Suffering, Guilt, and an Ant Farm

Posted on March 16, 2004 in Journals & Notebooks Myths & Mysticism

UPDATED

The older I get, the more wary I become of self-help courses like the one Rae is going through which she reports has left her “screwed, blued, and tatooed”. Day 10 in the exercises require that she “surrender to God”, a martial image right out of Maccabees if you ask me. Why does this being make war on us if we don’t go along?

Surrendering to such a “personal” god strikes me as no more spiritual than giving oneself over to a sadist as a slave.

Rae, like me, struggles with the problem of pain. I found a different answer than the one her course suggests as a cure.

Before I read her blog, I wrote this in my journal:

“I am thankful for my life. To whom do I give my thanks? Take delight in the earth, its purple finches, the dappled sycamores. Are they praise? Hopkins ends his Pied Beauty with the phrase “Praise Him” which is asking me to add to the ego of what? What if this world just came to be? What if this intelligence out there — if it is out there — just tells us that it made the world?

“I’m thinking of a child who forces the worship of ants. They bring him gifts, congregate, wait for the manna from heaven to fall so they can carry it back to their encampment. Are we nothing but a captive existence? I hope that I am better than an ant. Ants just enjoy their bounty. It takes human intelligence starved for purely mechanical explanations of the unanswerable ‘whys’ to make gods.”

A course that leads you to feel bad about being a suffering human being doesn’t strike me as much good. Even Jesus cried on the cross. Do we think we’re better than that?

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UPDATE: Lynn spoke with me about this. I rethought my objections while waiting for a haircut and wrote this: The term “surrendering” to God bothers me because it sounds like something outside of us views us as a melon harvest loaded up in bushel basket ready to be sacked. I do not trust images that liken spirituality to War. Lynn suggests “being open to God”. I like that until I look out into the night, beyond the buzzing electric lights, their aureoles accentuated by the mist. The idea that something massive wants me to slit myself like a cadaver and allow it to examine me like a coroner performing an inquest makes me want to hide*. No wonder the experience of “giving oneself” or “opening oneself to God” makes us tremble.

Then I adopt a new thought, more in keeping with this reality I experience sitting in this chair: “out there is the Universe and I am part of it.” The lights, the drooping eucalyptus trees, the fog, and the darkness no longer threaten me. They, too, are part of this existnece and strike no more fear in me than walking down Fourth Avenue in New York or taking the circuit around our neighborhood park. If I fear these, then I need the help that comes from just being where I am at, seeing the world for what it is and nothing more.

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*Besides, if it’s omniscient, shouldn’t it be able to see anyways?