This morning, I got up at 5:30 due to some intestinal discomfort - I blame it on the pizza - and realized that I had time to go to the very early church service. I had not gone the afternoon before because of the Belmont Stakes and the possibility of the Triple Crown. I was not disappointed, and figured, ah, well, another Goin' to Meetin' week-end lost to horse racing! But there I was this morning, compelled by circumstances to make the drive into town. I do not worry about black cats crossing my path, or walking under ladders for bad luck (stupidity is not bad luck), but I do believe in circumstances. And so, tired and somewhat uneasy of disposition, there I was, driving in the early morning rain.
Of course, I pushed the button on the radio. NPR was having a man talk in a section about "books we should read." He was a professor of something, and was going on and on about Roland Barthes and his ground-breaking work, "Mythologies." Written in the 1970's, the professor claimed the work made us understand the greater depth to our customary activities - what small things like cleaning clothes meant about our reality construct. Why, for instance, do the adds tell us we need our clothes to be "sparkling clean?" What does this tell us about our attitudes towards our biological selves, and about our natural world?
Ah, Barthes. He had been a prime member of a class of authors called "deconstructionists" which I studied with great seriousness in graduate school. Indeed, such were eye-opening and they have forever, as the professor said, "made me look at the world differently."
Yes, but I remember a problem with such studies: after the classes, as the day turned to evening, I would become depressed, not my natural condition. Life seemed pointless somehow, all a reflection of something else, which also was pointless. All arrows led to a bottomless pit of nothingness. In the old days of new philosophy, they called this "existential angst," that which was brought to us all because capitalism universalized the world and made every meaning merely a cultural construct in a multi-cultural world.
And here I was going to church, which is not only filled with endless symbols, but purposefully so. I knew as I turned off the radio that I was not only going because stomach problems had gotten me up early. Rather, the last few days had been filled with this existential angst, as cultural meaning and ultimate meaning collided. What had I done with my life? How much have I wasted? But- wait!- was it wasted, or was that only a cultural construct speaking to me? If so, what WAS important? Oh, and did I mention that this morning was my birthday?
But I did not have an epiphany this morning. Rather, I had the same one I often get the night before, each just as meaningful every time, and this morning only reminded me of it. It reiterated the idea that this daily world is a mishmash of cultural symbols, of goals and desires and self-perceptions that are manufactured for us out of the populist fabric. But unlike Barthes's "groundbreaking work," this epiphany always gives an answer after the expose, one that I always forget and need constant reminders of, especially when the night wolves have been out devouring the meat of meaning, turning us into less than wolves ourselves. The epiphany says that there is a meaning, or a doorway to meaning, that is accessible somehow, every now and then. One may be led to the door by a seeming accident, or by icons, or by the ritual of a church itself, for that is what the symbols are there to do - to lead us away from our daily selves and stylized realities. But however one gets there, there it is: this gateway to a deeper truth, this WAY beyond the grasp of Barthes and his fellow intellectuals. The Way does not depend on faith, although that might help; nor does it depend on reason, although that might help - or hinder - as well. Rather, it is the third way. It is beyond Barthes. He is stuck in his three-dimensional mental chess game and cannot see beyond the board. Most of us can't most of the time. But the door is there. And here is what it begins to tell us just beyond the door:
"Nothing else matters but this. It is the key. You know simply by being presented with it that this is true. Everything else is a pale reflection of this. You cannot know this with anything but that special sense that you have been given, but once you are there, you know."
With that, sometimes too my memory begins to work, and I sense again what I should have sensed when I was five and at the ocean, or 45 and on the river in a canoe - in fact, what I should have sensed every time. But some of these times call out louder, and when they do, it is of this Way, of this door that they speak, if I am aware. Which most often I am not. And that is why the darkness of discontent, of being lost, revisits again and again. FK
Of course, I pushed the button on the radio. NPR was having a man talk in a section about "books we should read." He was a professor of something, and was going on and on about Roland Barthes and his ground-breaking work, "Mythologies." Written in the 1970's, the professor claimed the work made us understand the greater depth to our customary activities - what small things like cleaning clothes meant about our reality construct. Why, for instance, do the adds tell us we need our clothes to be "sparkling clean?" What does this tell us about our attitudes towards our biological selves, and about our natural world?
Ah, Barthes. He had been a prime member of a class of authors called "deconstructionists" which I studied with great seriousness in graduate school. Indeed, such were eye-opening and they have forever, as the professor said, "made me look at the world differently."
Yes, but I remember a problem with such studies: after the classes, as the day turned to evening, I would become depressed, not my natural condition. Life seemed pointless somehow, all a reflection of something else, which also was pointless. All arrows led to a bottomless pit of nothingness. In the old days of new philosophy, they called this "existential angst," that which was brought to us all because capitalism universalized the world and made every meaning merely a cultural construct in a multi-cultural world.
And here I was going to church, which is not only filled with endless symbols, but purposefully so. I knew as I turned off the radio that I was not only going because stomach problems had gotten me up early. Rather, the last few days had been filled with this existential angst, as cultural meaning and ultimate meaning collided. What had I done with my life? How much have I wasted? But- wait!- was it wasted, or was that only a cultural construct speaking to me? If so, what WAS important? Oh, and did I mention that this morning was my birthday?
But I did not have an epiphany this morning. Rather, I had the same one I often get the night before, each just as meaningful every time, and this morning only reminded me of it. It reiterated the idea that this daily world is a mishmash of cultural symbols, of goals and desires and self-perceptions that are manufactured for us out of the populist fabric. But unlike Barthes's "groundbreaking work," this epiphany always gives an answer after the expose, one that I always forget and need constant reminders of, especially when the night wolves have been out devouring the meat of meaning, turning us into less than wolves ourselves. The epiphany says that there is a meaning, or a doorway to meaning, that is accessible somehow, every now and then. One may be led to the door by a seeming accident, or by icons, or by the ritual of a church itself, for that is what the symbols are there to do - to lead us away from our daily selves and stylized realities. But however one gets there, there it is: this gateway to a deeper truth, this WAY beyond the grasp of Barthes and his fellow intellectuals. The Way does not depend on faith, although that might help; nor does it depend on reason, although that might help - or hinder - as well. Rather, it is the third way. It is beyond Barthes. He is stuck in his three-dimensional mental chess game and cannot see beyond the board. Most of us can't most of the time. But the door is there. And here is what it begins to tell us just beyond the door:
"Nothing else matters but this. It is the key. You know simply by being presented with it that this is true. Everything else is a pale reflection of this. You cannot know this with anything but that special sense that you have been given, but once you are there, you know."
With that, sometimes too my memory begins to work, and I sense again what I should have sensed when I was five and at the ocean, or 45 and on the river in a canoe - in fact, what I should have sensed every time. But some of these times call out louder, and when they do, it is of this Way, of this door that they speak, if I am aware. Which most often I am not. And that is why the darkness of discontent, of being lost, revisits again and again. FK
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