GK Chesterton has perhaps the greatest sermon ever told written in this chapter. And it's how I choose to close out this blog.
One of the reasons that I think Girardian thought is so important is because it understands God in ways that almost no school of thought I know of does. It is able to understand the grand play of humanity, where Homo erectus gave way to Homo sapiens some 70,000 years ago, then
through generation and generation of countless cultures since human history was recorded in some shape or form, where countless gods existed to countless people through immeasurable violence and death. And to bring it all under a Divine Plan, a Divine Union, where humans evolved to understand just enough. Where now, with our brains continuing to shrink (3,000 years and counting I think is the last estimation) and violence on this planet increasing, and the Sacred decreasing, we may know as little as we ever have, and, even more dangerous, think we knew as much as we ever thought we have. As Edward Harrison points out in his gem, "Masks of the Universe", every culture has understood their (lowercase) universe and their (lowercase) god(s). But who really understands the Universe and God?
Case in point of humans' shrinking brains: my wife and I are part of that long, annual consumer line that has ate up that "Elf on the Shelf" stuff. He/She? (I'm thankful I don't know for sure) shadows our young kids in late November and December. He "mysteriously" moves around every night to a new location where he can "watch" our kids and make sure they behave. He buys us some quiet meals. Some less dramatic trips to bed at night. Some long toothbrushing. Some extra good behavior from 4 kids for a good 3-4 weeks. He's actually a great investment.
But really. How is it that a goofy looking, one foot long (when your stretching him out to get him to
"stay" on an uneven, elevated surface) elf suddenly mounting the chandelier can be perceived as threat by anybody?
Well, if you haven't noticed, young kids live in bewilderment. For example, my daughter (my princess), now five, has focused some of her attention to the Disney princesses.
It is in The Ethics of Elfland that Chesterton recounts the story of Cinderella, and asks the question, when is the last time you told the story to a child, and read the Fairy Godmother's words to Cinderella, "if you don't come back by midnight you will turn into a pumpkin?"
It's not like they don't know pumpkins. We know pumpkins. One of my favorite pictures is when it was just my wife and I, and my daughter, and we were picking out pumpkins back in Boston and brought them back for Halloween. She picked up nearly every pumpkin. Some were so heavy I was waiting for her intestines to shoot out. Now with her brothers we do that every year. It would be an utterly ridiculous thought -- less the bewilderment and joy of the moment - for my daughter even at five to think a princess could turn into a pumpkin.
But she, like every kid, tends not to stop the story and interrupt. "Why does she turn into a pumpkin? How can that even happen? Thats ridiculous!"
None of that.
Instead their minds move to the possibility of pumpkin transformation because they can, and, most importantly, are willing. The wonderfulness of the story. Of the possibility.
Why can't Cinderella turn into a princess? They may think to themselves .After all, those marvelous stars hang in the sky, Ice cream taste amazing, and I just love running around and not knowing what is next around the corner....
But what if they shot back at the Fairy Godmother. What if they shouted to the Fairy Godmother, "Hey wait a minute!. How come?????
As Chesterton masterfully concludes. "Because if the child asks how come, the Fairy Godmother may very well come back and say, "Well my child, how come there is a Fairyland in the first place?"
This isn't a fairyland. Certainly not a place of a living, loving, benevolent Creator. This is too often a brutal place. And the older I get, the more I think, its always a brutal place. We are just better at deceiving ourselves and distracting ourselves some of the time. And, on top of that, post-modernism is giving way to something even less palpable and more contrived. Integrity is much of a thing of the past. So are heroes.
We know better than a five year old, right? So we ask. "How come"?
But not the Fairy Godmother. Instead we ask God (uppercase) even if some think we ask the Universe (uppercase).
We ask. Everyone asks. And the reply?
"Well, my child, why is there a universe to begin with? Better, how can something living in another reality (mathematics) explain this (your) reality (physics and biology)? Better, how can your physical brain give you something utterly incomprehensible, your mind? Better, why can you trust your mind? Better, why is it humanity is obsessed with not the feeling of love, but selfless love proper, where it cannot be accounted for in any law of science that we know of? Better, how can laws exist without a law giver? How can DNA store information more efficiently than anything we can imagine? Better, How can Miller and Urey fail, and how is it that we now look hopeless to ever understand how any part of a cell emerged never mind the most complex thing anyone has ever invented? Better, how is it again that everything we know of that exists is caused, and was caused by something? And best of all, why is it your shrinking brain (yes, 3,000 years and counting) a dot of a dot on a google map, on a dot of a planet, on a dot of a solar system, on a dot of the Milky way, among 100,000,000,000 galaxies, can comprehend it all?
Birdman just won the Oscar last night. I thought it was OK. One lesson could be don't shoot yourself in the nose. But another could be this: How would a child view the end of that movie?
My ending was seeing Sam look out the window at her Dad, seeing him as the success he always wanted to be, soaring majestically around Broadway. A metaphor of sorts. But I would have to conclude my eyes and mind were playing a trick on me, or at least Sam's were. She was, after all, looking up and actually seeing something.
How would a child see the ending?
Well the obvious way. Sam was looking up.
Birdman flew away.
No comments:
Post a Comment