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.
It is dusk. I am sitting next to bel by a dogwood, with her overgrown smoke tree behind me in the newly fenced-in portion of their front yard. Gusts of wind blow dying oak leaves off their branches as five crows fly past and the leaves tumble, carried in the wind, and fall like drunken birds.
Bell is watching the sky.
“There go the evening crows.”
“They look purposeful, silently heading over the trees instead of landing in them.”
We sit in old and stained plastic Adirondack chairs. They used to be available at Snaz Super Stores for under twenty dollars. The bright blue, yellow and green, is muted by a layer of brown, an accumulation of spring tree sap, and jet exhaust.
We watch Ossian race around the yellowing mock oranges in pursuit of Leo, only a little bigger, who is visiting from next door.
Steve comes out the back door and sits down in the green chair next to bel.
“Look, that’s seven more, following those I saw from the kitchen window.”
An airliner passes over on its approach to Calvin Coolidge National Airport. Landing gear not yet visible as it descends gradually, well above the crows.
“Fred, we often see crows flying towards the river about now.”
“I think they are going to roost, bel.”
“There’s security in numbers.”
Ossian has come to see Steve. His red leash is still attached. Panting, he puts his forepaws on Steve’s knees.
“You have trained him well, Steve.”
He hands me a small cube of dehydrated liver. Another gust brings more brown and grey leaves flying over us in the wind.
“Offer him this.”
Ossian moves off and jumps on my lap and I give him the treat. He tries to lick my face.
Bel points to the ground.
“Down, Ossi.”
He jumps down and Leo trots over and Ossi tries to nip his dangling ears.
As the dogs run off, we watch the brilliant glow of the sun low behind the tree line, every twig and branch silhouetted in a vivid pattern of growth. More oak leaves rock and tumble, floating to the ground and some lodge in the hollies along the fence.
Steve points up towards the East.
“See the geese?”
“Yeah, must be about a dozen in that echelon.”
“There’s a lot of activity in the heavens tonight!”
“And no mosquitos, Fred.”
“No, I haven’t heard any crickets either.”
“They were subdued by those frosts last week.”
Steve finds a white oak leaf sliding off his shoulder where it landed after a long trip over the power lines from the huge tree across the street.
“Look, God has sent me a gift!”
He holds up the leaf by its petiole or stalk, turning it slowly.
It is light mottled reddish brown on one side, slightly curved with deep sinuses.
“How about that structure, Fred!”
“Yes, a fine specimen.”
He turns it so I can see the flat gray side.
“See those veins growing up from the stalk?”
“Yeah, like a diagram of the tree itself.”
“Yup, a trunk with branches.”
“Nature famously repeats itself wherever it can.”
“Don’t you find it mysterious?”
“I never thought of it that way, Steve.”
Bel holds out her hand.
“Let me see that thing.”
She holds it in one hand tracing the veins with her forefinger.
“It is a mystery to me why there is anything at all!”
“Wasn’t that Leibnitz’s question too?”
Steve watches bel examine the leaf. “It was, Fred, and he gave God as the only possible answer.”
“So he did, and Spinoza claimed that it is impossible for there ever to have been nothing!”
Another gust brings faint sound of leaf-blowers from up the street. We pause to watch the dogs. Bel lets Ossian off-leash to chase Leo unencumbered.
“I have been told God is love.”
“Well, Fred, he must have loved this perfect undamaged dead leaf.”
“I don’t buy the God is love idea.”
“Well, it is hard to find a concept of God.”
“I would say it is impossible, Fred!”
“So, what is all the ‘God-talk’ about?”
“Reassurance, hope, and faith, among other things.”
“That sounds about right.”
“A lot depends on how you talk about it.”
“Talk, grammatically, you mean?”
“No, Fred, the vocabulary.”
“As in ‘God is love’?”
“As in any sentence starting with, ‘God is.’.”
“Okay, go on!”
“Fred, ‘God is.’ that is all I can say.”
“That sentence may be grammatical but needs finishing!”
“Well, ah right, I might usually say, ‘I am happy’, or “I am finishing up” or ‘I am stuck in traffic’. See what I mean?”
“Not really.”
“They are all ways of ‘being me’.”
“That is true enough and the ways so many of us are ‘being’ at various times.”
“So, Fred, what about ‘being’ itself’?
“As in, ‘I am’?”
“Right.”
“Yeah, ask Heidegger that one.”
“You remember his famous line?”
“Can’t say I do. I remember he goes on about, ‘being’, a lot.”
“Our Marty said: “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”
“Oh, he said that did he?”
“Yeah.”
“Where does that get us as far as ‘being’ goes?”
“I guess it takes me back to all the ways of being me that came up before.”
“Okay, we were talking about, ‘talking-about-God’.”
Steve puts his hand on bel’s shoulder. “According to Exodus, God tells Moses, ‘I am that I am’, in the St. James version, anyway.”
“Yeah, in other words, don’t ask for any more info.”
“Exactly, bel, God is. Say any more and you put it in the human condition.”
“Isn’t that the point about Jesus?”
“Oh yes! Jesus was God in the human condition.”
“You said ‘it’ for God, Steve?”
“Right, aside from the gender issue I am not into an anthropomorphic god.”
“Okay Steve, suppose God had a daughter instead of a son?”
“That brings up the gender issue and is still an anthropomorphism, Fred.”
Steve raises his hand from bel’s shoulder in a gesture for emphasis. “Christian tradition has God the Father, firmly in place.”
“Oh, I know, but find it misleading.”
“Aren’t Christians supposed to think of him that way, bel?”
Steve throws another stick for barking Leo and Ossi to chase.
“Well, it does make God accessible, or understandable.”
“Yeah, Fred, especially if you get along well with Dad!”
“And if you don’t, best think again!”
“The thing is, ‘being’ itself isn’t understandable.”
“What? Don’t we all know the verb to be, bel?”
“Sure, that’s just grammar. I mean being is experienced, not only an idea in mind.”
Steve throws another stick he breaks off a small fallen branch under the hydrangea next to him. “Now hear this: ’ peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus’.”
“Isn’t that Philippians?”
“I forget, Fred, but it seems to me to be talking about an experience, not an idea.”
“Bel, would you have it that God and being have that in common.”
“Well, sort of, Fred. We must be careful of concepts!”
Another gust rattles in the oaks and more leaves fly up into the evening light and settle as the air stills again.
“Bel, where’s my leaf?”
The leaf has blown off the arm of bel’s chair.
“My perfect leaf, where is it?”
Another gust rattles earthbound dry leaves around us.
“It has joined the throng skittering across our lawn.”
Steve offers Ossian another treat, as he gallops in soft crunchy strides through the throng to his chair. Then Leo comes too.
“Bel has a Buddhist approach to this.”
“I hear that, Steve.”
The sky has darkened above us, but a glow still fills the treetops.
“Look at all those crows!”
“That’s over a dozen, Fred.”
“All still heading the same way.”
Bel looks up from a leaf that fell on her lap.
“Let’s not forget Jung, in all this!”
“Okay bel, I remember reading that he thought God was the unconscious.”
“That’s it!”
“So, you agree with him?”
“Well, think about what the idea of an all-knowing deity and the idea of the unconscious have in common.”
Steve has both dogs around him, barking. “What was that, bel?”
Steve throws another stick for the dogs to chase.
“I said, think about what ideas of god and the unconscious have in common.”
“Nothing much, I should say. One is a psychological term, and the other is the deity.”
“True, Fred! But they are both unknowable, yet they make themselves known.”
“Yes, the ‘unconscious’ can’t be known by definition!”
Steve taps his wife on the shoulder again. “It has been said that psychology came along to replace a deity for those who found the supernatural was no longer believable.”
“By whom?”
“Ahh, Jung, maybe. I can’t remember, bel.”
“Well, psychology does offer a new vocabulary to talk about the problems we might discuss with God.”
“You mean prayer, right, bel?”
“If you like, Fred.”
