled by contrariness, argued the latter - oh, but look at the environmental devastation of an industrial society spreading across the world, look at the rising numbers of single parent homes, of increasing dependence on welfare, of decreasing privacy rights, of the shocking rise of dictatorships both secular and religious!
In the nearly two days alone in that motel, though, I read nearly three books and had long private thoughts. One of those books, "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being" by Delio, argued not only for evolution, but for the absolute necessity of evolution. It was a well-padded argument and one that I am favoring, regardless of the argument at the wake. But in the same book came, against the wishes of the author I believe, the seed of the other; she spoke of the meaning of education back in medieval times, how all knowledge, whether practical or philosophical, was intended to aid the student in his search for God; all of it, from math to history. Have we not fallen from those times? Even though women can vote and gays can marry, are we not further from the greatest research of all, that which involves our selves with the eternal?
Two other books, though, were written by currently young authors concerning their own search for Truth, involving at least tangentially the use of mushrooms or ayahuasca, the entheogen of South America (I have a vine from which the latter is made from my fieldwork of 20 years ago still in my attic, dusty, old and dry.) Both were atheists or agnostics at best at the start; both ended up as true believers in the end, having followed their own difficult path to a concept of God that was far more personal and active than many of those who still follow the traditional route. Is this our future? Are our young searching now for a living religion that brings them into the presence of God in ways the old can no longer accomplish? Is this, then, evolution?
The dour old man that was risen from my mother's death says no; the struggling adolescent that was risen from my buried psyche says "yes." And I am still left in death's shadow, not knowing what to believe, except that this is no dry study, this life. It is involved; it does not let you off the hook. Downward spiral or upward surge, we must all deal with our own internal demons and angels in our own time. This is not a choice. This is life for the human, the sapien, the cursed and the chosen of God. FK
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