Call Me Ishmael
10.24.2004
One of a number of books I'm reading on spirituality right now is Kent Ira Groff's What Would I Believe If I Didn't Believe Anything? A Handbook for Spiritual Orphans. It's supposed to be a humble sort of guide for the burned-out, cynical, skeptical joe. Despite that that's so not me, I started reading it anyway.
So the book contains various short texts -- I guess I'd call them vignettes or meditations -- on what it means to live nowadays, and what and how we might find mystery in this our postmodern life. So far, so boring. Like many a self-help book, though, this one encourages the reader to keep a journal. And unfortunately, Gentle Reader, that means that you are going to suffer through some stank-ass self-absorbed reflections on what's in Groff's book. No promises on the quality or quantity, either: as journaling is in some ways the ancestor of blogging, I reaffirm my right to say what I want, whether or not that is satisfactory, accurate or even a falsehood. Ugh.
The first concept Groff introduces is the one suggested by the title: that our natural condition in the here and now is that of orphans:
Once, several years ago, Shel was having a phone conversation with LWB about my spiritual situation. LWB was understandably concerned, and was apparently somewhat discouraged. At length she asked Shel something to the effect of "will he ever get back to the way he was?" Meaning, would I ever return to more or less straightforward evangelical belief. I overheard this, and in my anger at the question, I retorted, "I might if I get in a car wreck and suffer brain damage." Now this was a rotten way to repay someone's concern. But what it says to me, now, is that there is no going back. You can't put the evils of the world back into Pandora's box -- once they get out, they're out.
And what that means for me, is that I'm out, too. Once you've taken the evangelical world out of the man, you can't put the man back in the evangelical world.
So the book contains various short texts -- I guess I'd call them vignettes or meditations -- on what it means to live nowadays, and what and how we might find mystery in this our postmodern life. So far, so boring. Like many a self-help book, though, this one encourages the reader to keep a journal. And unfortunately, Gentle Reader, that means that you are going to suffer through some stank-ass self-absorbed reflections on what's in Groff's book. No promises on the quality or quantity, either: as journaling is in some ways the ancestor of blogging, I reaffirm my right to say what I want, whether or not that is satisfactory, accurate or even a falsehood. Ugh.
The first concept Groff introduces is the one suggested by the title: that our natural condition in the here and now is that of orphans:
"Orphan"--the last word in Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick--includes each of us. We are all Ishmael, born of Abraham and his "foreign" wife, Hagar, Sarah's slave girl, who represents our own partly Muslim, partly Christian, partly Jewish rainbow coalition. After Captain Ahab's great ship Pequod (established religion) is wrecked, each of us Ishmaels is floating at sea. Then the roaming ship (Rachael) marginalized religion) drifts by in search of her missing children and finds "another orphan." (xvii)Are those timbers I hear creaking, or is it just his metaphor? Anyway, the idea that there's no spiritual home anymore, but that there once was, and that now it's gone for good, is painfully familiar to me.
Once, several years ago, Shel was having a phone conversation with LWB about my spiritual situation. LWB was understandably concerned, and was apparently somewhat discouraged. At length she asked Shel something to the effect of "will he ever get back to the way he was?" Meaning, would I ever return to more or less straightforward evangelical belief. I overheard this, and in my anger at the question, I retorted, "I might if I get in a car wreck and suffer brain damage." Now this was a rotten way to repay someone's concern. But what it says to me, now, is that there is no going back. You can't put the evils of the world back into Pandora's box -- once they get out, they're out.
And what that means for me, is that I'm out, too. Once you've taken the evangelical world out of the man, you can't put the man back in the evangelical world.
