The Indian takeout was bad. We had to pause the Walking Dead to complain to each other. It was that episode where the pastor reveals he locked his congregation out of the church and they got ate, so there’s a bit of guilt there. Also the team beat a group of cannibals to death. Who had just eaten their friend’s leg. Who also died of a zombie bite.
But man that Indian food was bad!
The surest way to feel like a kid again is to sit on an ill-fitting chair. It must be too small, so that your knees press against your chest, or too large so that your feet dangle or, worse, just barely reach the ground. That’s what being a kid feels like–nothing is made to fit you.
Satan is so bad-ass in the first book of Paradise Lost. He wakes up in hell and struts out the pithiest of sayings. Like,
Hail Horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
(Bk. I, 250-255)
Boom! Drops the mike. On he goes, immutable God of his own internal state, right?
But when he leaves hell and the fawning gazes of his co-conspirators, he has a moment where he is more honest with himself. He gets depressed, surrounded yet untouched by the awesomeness of Eden, because
within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step no more then from himself can fly
By change of place
(Bk. IV, 20-23)
And he eventually realizes,
Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;
(75)
Poor devil. He thinks his strength is in a mind that refuses to change. But a mind that cannot change is unnatural and ill-fitting in a world where change is the only constant. He is right that the mind is its own place. But the mind that refuses to change will more likely turn heavens in hell.
Back when I was a religious man, a dear Sufi friend invited me to his prayer and meditation group. Many religious people try to avoid too much exposure from the competition, and I couldn’t blame them. We grow up with stories about unwary sheep stolen by wolves. But I rarely entertained fears that my faith could be destroyed. I believed either my truth was unshakeable and therefore priceless, or else it would prove vulnerable and I could dig deeper to find the unshakeable.
We met in a family apartment, and even though my friend hadn’t told the others I was coming, they didn’t bat an eye at me or my flashy yellow tie. I joined them with a guileless heart, open to whatever wisdom they had for me.
We recited mantras and slipped kidney beans into little bowls. We meditated on the colour blue with our eyes closed. We heard a woman’s simple sermon on love. I stayed in the house of the Sufis for hours, talking about Pakistan, love, and the price of mangoes. But mostly about love.
My faith shook and fell apart some years later and at first glance you’d think it was the foundational things that crumbled. But it wasn’t. The things we call foundational are usually just distinctives–the things we believe that separate us from them: Which books to trust, if any. Which prophets to venerate, if any. Which creators to call on, if any.
It’s hard to touch the fundamental parts of spirituality because of the clutter we surround them with. But the most solid things are deeper than mantras and kidney beans, richer than bread and wine. They are surer than scripture and reach further than prophecy. Those gentle Sufis knew the fundamentals and here’s the proof: If everyone in the world had their same heart, their spirituality, the kingdom of heaven would be here already.
You know when you’re working on that essay for the third-year course that’s so heavy you think it’ll crush you? The one that makes you think this was the wrong path for you after all. Maybe school is just a big black hole that’ll suck you in and squish you and never let you out again. It makes you think about the night-job you left for school. Maybe you shouldn’t have left–the pay was good and the people were great, why did you ever leave it anyway? I mean, look at this ridiculously vague topic! Look at the huge wordcount that’s expected! And fifteen independent scholarly sources? No one is even studying what you’re supposed to write about! Not only that, but the professor has this air of impenetrable rigour about him–this is no humanities paper where original ideas and good spelling will get you a half-decent mark. No, no, he wants science from you. What do you know about science?! So as the deadline inches closer without your rough draft growing much larger, the weight of expectation seems to crush you.
But you’re a faithful one, in your own way, aren’t you? You fiddle with it every day, even though it hurts. You’ve got some experience in faith-walking, so you study and write and attend lecture, tearing only a bitof your hair out along the way. You might not get anywhere, but what else are you going to do?
Until you turn the Corner and a bright light appears within your mind. You get it. The rest is cake.
Why didn’t you see it before? Why were you so confused and crushed by something this…understandable? Maybe confusion and crushing lead to understanding. Maybe you were always going to grow this thing eventually–sweat for water, discipline for sunlight. Twenty bucks says that a gentle and calm spirit would have been nice fertilizer, but hey, maybe next time.
And isn’t it funny that nearly every good venture works the same way as that damned NEW331 essay?
There was a time when I just could not stand it. It was as if there was a burning pit of death in my chest that I did not have the endurance to keep carrying. People tried to encourage me with words. “He never gives us more than we can handle,” some said. I wanted to scream back, “Liar! Look at this thing I carry! Look at this amazingly effed up situation I’ve been forced in! You don’t know what it’s like! And even if you did, that does not help at all–words are wind blown from open mouth-holes. How could words help me? I cannot handle this!”
But, of course, I did handle it. I’m still here, after all. I guess it was all in my head.
That’s not totally true, of course. There was something real going on in my life that sparked the suffering. My thoughts were, “If only so-and-so were never in my life! If only so-and-so hadn’t done this, or that, or whatever! Then I’d have never lost my peace.” But that’s a half-truth only. And not a useful one, at that.
Suffering and peace only exist in my own consciousness–in my head. It was important to realize that, because it gave me the opportunity to deal with me, even if I could not deal with the situation.
I took the hand of the Beloved who suffered along with me, and together we made a list of the things that our death-like anxiety sprang from. They fit on a small slip of paper. We looked at each item, mindfully and in turn. They were not so heavy now, on that thin scrap. It seemed like we could fight back. So we set them on fire, and laughed at their fragility.
The fire-ritual didn’t change our situation, of course. The people who were actively trying to rob our peace continued their thievery. But we created distance and glimpsed into the truth that it’s all, at the end of the day, in our heads. And I get to choose what dwells in my head. The trials changed over the following months and years, and today I cannot remember what it was that destroyed my peace so utterly. Life goes on, everything changes, and the crises of today will always go up in smoke.
I was starting up the nightly Minecraft game. I flicked through the options and asked which texture pack we should use. Asha asked for the Plastic pack.
“Can’t use that one,” I told her.
“Why not?”
“It’s just a trial pack. We won’t be able to save what we build.”
“I don’t care.”
“But anything you make will be gone when we exit. Forever.”
“That’s okay,” she said. She was willing to spend her unredeemable time building something awesome, and then walk away and let it cease to exist. It reminded me of a couplet from the Bhagavad Gita:
You have the right to work,
but never to the fruit of work.
2.47
Sounds awful, doesn’t it?
At the end of the day, though, that’s just how it is. And not just in the obvious sense—that often we work really hard for something we don’t get. That’s how it is in a bigger sense.
I want my life to matter. We all do, I bet. We work hard to matter. We draw attention to ourselves and train long hours and take crappy jobs to make our mark. But no mark we can make will last. A billion years from now, nothing that I have done will remain anywhere at all. I build my castles, but when it’s time to quit, I cannot save the game. Seems depressing, eh?
But not to Asha. She isn’t concerned about the fruit—saving the game. No, the game is in the building. She hasn’t learned that she’s supposed to suffer and strive and sacrifice today for a tomorrow that never seems to come.
I hope she never does.
They come to me all the time. I bet they come to you, too. Washing dishes, on the bike, cooking. A few magical wisps of a scene appear. A few exceptionally clever lines. An original plot that just begs to be allowed to grow.
I hold it in my head as hard as I dare while finishing the dishes—I’ll crush it if I crumple it too hard. And it seems intact when it’s done. Until I try to type it out.
I can’t seem to lead into it. It’s just a wisp or a few lines or a general plot. It has no context. No place to attach itself. Like a single atom, which cannot exist unless bonded with something else.
So I shake my head and smile as the wisp floats away. I don’t begrudge its uselessness. It was fun to think about. Fun to chew over. And I’ve also noticed that when the wisps are breezed away on the wind, they leave a scent that never seems to go away.
The pool of water was supposed to be calm and clear. I was sure of that. How else was I supposed to see through to the bottom? But the surface bobbed with ripples from the pebbles that children had been throwing in. Misty sediment polluted my vision. It was a mess. And it was up to me to calm that pool down.
I watched the ripples carefully. Timed everything as best I could. Then I started throwing carefully-chosen pebbles into the pond to counter-act the ripples.
I know, I know, it sounds stupid to get rid of ripples by creating more ripples. But that’s where I’m educated and you aren’t. I’ve taken physics, you see. And I know how to use waves to annihilate waves.
Theoretically.
I’m pretty sure I disassembled the waves caused by those stupid kids. But maybe I over-compensated a bit with my own pebbles, because there was still distortion. But I still figured the best thing was to fight fire with fire. I examined and thought and manipulated and threw more pebbles.
I’m still throwing pebbles, and I think I’m making progress. But I can’t stand the asshat in the next pool.
His pool was wavy and clouded, too. More so than mine, if you ask me. But instead of doing the hard work, instead of fixing it the honest way, he just sat there.
And watched.
As the ripples fell away.
And his pond turned clear and serene.
Matt W Cook 