God the Father...
"Our fathers were our role models for God. And if our fathers bailed, what does that say about God?"
-- Tyler Durden, in the film Fight Club
If God is God the father - if our fathers on earth are somehow echoes of our father in Heaven (capital H, like it's a real place, like you could fly there with the right travel agent) - then it's no wonder I am getting used to the idea that I may never understand God. I have spent years contending, lamenting, accepting, and embracing the possibility that my father's motives will likely remain beyond my reach.
Once upon a time, I thought I had achieved my own personal understanding with both of my fathers (for I never did have any other father figure, poor kid), but those feelings shattered into fine glass slivers during my early twenties. No great tragedy or blowout occurred. Left long enough in life, I felt the scales slip painfully from my eyes, unbearable and unbidden. I hadn't wanted to lose that instinctual faith I'd maintained throughout the worst of my childhood. I hadn't wanted to lose contact with my dad due to his odd withdrawal into silence.
I can imagine that Adam and Eve missed their father's occasional presence in the Garden, and those delightful little things he brought or taught them. I can imagine that Cain felt bereaved once the anger at his brother was gone, spilt in blood amongst the seeds. I can imagine Job's confusion after a lifetime of goodness, to be dealt such vicious blows. And he thought he was doing so well. He thought he understood. But where were any of us at the creation of this world? How can any of us presume to know the ones who made us, parents or deities?
If life has taught me anything (and I hear myself saying that more often lately), it is that my parents are more - and less - than I ever imagined. When then of a being representing the infinite? What hope of understanding do we have then?
I was drawn, in college, to the concept of the Sublime because, by that point, it was a concept with which I had become painfully familiar. The awe and wonder and fear of that which is so much greater. The joy and gratitude and amazement to have ever been able to sense even the smallest part of something so grand. To touch, within an inch of sanity, on the mysteries of having ever been alive. That had become my experience of God by the time I first read about the Sublime. (Capital S, as though it were a real place and with enough fear you might be transported there, courtesy of the Ekstasis Express.) To believe that you understand is simply to rationalize.
And I did rationalize, using the myths and legends and lies that my father told me. In the beginning, there was the chaos of his father and the void left behind by his mother, and the pain of growth in seven short days. And then there was the great journey to Vietnam, and the drugs, murder, and mayhem that followed.
My father rarely told a story the same way twice. Confusion at the fragments of his strife. Deciphering and interpreting the truth behind the lies. I came up with a version that satisfied me for a time, only to find that acceptance does not mean accuracy. My translation was just that, and faulty. I tried again, and again, until I realized that in so doing, my fault was pride.
I assumed I was wise and wily enough to understand a man I half saw after a lifetime of his own mind. If I just read the story enough times, if I just opened my heart and mind, then my work would be rewarded. I would be one of the few with the inside story. And didn't I know the power of stories?
Of course I did. I was raised on them. Even as I hated the people who forced their religion at me, I loved the strength of their stories. Noah and Daniel and Joseph (oh my!) - they walked and spoke on the stage of my mind. But, perhaps because of what I knew of tales and their tellers, I never could believe the Bible as the unreproachable distillation of the divine. Believe me, I tried.
Even as a small child, I was haunted by questions no one wanted to take. Why the inconsistencies? Why the blood? Why the Devil? I saw the human behind the facade - the hidden fingers of the Wizard of Oz, playing ancient tunes of pity and love and parental admonition. I saw the Code of Hammurabi in the Ten Commandments, the desperate desire to hold a people together despite their innate, debauched urges. I heard echoes of the Romans in the victories of the early Jews. I saw Hector in Abel and Achilles in Cain. I heard the wisdom of the snake (serpent, dragon, symbol of Aesclepius, what have you). And I became further removed from my maternal grandmother's perfect, admirable faith.
She read her Bible every day. English or Spanish, page by page or verses pulled out on sheets of colored paper from a plastic holder designed to resemble a loaf of daily bread. She breathed the Book (capital B, as though, if you read it enough, you would go there). She preached lovingly to us about Jesus knocking at our hearts, waiting to be let in. We needed the redeemer of sinners, because she needed us join her in Heaven.
When I first heard of bodhisattvas, I thought of my grandmother.
I would go anywhere, endure anything to be with my beloveds forever, her included. But as painful as it may be, I don't believe I will enter or leave her way. For this is one arena in which words cannot save me. The most important things I've yet seen - love, life, death - are beyond the ken of our second-rate speech, our refined Babel, our highest and lowest attempts at communication. They are beyond symbol and metaphor and visual representation. Color, light, and line all fail at capturing the divine. Words, my beloved words, the only art I have dared to count as mine - they will fail.
But failure is not the end, or the worst thing that can happen. Eyes shut or wide open, we are all hurtling through and toward the greatest mysteries. We will see. They will seize us. Inevitably, there will come a kind of reckoning, though it will likely be less like Ragnarock and more like satori. And somewhere, someday, beyond expression and even human comprehension, we might understand.
Until then, I will love life and accept its flaws as they are - rather as I do with my father. For love, as it stands, is the cornerstone of that which may be called my faith.
-- Tyler Durden, in the film Fight Club
If God is God the father - if our fathers on earth are somehow echoes of our father in Heaven (capital H, like it's a real place, like you could fly there with the right travel agent) - then it's no wonder I am getting used to the idea that I may never understand God. I have spent years contending, lamenting, accepting, and embracing the possibility that my father's motives will likely remain beyond my reach.
Once upon a time, I thought I had achieved my own personal understanding with both of my fathers (for I never did have any other father figure, poor kid), but those feelings shattered into fine glass slivers during my early twenties. No great tragedy or blowout occurred. Left long enough in life, I felt the scales slip painfully from my eyes, unbearable and unbidden. I hadn't wanted to lose that instinctual faith I'd maintained throughout the worst of my childhood. I hadn't wanted to lose contact with my dad due to his odd withdrawal into silence.
I can imagine that Adam and Eve missed their father's occasional presence in the Garden, and those delightful little things he brought or taught them. I can imagine that Cain felt bereaved once the anger at his brother was gone, spilt in blood amongst the seeds. I can imagine Job's confusion after a lifetime of goodness, to be dealt such vicious blows. And he thought he was doing so well. He thought he understood. But where were any of us at the creation of this world? How can any of us presume to know the ones who made us, parents or deities?
If life has taught me anything (and I hear myself saying that more often lately), it is that my parents are more - and less - than I ever imagined. When then of a being representing the infinite? What hope of understanding do we have then?
I was drawn, in college, to the concept of the Sublime because, by that point, it was a concept with which I had become painfully familiar. The awe and wonder and fear of that which is so much greater. The joy and gratitude and amazement to have ever been able to sense even the smallest part of something so grand. To touch, within an inch of sanity, on the mysteries of having ever been alive. That had become my experience of God by the time I first read about the Sublime. (Capital S, as though it were a real place and with enough fear you might be transported there, courtesy of the Ekstasis Express.) To believe that you understand is simply to rationalize.
And I did rationalize, using the myths and legends and lies that my father told me. In the beginning, there was the chaos of his father and the void left behind by his mother, and the pain of growth in seven short days. And then there was the great journey to Vietnam, and the drugs, murder, and mayhem that followed.
My father rarely told a story the same way twice. Confusion at the fragments of his strife. Deciphering and interpreting the truth behind the lies. I came up with a version that satisfied me for a time, only to find that acceptance does not mean accuracy. My translation was just that, and faulty. I tried again, and again, until I realized that in so doing, my fault was pride.
I assumed I was wise and wily enough to understand a man I half saw after a lifetime of his own mind. If I just read the story enough times, if I just opened my heart and mind, then my work would be rewarded. I would be one of the few with the inside story. And didn't I know the power of stories?
Of course I did. I was raised on them. Even as I hated the people who forced their religion at me, I loved the strength of their stories. Noah and Daniel and Joseph (oh my!) - they walked and spoke on the stage of my mind. But, perhaps because of what I knew of tales and their tellers, I never could believe the Bible as the unreproachable distillation of the divine. Believe me, I tried.
Even as a small child, I was haunted by questions no one wanted to take. Why the inconsistencies? Why the blood? Why the Devil? I saw the human behind the facade - the hidden fingers of the Wizard of Oz, playing ancient tunes of pity and love and parental admonition. I saw the Code of Hammurabi in the Ten Commandments, the desperate desire to hold a people together despite their innate, debauched urges. I heard echoes of the Romans in the victories of the early Jews. I saw Hector in Abel and Achilles in Cain. I heard the wisdom of the snake (serpent, dragon, symbol of Aesclepius, what have you). And I became further removed from my maternal grandmother's perfect, admirable faith.
She read her Bible every day. English or Spanish, page by page or verses pulled out on sheets of colored paper from a plastic holder designed to resemble a loaf of daily bread. She breathed the Book (capital B, as though, if you read it enough, you would go there). She preached lovingly to us about Jesus knocking at our hearts, waiting to be let in. We needed the redeemer of sinners, because she needed us join her in Heaven.
When I first heard of bodhisattvas, I thought of my grandmother.
I would go anywhere, endure anything to be with my beloveds forever, her included. But as painful as it may be, I don't believe I will enter or leave her way. For this is one arena in which words cannot save me. The most important things I've yet seen - love, life, death - are beyond the ken of our second-rate speech, our refined Babel, our highest and lowest attempts at communication. They are beyond symbol and metaphor and visual representation. Color, light, and line all fail at capturing the divine. Words, my beloved words, the only art I have dared to count as mine - they will fail.
But failure is not the end, or the worst thing that can happen. Eyes shut or wide open, we are all hurtling through and toward the greatest mysteries. We will see. They will seize us. Inevitably, there will come a kind of reckoning, though it will likely be less like Ragnarock and more like satori. And somewhere, someday, beyond expression and even human comprehension, we might understand.
Until then, I will love life and accept its flaws as they are - rather as I do with my father. For love, as it stands, is the cornerstone of that which may be called my faith.