NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Daisy has been dog sitting Maximilian, her friend Hank James’s longhaired dachshund. The dog ran off with its carefully combed tail streaming hair like a flag, and disappeared, after chasing Mr. Liddel around the yard. Daisy was so anxious to rescue her white rabbit, it didn’t occur to her that the dachshund might run away. Herman Intaglio and Theo Tinderbrush and I walk among the ruins on the hilltop where Bails Lane intersects Wicket Street.
“Herman, are you trying to start another religious argument?”
“Not an argument Theo, a discussion.”
“Herman we won’t get any further than we did at the restaurant.”
“You never know Theo. As I get older I have turned more to God and you have no God. This worries me my friend.”
“There’s nothing to worry about buddy. I am doing fine with the absurd.”
“What? The absurd? Is that your religion?”
“No, as an atheist, I don’t believe in God, or any supernatural controller, or any of that religious stuff.”
“See Theo, I think you are missing something.”
“Don’t tell me Herman.”
“No, Theo I must, life is meaningless without God.”
“Like I said, it is absurd. Unless you have a project in life, and get meaning out of that.”
“Have you been reading Sartre?”
“Think I did, years ago.”
“Now think of this, God is the beginning and end of everything.”
“You mean there would be nothing at all without God?”
“Well, right, without the creator there would be no thing, no creation.”
“What creator? We don’t know how the universe was created.”
“No, no one knows how God created the world or the universe and all that.”
“Say God didn’t create the universe or the world. Suppose all these particles or strings or what ever they are, have just been there for ever, blowing up and condensing in an endless cycle.”
“That sounds absurd alright, Theo!”
“It doesn’t matter, we are here looking for Diddlie’s dog. We have a purpose. We are doing something useful, and helpful. I am fine Herman.”
“Okay Theo I am glad you feel fine about it. You know you don’t have to live in an absurd situation.”
“Well, I do and I don’t. Cosmically it looks absurd to me, but personally life is full of meaning. I am a lucky bunch of particles!”
“You are more space than particle you know!”
“Herman you are supposed to be shocked!”
“Not shocked, not at all. I’ve read a little about Penzias and Wilson, cosmic background microwave radiation, and cosmology.”
“As far as meaning is concerned, I find meaning in my experience.”
“Yes and God is immanent at every moment.”
“What does that mean?”
“He is with you in every moment … there to be heeded.”
“There? … in what sense?”
“Whenever you move from one thought to another, make a judgment or a decision for instance?”
“Well you never know what may come up from the subconscious!”
“Too true!”
“If I decide to drive over to the Safeway, isn’t that a matter of will?”
“It is, but what are your motives?”
“I want to buy something for dinner.”
“Okay, so what led you to the decision?”
“Look Herman, it wasn’t God. It was hunger.”
“Sure, but you can always be open to God’s will, or not. That is the perpetual question.”
“It is?”
“Yes, can you accept something beyond your own will?”
“Like what?”
“Like something that prevents you going to the store.”
“You mean God’s going to prevent me from grocery shopping?”
“No, well in a sense maybe so. Say there’s a snow storm and you can’t drive. Then you are hungry but can’t get anything to eat.
How do you cope with that?”
“Damn frustrating!”
“Yeah it is, and that’s where you can seek the Lord’s help.”
“In my frustration?”
“Sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Say a prayer.”
“What? … pray for the snow to stop?”
“You might.”
“I might not. Why should God stop the snow for me?”
“That’s not for us to say.”
“Oh? but, suppose that’s what I am asking?”
“When you pray you get away from yourself and your frustration.”
“You mean I distract myself.”
“No, you could do that with a cigarette or something.”
“Well I don’t smoke, but what’s the difference?”
“The difference between a distraction and a prayer is that a prayer is a sacred conversation and a distraction is just that, a loss of attention.”
“Oh, but I would be talking to myself … that sacred stuff, incense, choirs, etc. doesn’t work for me.”
“Look, prayer takes you, moves your attention, away from your immediate concerns to God.”
“Oh, really? … but I don’t pray.”
“What about conscience?”
“What about it Herman?”
“Do you answer to your conscience?”
“Yes I have a sense of guilt when I realize I have done wrong.”
“There you are then.”
“It is part of me Herman, my conscience isn’t any thing super natural.”
“Part of you yes, and more than that too. It is not your will.”
“Suppose I just want to go to the store and eat dinner. While I am messing around praying, the snow is getting deeper. Where is this getting me?”
“If you are sincere you are getting to another place, you will be open to other possibilities, and know the love of God.”
“God’s love?”
“Yes his infinite love for you!”
“Well sure, if I were a believer but really, if I just take a deep breath and relax for a few minutes I’ll think of something.”
“Well if you ignore God, you will not find him that’s for sure.”
“I am not ignoring anything. Besides Herman, watch it, you know there are those who take exception to the idea God as “him”. I just thought I’d warn you.”
“Him, her, it, gender isn’t important here, at least to me. Don’t think of believing … this is not so much a credibility issue … Think of paying attention.”
“Paying attention? I am. In this case the damn snow has really got my attention!”
“Okay Theo, are you reliving something here?”
“Yeah possibly … this stuff drives me crazy!”
“A prayer will get you off that.”
“Finding this dog would too. You know Herman, I think you are talking about intuition.”
“Well sort of, that could be where you will find God.”
“I thought he was supposed to be in heaven.”
“So it is said, but that is figurative language.”
“Where do you think it is?”
“I think heaven is within us too.”
“Yeah, but what about all this talk of Jesus ascending into heaven?”
“I don’t think it is a physical movement.”
“What else could it be?”
“It could be a movement from, say …. stress to being stress free.”
“Oh relaxation, a kind of Yoga thing.”
“Could be, but reached through prayer and not physical postures.”
“Wait a minute. A man, Jesus died and ascended into heaven. That’s what I learned, and never have been able to believe it.”
“Don’t forget the difference between figurative language and ordinary language.”
“So it can mean anything I want?”
“It means what ever your tradition says it means.”
“Oh tradition … well yes, tradition is a fine thing but it doesn’t make the impossible possible.”
“I am trying to tell you Theo, not to take it all literally.”
“So what? It still says what it says.”
“The question is, what does it say?”
“Yes that’s it, countless wars have been fought over that and people have been tortured and martyred.”
“The history is pretty awful, but it is the history of people’s conflicts with each other.”
“Right, that is social control through religion”.
“So what are you saying?”
“Herman, what you find in your faith is wonderful for you, but I see things differently. I am afraid the faithful have been used and manipulated all along.”
“I think you are right Theo”.
“So how can you join such an organization?”
“It’s the tradition, not history.”
We walk up through the sloping yard toward the ruins of The Ashes. A heavy black wooden garage door has fallen off its rusted hinges and smashed the back of an old Oldsmobile Toronado with a big back window. Reaching the old patio above the garage we look down on a sunken driveway that leads from the road into the garage beneath our feet. A chain link fence sags from poles leaning from each side into the shadows where oak and maple leaves have collected on the driveway. Ivy, Virginia creeper and wisteria vines wind up the trunks towards the sun. The ivy covers two dead gum trees with winter foliage. More debris blows into the abyss, from the ground, surrounding red oaks and the big maple at the top of the driveway. Tree roots have burst though the crumbling asphalt, now partly overgrown with moss.
“Look there he is!”
“Where Theo?”
“He’s at the top of the driveway Fred, on the left.”
“That was a red fox!”
“It was too low slung for a fox Fred.”
“Let’s take a look!”
Theo walks off fast, snapping twigs underfoot and heading down hill, blundering past azaleas and hollies draped with vines.
