Opening Up to Wonder

Well, it happened again, when a perfectly normal day suddenly dropped a crater beneath my feet that I could not avoid. What exactly does that mean, you may ask? Well, first you would need to understand that whenever an idea grabs my full attention, whether a song lyric, or painting, or perhaps a well-crafted scene from a movie, I simply have to write about it. There is simply no other option for me. Words will begin to explode like popcorn in my mind and before I realize what’s happening, sentences begin taking shape, and from there I simply have to get it all down somehow. The unfortunate pothole for me is realizing that I constantly reach the limitations of my writing ability. The depth and nuance I feel is very often left naked and exposed due to my inability to provide them proper clothing.

It’s a constant frustration, to be sure, but regardless of that sting, struggling to find the right words is something that I have to do. One of the reasons that I have kept at this journal for all these years is that it allows me the chance to sort through the barrage of ideas that tend to spill out all over the place and allows me a fighting chance to organize it all and perhaps gain a better understand as to why I was so moved in the first place.

This latest barrage occurred after my son and I went to see “Avatar”, the new movie by James Cameron, which is set on the fictional planet of Pandora. On this ‘otherworld’, the native inhabitants, the Na’vi, are a race of blue skinned creatures nearly ten feet tall who are being forced to relinquish their land to foreigners for its rich resources…. sound familiar?

I’ve read a number of different accounts about the storyline, which I’m sure are accurate enough, but my own take is that it’s an allegory that exposes the carnage that unbridled greed inflicts on those caught in its crosshairs. It struck me as a polemical commentary on how unrestrained capitalism bares its blind ambition for profit, as well as its accompanying disregard for anything that may stand in its way.

The movie was advertised as using the latest in 3D film technology and promised unequaled visual candy, and that promise was definitely fulfilled as the visuals were indeed stunningly imaginative, but the movies weakness was a dialog that made several characters predictably one dimensional. For instance, the military, as a whole was presented as little more than a blunt instrument reacting to any resistance to its stated goals only in terms of a conflict to be won. Higher reasoning skills were simply not a part of their vocabulary…or perhaps that was more accurate than I’m willing to admit. That implied “backhand” was possibly Cameron’s intent.

There was also the non-to-subtle connection to our environment and the damage continually being inflicted on it. At one point the protagonist, a young marine named Sully, says a sort of prayer for a lost friend by pointing out that they (humans) have killed their Mother (the Earth), and there was no longer anything “green” on their world. Each being terms that framed Cameron’s obvious intentions.

But as I left the theater none of that was on my mind. While walking to the car with Scott, all I could think of was how to slow down the flow of popcorn that was spilling out all across my mind, because it was bursting with threads of thought. The first analogy that came to mind was that it was the re-telling of what we did, as a nation, to the American Indians in the mid 1800’s. Just as the military establishment in the movie succeeded in driving the Navi’s away from their land by destroying their spiritual home, so our government destroyed the Buffalo, the main deity and food source of the plains Indians. In both cases, the goal was to strip the natives of their God, and from there easily manipulate their disillusionment. Machiavelli would surely have been impressed, but any sense of a common humanity was simply not on the menu.

In considering it closely, I believe the main reason the movie captivated me so much was that I found myself so at home alongside the Na’vi, who appeared to be modeled after our own American Indians, for both held a similar connection to nature, as well as a deep, intimate intuition to the mysteries of their world. As a people, they easily opened themselves up to a deeper, more penetrating mode of living, which always affects me.

Several years ago, I came across the letter below, written by Chief Joseph shortly after being defeated by the American government.

“The President in Washington sends us word that he wants to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky, or the land. The idea is strange to us. Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shinning pine needle, every sandy shore, every meadow is holy in the memory of my people. We are a part of the earth as it is a part of us. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us. That the air shares its spirit with the life it supports. The wind that gave my father his first breath, also received his last sigh. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it and whatever he does to the web, he also does to himself…. we love this earth as a newborn loves its mothers heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it…. for we are all brothers.”

That was such a beautifully written letter of hope, in spite of all the evidence, and one that I believe perfectly symbolized the respect for nature that Cameron attempted to capture with the Na’vi race. And just as the military commander in the movie depicted the Na’vi as a race of savages, Chief Joseph was also considered a wild savage by those executing our governments policies.

Now give me a moment to reframe the point that I’m attempting to make here. In order to describe what I mean by that, allow me to describe a scene from the early part of “The Wizard of Oz”, while the story is still presented in mono tone black and white. After the climatic scene with the tornado, Dorothy gathers herself and opens her door only to discover Oz for the first time, and with it sees a world she had never dreamed of suddenly before her eyes in stunning color.

For several years now I have used that scene as a crude analogy to describe the two general types of people in the world; those who spend their entire lives living in that sort of black and white world of the familiar, where reality is little more than our daily responsibilities, the day-to-day mechanics of our lives (our default mode), while there are others, as few as there may be, who have opened their own inner door and have seen their own Oz, and with it see the world around them as multicolored, nuanced and inviting.

Now here is the payoff that I’m alluding to. In one particular scene that pierced me to the marrow in my bones occurred fairly early in the movie when Sully was walking with Neytiri, the Na’vi Princess up the mammoth tree where the Na’vi lived when suddenly several glowing, beautifully delicate Jellyfish like creatures began floating near him with the apparent intent to ‘check him out’. Neytiri explained that they were seeds from the Tree of Souls, and that it was a good omen if they respond well to you.

At first Sully reacted just as most western people would by attempting to swat them away (because he was still in that default mode mindset), but she quickly rebuked him and convinced him to relax, to be still, and allow himself to be open to a sense of wonder. It was only then that something magical was allowed to unfold. Once he relaxed and opened his heart, dozens of beautiful little seeds suddenly appeared and began landing all over him, illuminating him in a magical glow.

That scene defined for me, if for no one else, precisely how spirituality should be defined. It certainly isn’t the indoctrination that passes for it every Sunday morning in the pews but is rather an opening to a sense of wonder and mystery and to the poetic beauty that can be discovered there. To frame it with words and concepts will only sterilize the moment. It only requires us to experience it and become enlarged by the encounter.

Ok, now I need you to dig in and focus, because for me to frame my point with this post, I’ll need to expand the canvas a bit by introducing Tom Robbins into the fray. Here is a passage from “Skinny Legs and All”, which perfectly captures the ideal that I’m aiming for, and with words that could only come from a true shaman like Robbins. Here is the setup…..stay with me.

“Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually, however, religions became aquariums. Then, hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim.”

Then he unleashes the hammer.

“Of course, religions omnipresent defenders are swift to point out the comfort it provides for the sick, the weary, and the disappointed. Yes, true enough. But the Deity does not dawdle in the comfort zone! If one yearns to see the face of the divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows of the lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, a absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the “comfort” of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutrients…… We approach the divine by enlarging our souls and lightening up our brains. To expedite those two things may be the mission of our existence.”

Now to connect this ideal from Robbins back to the movie, allow me to point out that the Na’vi were so intimately connected to nature, which to a certain degree was their God, their sense of spirituality did not require any type of religious framework, but rather had a genuine openness to their own intuitions. Their faith, if you could even call it that, was integrated so deeply into their daily lives that it didn’t require any type of theological structure, and it was that quality that reminded me of an interview I read with Joseph Campbell years ago, where he described a trip of American religious scholars who had traveled to Japan visiting a number of Shinto Shrines. At one point, one of the American theologians commented to one of the Shinto priest saying.

“We’ve been now to a number of your Shrines, and ceremonies, but I don’t think I get your ideology, I don’t get your theology”.

At that, the Priest simply answered back,

“I don’t think we have a theology. I don’t think we have an ideology. We Dance.”

I doubt the American delegation realized the Jujutsu move that had just been unleashed on their restricted views on the matter. To emphasize Robins’ thought on that point, spirituality isn’t a concept to be defined by theologians but is rather an experience that must be felt and lived.

To circle back to the movie once more, there was also an interesting connection with the Tree of Souls, which was the spiritual heart of the Na’vi people. It was presented in the movie as a hidden place, naturally enough, that could only be found by searching for it intuitively.  For instance, the radars on the military helicopters were of no use to the pilots trying to locate it; their radars failed to give any meaningful coordinance, so they had to ignore the radar and “feel” their way through the landscape. It suddenly occurred to me that the radar on the helicopters could easily be viewed as a metaphor for religious instruction. Meaning that attempting to use a “system” of instructions, or predetermined roadmap that is not an integral part of our own intuition would be of no use in discovering our own spiritual home.

It’s an intriguing idea, and one that certainly hits home for me. I’ve spent countless hours reading the requisite books, thinking through the concepts, listening to the sermons, and contemplating the basic questions, and through it all I have yet to find anything that matches what is already flowing inside of me. And I don’t mean for that to sound trite. Throughout my entire adult life, I’ve had an insatiable yearning to understand it all, which is to say I feel a profound reverence and desire to understand what the hell this is about and to live a life that honors the gravity of it, but the world has provided me with nothing that speaks truer or resonates deeper than what I already feel running through my veins.

I could be wrong, of course, and may reach the end only to find that the “good book” had it right all along, but I will confess it now, my future reader, that I feel nothing but complete serenity walking my own path and will pay whatever price is required for it.