Bene-gesarit saying
from Frank Herbert's Dune
Fear can save us from the sabertooth tiger, but it often keeps us in terrible marriages, keeps us from pursuing a particular vocation, keeps us from opening our hearts... from living life, even. But why should that matter?
It is said in the book of Proverbs that the beginning of wisdom is the "fear of the Lord." The better translation probably would render "fear" as "respect," but on some days I wonder if there is something to the traditional wording.
We are born in a certain time. I was born on a snowy morning Anno Domini 1979, on the planet Earth, the continent known as North America, in the State known as Tennessee. My father was a fifty-two year old pathologist. My mother was younger. They'd been married two years when the "bump" known as Me began to show. For years they told me I was not an "uh-oh" baby, but it WAS an accidental pregnancy. One "slipped through the goalie," apparently.
Or maybe it was the hand of God that orchestrated it. I am here for a purpose. Like John the Baptist or Jacob the Cheat. I'm "William the..." I won't suggest an adjective. I'm "Will." It's less formal that way.
Yeah, sure. God planned it out that I would be here. But does this mean that God also planned the unknown miscarriages that occur for most sexually active women? Something like one in three conceptions self-aborts. I don't have the documentation on this. This may be bunk. But I remember that the number surprised me. Life is conceived... often it is never known to exist... and it dies. All in the bright shadows of life and love and happenstance. It happens all the time.
There is the shadow of terror here. I could have been one of "those" that Life did not select. And you also!
In an alternative universe, which many theoretical physicists now believe exist, I have died. In a billion trillion other worlds, I have lived, died, and never been born. I am beginning to feel some of that fear... I mean, respect, for the Lord.
Yet, I have trouble bending the knee. Calling God the "Lord" is suspect to me for many reasons. There are the social-academic reasons. Imperial models of relating to God are very medieval... nay... antique! In first century Rome, where one inclined their heads before an Emperor, it was well and good to refer to God as "Kurios," or "Lord." New Testament authors, comfortable with the monarchical models suggested by their Old Testament forebears, spoke of the Kingdom of God. But do we have any real kingdoms here today? Tooday everything is democratic. Everyone has a voice. In the United States, we have no class. Er... classes. I meant to say CLASSES. And so, in this day, we imagine that God does not WANT to be called a King. It's too masculine. Too imperial. And despite the tongue in cheek quality of this paragraph, such imperial labels have wedded religious justification to the oppression of millions over the centuries. The way we talk, after all, affects how we think and live. So if you talk about "the Lord" a lot, you have a very strong sense of hierarchy. Perhaps you are the king of you own castle?
Still, in our attempts to evolve our images of God and life, I wonder if we have disempowered God?
Damn it all to hell. I was not trying to turn this into a sermon. This was to be a personal type blog. It never fails, however, that I sway towards the preacherly. I was trying to talk about FEAR... and I swerved into God's lane.
We should probably fear God. Any Being that could generate these myriad universes is a Power.
Oh, it's not that I think God is "up there" waiting to smite us because we have premarital sex or have a shot of whisky. Course, we might get smote with a baby if we don't use protection. Or a DUI. But I don't think God will drop a piano on our heads out of indignation.
I think I fear God in the same way I fear the edge of the Grand Canyon. If I fall off this ledge, I'm gone. I fear God the same way I fear an asteroid flying throught the blank dark of space. How many worlds have been destroyed in the history of the universe? Is my life so special as to be protected? Does God "have a special plan" for me that protects me from such? Yet I am drawn forward by siren song. Will I be lured towards Meaning, or dashed upon the rocks? Don't we live in a universe where the rocks are inevitable? Is Meaning as clearly promised?
All of that is the fear of mysterious great powers. Things Bigger Than Us. Awe. Terror. Rilke says that "Beauty is the beginning of Terror." and that "Every angel is terrifying." And so it is. So it is. God is beautiful.
I think the grief our world lives with today is the death of Destiny. At least, this seems true among intelligent folks. People who have reflected upon the chances and changes of life, who have seen the Universe strike down the innocent with pancreatic cancer or aneurysms with utter capriciousness... they find it hard to believe in personal destiny. Echoes of Job, there.
On the other hand, there are still plenty of people who DO seem to believe in it, but their victory seems cheap. Sunshine Christians who never admit to feeling doubt or fear. Of course, when tragedy does strike, and they do not feel so perpetually "blessed," many become psychotic religionists... unwilling to mesh their personal experience with their triumphalistic understanding of God... OR they become the most violent of atheists. What can you say to these people? Even the Psalmist had enough faith to doubt. Even Jesus sweated the big stuff in the garden.
But I think there are many people who have lost their sense of Destiny. I am sometimes one of them.
To feel as if we are a part of a grand Story may or may not be an option. We are born and place our feet into the cold stream as it passes. The river's beginning or end has no practical bearing on us. We are only one foot in, and soon we are done, followed by others who have made their way there from unknown provinces.
Yet there is the shock of cold water we feel on our ankles when we tenderly step into the water. There is the smoothness of the stone underneath the balls of our feet. There is the crawdad that disappears into a cloud of murk, while the water spiders transport across the surface like electrons. We look up and see others around us, tenderly padding their way across the stream, hands and arms outstretched for balance. The rapid knocking of an unseen woodpecker resonates in the air... nature's jackhammering, to be sure, yet cleaner somehow than the human version. We feel the warm air on our faces, the sunshine... or the rain. We smile, we lament, we hold hands, we walk alone.
Maybe there is a Story. Maybe there isn't. But we have the walk across the stream. We have our brief moment with others who share this time and space with us. This time has never existed before and will never come again. We share our atoms with stars and dinosaurs and ancestors, but THIS configuration right now is unique to us... just as theirs was unique to them.
There are fools who sometimes get it right. People who tatoo "YOLO" somewhere on their bodies. The sentiment seems to be "You only live once," so party hard while you can. But what if we used an awareness of our mortality... the single, strange limitedness of our one wild lives... to spur us towards awakening? What if we find ourselves walking across the stream, and realize that we should give this journey our best efforts, our best attention?
Life is a mysterious guest sitting across from us at the table. We are sharing a meal. There is a beginning, and there is an end. Will we be attentive to what this interesting Stranger could tell us? Will we lean forward on our elbows, and gaze into the Stranger's eyes, hanging onto every word? What would we ask of this One? What would we offer of ourselves?
If you feel a little intimidated... a tinge of fear. Then perhaps you really have arrived at the beginning of wisdom.
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