Stream of Consciousness

 

Have I mentioned the little stream that flows through our little city park? Sometimes I stop there after a walk and sit and listen to the gurgling water and watch the current go around and over rocks. It has been a little oasis of sorts, a place to be still and know. A little paradise. But last week it became Paradise Lost.

I was sitting as usual, just relaxing and taking in Goodness. As I looked upstream I saw a snake. A SNAKE!! I have a strong, irrational fear of snakes. I don’t care how little it is or how non-poisonous it is or how pretty it may be; I am petrified of snakes.So, there, in my Paradise, slithered a snake! Paradise lost. No more can I go there and completely relax. I’ll always be on the lookout for that serpent.

It was too good to be true. We are east of Eden and there is no going back. Life will always have its intruders. Imperfections, inconveniences, and downright tragic events will slither into our lives. We might as well accept the fact that there is no perfect stream, no perfect place, and no perfect person. The Biblical message is profound. Snakes happen.

It was strange too that a few nights before this snake scare I had a dream in which I was walking through a house where people were sitting at a table and just before I left that room to enter another room, I glanced over at the people and saw a large snake on a counter behind them. I walked into the other room with cold chills up and down my spine. Do dreams warn us of things to come? Or is the symbol of ‘snake’ just part of the ongoing mythology of my dreams?

Well, this morning I went out for a walk (83 degrees when I left and 86 degrees when I came home) and stopped by the little stream in the park. I sat down and consciously looked around for any sign of a snake, not relaxed like I used to be at this spot. I sat for about ten minutes and watched the water flow by. Then I stood up and walked along the bank about ten feet, looked out into the stream, and there she was—the same snake—about ten inches long, orange with dark rings (or black with orange rings), sitting still in the middle of the stream as if trying not to be seen. I watched it, it watched me. I found a small twig and tossed it into the stream close to her. (I’ve named it Trudy. I don’t know the sex of the snake [how can you tell?], but since it is the Intruder, I’ve named it Trudy, which makes it female.)

When the twig hit the water, Trudy slipped under a rock. About fifteen seconds passed; then she stuck her head above water as if to say I’m still here. Trudy and I are developing a relationship. We were sort of playful with each other today. The truth is that she is probably as scared of me as I am of her. As long as we are at least fifteen feet apart I’m fine.

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Questioning

I’ve been reading essays by Iris Murdoch entitled, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature. I criticized Murdoch’s philosophy in my last book (Many Rooms, Many Windows, available at Amazon.com). But this wider reading has given me an appreciation of her principled affirmation of foundational morality. 

Murdoch doesn’t believe in God. But she believes in a transcendent Goodness. She’s a modified Platonist. I found myself feeling very peaceful after reading several essays. I have spent my life searching for Certainty. Of course there is no absolute Certainty in this life. But it is slowly dawning on me that my very restlessness is a sign of a transcendent Rest (the Great Sabbath in the sky). 

Everyone lives by faith. Atheists live by faith in reason or science or some other value. Everyone lives by faith. We choose our faith. All over the world people have faith in some transcendent, eternal Reality.  Different religions give different names for this Reality. But in the end it is the same Thing. 

Humanity’s search for meaning and Certainty is itself a manifestation of a purpose in life. We have evolved to be a seeking, searching, questioning species. If there is a hunger, there must be food. An appetite implies that there is something to feed that appetite. The fact that the power behind evolution has created a species with self-consciousness--a species that asks questions about the Ultimate--points in the direction of an Ultimate behind of and ahead of the evolutionary process. Humans have a built in compass that points toward some mysterious North. That magnetic field which seems to draw us to Itself, I believe to be God.

Freud would say a belief in God is just a wish with no fulfillment. Others would say that belief in God is an illusion we choose to live with. But it seems to me that trust in a transcendent Reality is a reasonable and plausible decision that corresponds to the human experience in general. I am a seeking person. I am a questioning person. I believe that being a questioning person is a sign that there is an Answer. 

We are made as keys to fit the Lock. As Augustine said centuries ago, “O God, my heart is restless until it finds its rest in You.” Therefore, my endless search of Certainty is itself an expression of faith, and a sign that there is a Certainty somewhere. In our Christian Tradition we call that Certainty “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

My search for the Holy Grail will never end. The restlessness will be with me all my life. But the very restlessness itself is a pointer to that Transcendent Answer. Jesus is the Symbol of Certainty introducing itself to us. But he went away, which means that there is no certainty on this earth; life is ambiguous. But our hearts are restless until that time when we leave this earth and transcend the ambiguity. We call this ‘heaven.’ 

The Bible uses poetry and myth to describe heaven. That’s the best we can do. Whatever it is, it is the life of unambiguous Love and Meaning. The Question has an Answer. I can’t prove this to anyone. There is no proof. Everyone has faith in something.

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