A Commune of Fear

 On a blue-sky day near the sea shore, in my parents' home, I sat with a family friend, a professor of education at one of those now-Ivy League, quasi-Catholic (well, I could say "formerly Catholic but now oxymoronic") institutions; she was writing an article about white privilege in k-12 schools, and had asked me, a former Trivium professor, to edit it. When I sat down, I didn't know what it was about, and simply wanted to be helpful. As I discussed with her sentence clarity, I came across a point that seemed illogical, or unsound, and thought naively that perhaps it was about syntax. 

"No," she said in her sanguine, kind, energetic manner, "I'm really saying that white privilege is systemic, and this means that all white people are, as a class, guilty of racism." I don't know if my mind fell open, or my mouth. When she got up to see if her chocolate cake was done, my philosopher-husband must have seen a train wreck coming, so sidled up and quietly, under the racket of oven door and cake pans said, "She's a cultural Marxist." 

This was three years ago. Since then, I've been trying to understand this concept, and why my immediate response was that it was unsound, illogical, and fundamentally, an open door for social terrorism. I've been trying to understand, why, when she explained her point, I saw fire; I saw individual people crushed under the weight of a nameless, faceless, uniformity; I saw individuals subsumed into class, into deterministic fate, into fossils, no greater than the sum of the irrational forces of survival. Now, as I watch 2020 unfold and reveal more apocalyptic bits hiding in every crease, I see this fire again, and I see now the fullness of what has been unpacking and unfolding over the last century, the last five hundred years. Cultural Marxism, and its parents, Economic Determinism and Communism and Atheism, have a pedigree reaching back into the thought of Darwin, and even further back to the "state of nature" philosophers like Hobbes and Locke.

What is cultural Marxism? Complicated question; one can experience it, though, in the 2020 focus on "systemic racism," "white privilege," BLM, and even, perhaps, on MAGA groups. One hears it in terms like "social solidarity," "corporate kleptocracy," and "dismantling Western nuclear family and patriarchal structures," to name just a few. You experience it in the persecution of sacramental churches, the herd-like narratives presented by corporate-owned media, virtue-signaling, draconian business and middle-class busting, and robust, corporate-run censorship on social media platforms which is just one dance step away from the censorship I experienced first-hand in Russia during the death of the USSR.

To see that all these seemingly disparate elements are species of Marxism, one needs to see the fundamental roots of Marxism, and this is a wide-ranging, historical and philosophical definition. Building partly on an older book by Dr. J. Husslein, The Christian Social Manifesto, we have to start with a parent of cultural Marxism: Economic Determinism. This is a materialist conception of history and human organization, built, I think, partly on radical idea of a "state of nature" in the seventeenth century. For the first time in human history, thinkers like Hobbes and Locke posited an "extra-societal" theory of the origins of human rights and behaviors. Locke created a "state of nature" which emphasized the individual's right to private property as necessary for survival, and traces early human cooperation to the need for survival around one's labor and property; Hobbes, on the other hand, posited a "nasty, brutish, short" state of nature from which escape was necessary for survival, period. One could say that these two "state of nature" philosophers are respectively the direct root of Capitalism (via individual private property rights and contract theory divorced from the constraints of the Church) and the direct root of Communism (via the Leviathan necessary to control a brutish nature). 

However, if one looks more closely, they are perhaps two sides of the same coin. The "coin" is the assumption, first, that a "state of nature" beyond, prior to, any human society, is possible (do we just pop out of random bacteria--oh wait, that's Darwinism), and second, that political order is a bandage and not necessarily a good in itself. This fundamental "sameness" can be seen more clearly when it is contrasted with political theory in Western culture starting with the Greeks. For Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and until the Scientific Revolution and the Wars of Religion (15th-17th centuries), the political life was, on the one hand, the means by which human beings attained natural virtues and the development of their faculties in accord with the discernible order of the cosmos, and on the other, during Christendom, the reflection in society of the natural, eternal, and divine laws. As Pope Pius XI says in Quadragesimo Anno: 

For according to Christian doctrine, man endowed with a social nature, is placed here on earth in order that he many spend his life in society and under an authority ordained by God, that he may develop and evolve to the full all his faculties to the praise and glory of his Creator; and that, by fulfilling faithfully the duties of his station, he may attain to temporal and eternal happiness. (39). 

The Pope is saying that people are placed by God into society, not that they decided to create society out of a kind of nothingness; he is saying that society has a final cause, an end ordained by God that is for man's good and for the fulfillment of his nature as a rational creature made in the image of God, who is Himself a society. This is so very different, contrary, really, to the idea of a state of nature and therefore contrary to the political and economic societies produced by "state of nature" philosophers. The pernicious element entering through Locke and Hobbes is determinism: we are determined, in some way, by the need for survival. Survival is the end, either one's very life (Hobbes) or one's economic life (Locke). These forces of survival become the determiners for political, economic, and social life. At the root of human life is antagonism; no longer is the focus on love, or on the rational and its development, but is rather on a balance of forces to create order: for hegemony and survival. In essence, human nature is reduced and redefined. 

This lens of primal, survival forces creates logical conclusions: in societies, whether Hobbesian or Lockean, the state of nature will become a herd or group-like balance of forces, and these groups, like the individuals in the states of nature, will still be fighting for survival. Not only this, nature is defined not only as fundamentally competitive, it is also a nature requiring either Leviathan or contract theory to order it properly: this means, in effect (especially for Hobbes) that man in nature was not able to see or discern eternal or divine law, was not able to relate to a Creator, or to be primarily under His authority, that family is not ordained by God and the primary authority after God. 

As things developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, the progeny of Lockean thought was the American Regime built on contract theory and an absent, Deist god, the ravages of the mercantilist model, and the capitalist movement from Adam Smith's laissez-faire private capital and the mysterious forces of the market, much like the survival, individual right forces of the state of nature. The progeny of Hobbes, I would argue, was the absolutism of the 18th century monarchies and ultimately, Marx. 

Marx posited that the real forces, the real ends of human community, were found in economic struggle. Dr. Husslein says, "The final cause of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in mens' [rational apprehension of logos or God's order], but in changes in the modes of production and exchange"(58). To me, this sounds like the economic version of "state of nature." Like the scientific revolutionaries starting in the 16th century, Marx was looking for impersonal forces, or certain empirical laws that one could use as the ultimate principle for action. Like the American founders, Marx saw that if one built a system on how people really behave, rather than how they ought to behave, one was more likely to predict what will happen next and be able to manage it: economic determinism was born. Also, like the scientists and political thinkers fueling the Enlightenment, Marx wanted to create and articulate laws independent from the claims of Christianity. 

Why? He saw religion as just another, rival, means of control, an opiate: he saw that Christianity held that God is both the principle of order and that He makes demands on us for our own good and fundamentally relates to individual souls. Marx desired scientific, empirical certainty so that human beings as a collective could control their own ends. Furthermore, to Marx everything was actually, empirically, determined in a materialistic framework and so it was worshipping clouds to accept the claims of the Church and 2000 years of Christian thought. This is akin to the scientific, political, economic, and even religious revolutions of the centuries after the breakdown of Christendom. Dr. Husslein states, "The method of producing . . . material livelihood determines also the social, political, and intellectual processes of life in general (59) . . . underlying all this doctrine is the starkest materialistic evolution, claiming the descent of man, body and mind, from the truth: the evolution of the family from a purely animal herd, and denying, on the other hand, the existence of anything except matter and force, thus doing away with God, the soul, and free will"(60). In other words, materialism means determinism, which means that responsibility is meaningless, and therefore, so is free will and all overarching, cosmic, true, objective morality checking any human institution. The system, the State, becomes the morality because it is the ordering principle, the First Cause. 

Here we see the deeper connections between Economic Determinism, the principle under all Marxism,  Darwinism, and Capitalism. The picture of our modern world begins to come together: empirical, materialistic evidence is the only source of truth, and a grim, narrow 'realism' comes to maturity. Human beings are a step away from brutes to be managed, determined by their needs, passions, and selfishness. Fundamentally, these modern systems are built on the abolition of man based on the Christian conception, a conception that holds a special place, because it is simply true. The only form of a god allowed in any of these systems is the Enlightenment Deist, "clock-maker," but this was a short step to atheism, and Marx was honest about it. 

Many people no longer understand the Christian view of man and society, and so a study of Leo XIII on Catholic Social Teaching and Pius XI, along with Aquinas and Augustine, would be eye-opening. In principle, though, the Christian conception of human life is built on Love. It seems simplistic, but it is true. If one compares in particular the different understanding of economics and property, one sees that Catholic economic and social teaching centers around the model of the family, a unit not only economic but that of love. Reflecting God's love in the Trinity "the Father and I are one" the family has natural  hierarchy and love and responsibility reflecting the reality of the Trinity and the Mystical Body of Christ. Thus, in distributist economic theory (the most Catholic economic model), the good and thriving of the family is paramount; private ownership of property is as widely distributed as possible, because a certain amount of economic independence for the family allows for the unit to remain a unit, and to have responsibility and self-sufficiency, and therefore genuine morality, within the larger society. Love desires the beloved to flourish, and Catholic Social Teaching is built on this end, the same end that Christ expresses in his last discourse before His crucifixion. In a true Christian setting, responsibility for one's moral life reaches into all spheres of society, and the inherent morality of politics is acknowledged and balanced with the "check" and authority of the Church, Christ's Body. The final cause, or end, of all of this, and all of what God does and asks, is our flourishing, and human flourishing can only happen when we move toward our end, love-unity with God. This reality does not ignore sin, and failure, and the failure of Christendom was also self-inflicted, but denying its truth because of failure is like getting rid of the idea of family because parents mess up, and badly.

This must all sound incredibly foreign, and according to most moderns, unworkable. We live in deep pluralism, or we did. As Aristotle says, the instability of clamoring opinions easily gives way to the one voice of the tyrant, especially in times of fear and unrest. In our culture, an uneasy pluralism is giving way to another form of Marxism, just as Our Lady predicted at Fatima in 1917. 

In these times of great fear, and growing economic unrest, people are feeling more acutely the drive to survive, and the forces of the fittest (the most adept at survival) are encroaching on all of us in the form of medical tyranny and communistic groups demanding total acquiescence around their platform of meaning. Yet, having banished God long ago from our scientific, political, and economic spheres, we are not turning to the Logos, the Truth undergirding creation and human life. We have lost our end, and all we seem to care about is survival and maintaining our standards of living at all cost--even our free will, even our God-given, dignified right to make decisions for ourselves about the most basic things. We are at the mercy of both rabid capitalists in the form of the corporate kleptocracy on the one hand, and rabid communist groups on the other hand, who say openly that they will dismantle what is left standing of Western, Christian institutions and principles, and even the idea of the nuclear family present in almost all human cultures throughout history.  The Good and its concomitant, the "common good," are being forced to give way to rogue economic and political forces. 

And, setting the stage, intellectuals like the one I started with are involved in this: The idea that just because I am white means that I am inherently part of a system (read: force) that fosters racism is, simply, social Darwinism and cultural Marxism. I am not much more than a molecule in the current of white supremacy, fostered in the political and primarily economic systems. Do racist systems exist? Yes. Do evil systems exist? Yes. However, reducing human life to a force, a system, is also evil, because it attempts to devolve my nature from a responsible, free, rational creature in relationship with Logos, with God, to an element in a "force." This is not any different than becoming a Marxist "worker" where everyone is the same, and equality devolves from the love of God for each of us with an eternal end to just sameness, where dreams die because everything is determined and you exist to serve the collective ("social distancing is social solidarity"). One is forced to live a lie, because one is forced to be less than human, and to see others the same way.

I see this on the "Left" and on the "Right." Groups are no longer individuals with personal responsibility, but rather forces untied from any true and justified knowledge; sophistry reigns supreme. Just look at BLM's mission statement about dismantling Western culture into some racial and moral Borg, and The Proud Boys' statement (by founder McInnis), in which the right to drink beer in peace seems to be a euphemism for radical individualism. Of course the groups are reacting to each other, and become more extreme as the others do, and so it seems that Marx was right, after all, and Hobbes and Locke before him. 

How? Because we have built our modern societies on fear, not love. We have taken Hobbes at his word, and Marx at his word, and Locke, who relegated religion to the vestibule of society. We have lost love, because we have lost God, who is Love. We have taken survival of the fittest to heart, and this, of course, produces fear and means that Machiavelli makes the most sense; fear then re-enters, more virulent than before, and we in turn create more systems to control it. 

We have lost our desire for eternal life, and so we fear death and crush the dreams of millions of people, their businesses, their property, their lives, in order to escape it, all the while being manipulated by both capitalists and communists.

Defining Conspiracy Theory: From Paranoia to Huponoia

          

"Conspiracy Theory" or "Conspiracy Theorist" are terms now enshrined in our cultural temple as easy, finalized plaques of pejorative judgment on anything or anyone that questions one's own paradigm, or the "consensus" paradigms. In plain English, the connotation of the various "conspiracy" terms is, I think, simply "paranoia," which is a conglomeration of the Greek root words "para"(beside) and "noos" (mind). In the Greek world, "noos" has a much deeper connotation in terms of connection to reality, to the cosmos (order of things), and so to be "para" or "beside" the "noos" is a much more loaded term: together these words mean a divorce from order, from reality. I think we think of this word, "paranoid," in similar though weaker terms, and besides, the Greeks also had the richness, the generosity, the hope to maintain some awe of certain kinds of "beside reality," or madness: there could be a Bacchic kind, for example, a frenzy that was yet mystical, in touch with some deeper force beyond human rational categories. Today, I think we mean more that someone is overly afraid of things, or makes conclusions not based in the reality of a particular situation; some people, though, we think we can deem as fundamentally and comprehensively paranoid, and yet we don't have the distinction in language, so the difference comes across either through inflection or expression, or we use different terms and syntax like "He is a Conspiracy Theorist" to make the distinction categorically clear (the term is loaded and the syntax redefines the entire person: think: "She is a dog"). 

The Conspiracy Theorist, for most people at present, is one who more-or-less has a kind of complete paranoia about effects and consequences happening in the world, more particularly political, economic, or spiritual issues. Thus to use it nowadays, such as "Oh, he's just a Conspiracy Theorist," is to relegate a person to a functional madhouse; unfortunately, no one in the modern world seeks advice from a madhouse resident, ergo that person is effectively cancelled from the community or discussion; he or she simply cannot be taken seriously or even mystically, and all their offerings are suspect, whatever the subject. They are at the forefront of the "cancel culture," made all too easy by the lack of personal, face-to-face contact that is becoming ubiquitous.

However, let's back up a little, maybe to a few years before the Mel Gibson movie "Conspiracy Theory" came out and played with and perhaps inadvertently cemented the present defamation. Let's go back before the term seems to have been weaponized as a way to defame anyone questioning tightly-held narrations: Before the first weaponization of the term and the later comedy, a theorist about possible conspiracies was one who theorized or made hypotheses and perhaps even theses about something going on behind the scenes, much like a detective; because of the complex nature of the issues (groups in power and groups oppressed by it alike tend toward secrecy though of course for different reasons, I would argue), the hypothesis or theory required some inference, or, in circular terms, theorizing--much the way a scientist should theorize about the complex natural world, using the tools of induction and deduction with the humility to remain open to falsification or the better model to explain the appearances. Proper theorizing requires the prudence to know when evidence is complete and absolute and when the situation is simply at some point beyond our power to have absolute knowledge (the latter most of the time, in all areas of human knowledge, I think it safe to say, because, as Aristotle points out, particular situations are subject to so much variation, we can actually "know" these situations less, than, say, universal rational principles like the Law of Non-Contradiction).

Based on this earlier usage of the term "conspiracy theorist," one can define the early American "Sons of Liberty" as conspiracy theorists. They got a lot wrong because of the Atlantic Ocean between them and the British Parliament and the wide ocean of intent and miscommunication that created a lack of transparency between the British overlords and the colonists, but they used what data they had, and made tremendous inferences from what could have been (or weren't?) malicious actions, like the doing away with the tea tax which precipitated The Boston Tea Party. The jury is still somewhat out about the intent of the British Parliament, but the evidence we have seems to indicate that it was, at least partly, a  misunderstanding, a conspiracy theory not quite on the mark. However, though, do we then say that the Sons of Liberty were fundamentally madmen who should have been locked up instead of having their portraits painted and beer drunk by ensuing grateful generations of Americans? Were they just paranoiacs? Were their thoughts totally unjustified? Or correct in some deeper sense (the intent to use the colonies in the new, and cruel, dehumanizing paradigm of mercantilism) and yet off the mark slightly due to their status as the relatively powerless? 

The jury is still out, I think, on the Sons of Liberty...at least, the jury that resides in my mind is...but it is a serious conversation, and one would never think to simply consign them to the madhouse of history along with inmates like Joe Stalin simply by using a weaponized term against them, the ad hominum stick of desperadoes and cowards. That, seems to me, is paranoia. 

The other option is to think of someone theorizing about hidden political, economic, or spiritual motives, or even not-so-hidden ones, as possibly a "huponoiac"--now, I really did make up that term, though there is a real word in there, another Greek one: "huponoia," from "hupo" (under) and "noeo" (to think, to perceive). I am defining this as someone akin to the myth-makers (Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, MacDonald, Tolkien, and others) who tried to uncover, to reveal poetically the deeper truths of reality, of existence, of the cosmos. Like terms such as "science" and "theorist," "myth" is another word we've murdered, cut into little pieces, put through the grinder, and re-packaged as something to sell as "food" at the local store. In truth, a myth is a poetic image that, again, reveals things too sublime, too deep to express in human rational categories alone. The myth-maker is not crazy by definition; "myth" is not synonymous with "false," although one could talk, as Lewis and Tolkien and Barfield did one fateful night, about the "false myth" and the "true myth."

I'm not saying a 'theorizer' about what is 'underneath' the events and consequences in our present world is a myth-maker--I was making a kind of analogy, as the myth-maker creates within the Poetic World, the world that is meant to reveal truth, the Logos, through story, through image, through rhythm, a road to Truth through Beauty, or a portrayal in some way of Goodness. The theorist about patterns of power is in a different category. This "huponoiac" could be some one who tends to think "under" or to perceive the underlying patterns, intents, and motives resulting in the effects and consequences we live with in our moral, political, economic, and spiritual lives. Not an easy task, but one can see a quite necessary one. The huponoiac could, probably does, get a lot wrong; but when one has resisted the temptation to defame in knee-jerk response to discomfort, like one kicks when someone sneaks up and pulls a scab off one's knee (yes, we've all had that happen to us), then it is certainly possible to judge whether one's interlocutor is a paranoiac or a hupanoiac, a Conspiracy Theorist or a theorist about possible power-structure agendas.

How? First, be aware of your own cultural and family and tribal attachments: they are largely subconscious and shot through with emotion: affection, fear, love, hatred, anger. Emotions and attachments are not bad; however, as CS Lewis says, anything not kept in the proper hierarchy will become demonic, and subconscious attachments are often feasts where demons eat beyond their fill and get you to vomit them all over others. Be aware that you have them, and that they should be firmly governed by reason and the doctrines and principles of the Faith (that revelation of true Logos), by true sanity. Second, cultivate an attitude of listening and the responsibility to do your own homework before anything close to weaponized-word defamation is even on the horizon; know the difference between claims about absolute truth, theory, and hypothesis.Third, if at all possible, get a real liberal education, which includes hefty, foundational portions of logic and philosophy. Seriously. You need to know how to think, or anyone and everyone rhetorically compelling, or even emotionally compelling yet idiotic, will tell you what to think: and if he or she happens to be the fad, or in your tribe, or can get you some power, or toilet paper, as the case may be, then, well, then, it becomes really difficult. We all need authority and belonging, but we are also asked fundamentally to use our distinguishing characteristic in the natural realm (rationality) and our distinguishing characteristic in the spiritual realm (free will). 

Huponoiacs, as I'm defining the word, are often the prophetic type in the spiritual realm, or philosopher types in other areas; these are people who listen for, look for, are gifted in terms of, the "hupo" or that which is underneath normal, more shallow categories of thinking and action. Sometimes they are just regular people who, through virtue and common sense and experience, and the use of their God-given sight, see. I think all these types are more rare, or perhaps more and more 'cancelled' in the fearful, emotional, selfish, irrational, relativist paradigm we inhabit. Modern science, now far from its proper place in the hierarchy of knowledge is now unquestioned dogma, and real dogma is eschewed for the Self. The upside-downness of Christ's kingdom, the scandal of the True, Good, and Beautiful, is becoming more intolerable to those who cannot think, or see, or hear, beyond the neon signs and cartoonish conclusions of the "right-side-up" elite. What should be obvious, what is simply scripted for us in open documents like Reset 2021 is considered prima facie false because it calls our nannies, our nursemaids, those who squirt their reality into our mouths, into question.

If someone questions the narrative of our global governments and NGOs and agencies and corporations and technocrats, look at the evidence. Not an easy task, if you can't think or you don't have access, or there's just too damn much. However, if you've got documentation and a clear logical pattern of centralization and manipulation; if you've got motive and means, then a conclusion, however uncomfortable or unbelievable in terms of our emotions and paradigms, might just be a good theory and not madness, no matter what the parrots on our screens say. If you watch something like Plandemic 2, do your homework on the evidence they present: don't just knee-jerk it because Bill Gates looks too nice in his hot chocolate sweaters, or Anthony Fauci looks so--small. How could someone that size pack a nefarious punch? Think for yourself, based on solid rational and spiritual principles. It could be, it just could be, that our governments don't have our best interests at heart, that they are fundamentally corrupt; if history teaches us anything, it is that this is the tendency of human institutions, and that no nation or tribe is exempt, except, perhaps, those who know they have that tendency and who don't kill their genuine prophets and philosophers, their huponoiacs, their "I beg to differ and here's why."

Back to paranoia: does everyone deserve a hearing equally? No. There are mad people about, people whose logic or principles are simply not in accord with reality. Historically, these are usually people or groups who have a lot to lose or are deeply fearful and thus desire manipulation, but there are some who've been driven a little mad by this valley of tears and deserve our pity and understanding, and a la Shakespeare, perhaps at times speak the truth no one else dares to say. The former lot deserve jail or worse, especially if, like many corporations and powerful individuals, they have killed or oppressed many people. They probably deserve the Eighth Circle of the Inferno. 

Do your homework and if you're confused, find good people who are willing to dialogue with respect and honesty. Look for those who've had a genuine liberal arts education and/or live good, humble lives; look for those, liberally educated or not, who show a clear pattern of laying down their lives (and not just self-aggrandizing disguised: Do they give up their place on dais? Do they allow others to shine? Do they genuinely allow dissent? Do they listen? Do they love you with a love that is genuinely about your good and not about looking good or about flattery? Do they need to portray themselves as experts and make sure you know it?). Look at the wide range of their thought and writing and action, and make a suitable theory about whether or not they are mad (See? You're now a huponoiac). Look at mission statements in writing (like BLM or the Communist Party) or look for, ponder in prayer, mission statements that are embedded: remember that everyone and everything has a mission statement, or principles by which and for which they act. As Aristotle says, no one acts except towards some good, true or perceived, some love. That 'good' or end is usually expressed in a kind of mission statement or statements, or in a pattern of action, and it is the end or purpose for which that person or group or thing acts. There are some obvious ones, like "corporations exist to make money." Period. Don't believe they exist fundamentally to make you more virtuous or safe, even if they have some good programs, etc.. Remember that modern governments exist for many different reasons, and that it isn't always found in some Declaration or Manifesto. Remember that Communists fundamentally exist to build a materialistic paradise, a replacement for heaven, for God, that they are "humanists" denying the proper end for humans. Remember that many people think they exist to aggrandize themselves or their political cause. Remember psychopaths are real, and they tend to run things because they have no scruples. Remember that Machiavelli was probably mad from being tortured, but that he described powerfully the way people act when their final end, their basic principle, is maintaining political order and power, no matter the cost, divorced from metaphysics and proper theology. Look to St. Thomas More if you want a picture of a good man acting on the best principles in the political realm.

If you can figure out how to see basic principles for action, you are on your way to true discernment of the world around you, and you are on your way to being a huponoiac. You may, however, have to deal with being called a Conspiracy Theorist if you happen to question secular or corporate or science dogmas (one is not allowed, for example, to remind people that the theory of Darwinian biological or social evolution is a theory, a model). Just yell "You mean huponoiac" and I'm hoping on a wing and a prayer (?!) that people who think a government that legalized the murder of unborn children is still benevolent somehow, and people who think that just because they have money are magically allowed become a medical authority for millions of people at once, and people who think that Marxist organizations care about the Good, will start listening to you.

Valley Girl voice offstage: "Nawwt."

  

Out of the Depths

 

We were snorkeling between the shore and the little rock island, my mom and I, that little island that lay only a few hundred yards from the shallows where the waves broke; to me, it looked--well, it was--much farther. I was about six--actually, I distinctly remember being six, because it was a topic of discussion about whether or not a six-year-old could make the swim with snorkel and fins, and I had pleaded and pushed: my sister was already on her way out. Every few seconds, I had been tracking her snorkel poking out of the water, straight and steady. It had looked simple and besides--I ran miles every day--I ran everywhere--it was a point of pride for me. A runner, a horse, a galloping thing, a bird flying low to the ground, I could walk all the way up to Panorma, miles above Thessaloniki, by myself (though my mom didn't know that). Nevertheless, the logic was easy: I could therefore swim a few hundred yards to that island, that other world, that place forever separated from land, a place that basked above the swirling sea. I wanted to go out there, and I wanted to even more because I'd heard my sister saying that she hoped to catch a glimpse of the bubbles from the divers below, to see them as they grew and expanded with the lessening water pressure, as if, as they rushed upwards from the confinement of the tank and the lungs deep underneath, they felt more and more free to be themselves, to be air, the closer they got to the surface where they would once again, be part of that greater air, their home. Though I could not articulate that clearly to my mother as I had tried to persuade her to let me go, that is what I wanted to be, a bubble...

I remember her sighing and getting up from her towel, brushing sand from her legs--in this present moment, I can see my mother young again, not so small and not so, so thin; her legs then were miracles of shape, smooth and artfully proportioned ("Except my knees," she'd say); her hair was long and dark, and her face was beautiful like a doll's. I know her again in this moment as a young woman, much younger than I am now, full of life and strength...and in that moment, she was the slightly annoyed but deeply patient elementary school teacher who saw the concentrated-in-a-cup dreams of a six-year-old child.

"Ok. I'll go with you. Just a sec..."

I hopped around, adjusting my snorkel and checking on my sister's progress every few seconds. She was so far out already! We'd never catch her. Finally, the shapely legs were moving and there was a hand for me to grab. We got in and started swimming; now I was going fast, confidently, and I began to relish the view around me, as the bottom, the boring sand bottom, faded and the sea took over, that great and clear Adriatic, great womb of beauty and myth, great storyteller, great wild one. Here I was in her, swimming, my mother beside me, just a little ahead; she would turn, her mask hiding any expression, and check on me every few seconds. I could swim to that island ten times and back.

I looked for bubbles, but the concert of blue, pale fading into dark, and finally black below us where the divers were, my father and his friends, was the only reality--and I wondered about my father. It looked so dark, like death beyond the upper registers of blue; color was somehow life, or perhaps it was light. There was no light down there, and as yet, no bubbles dancing upwards. I began to look for the bubbles as signs of life from the depths, but still I saw none, and the water pressing on me, the small caressing weight of it at the surface, became somehow tinged with malice. 

Then I saw them. At first, floating innocuously in their relaxed way, they looked like bubbles through the blue water-lens that was thick and slightly distorting like thick colored glass. My thoughts of the depths disappeared in a rush of expectation. As we got closer, they resolved into what they where: huge jellyfish, their heads pulsating like bubbles on the rise, but they were not rising; they kept themselves at the same level, their heads drawing entrails behind, and I knew what those meant: pain. They weren't bubbles, they were predators, and they'd got me a few times before; the searing pain reared up in my memory as I began to slow my pace. At first it was only one or two floating in front of my mask; then, as I turned sideways, right and left, I realized that it was a school. They were dotted in maddeningly regularity all around us at about ten feet apart; we were now threading through them.

My heart began pounding, and I needed air, but I was afraid to take my eyes off them; though I knew they didn't behave this way, every skin cell fully expected a concerted rush to sting the life out of me. I wavered there, finding it hard to breathe, feeling the thuds inside my chest. I finally just needed to be in the air, so I broke surface and ripped the mask and snorkel off my face. Head just above water, keeping my fins going below to keep me just at surface, I treaded water. My mom popped up and pulled off her mask. 

"I can't make it, Mom," I panted. She stared at me for a few seconds, saying nothing, just staring at me. I know now, years later, that what she translated was "I'm too tired to swim farther; I'm too weak"; what I meant was "I'm too scared of those jellyfish." Lost in our own translations, we stared at each other; I could see the island a hundred feet off, much bigger and closer; it looked enormous from the perspective of the irregular, rolling surface of the water. She didn't grab my arm or say anything, until, very quietly, she said: "You can make it. It is just a little farther, see? Follow me. Follow me." 

Her calm demeanor translated itself to me; something in her eyes and voice came through, across the rolling water, above the water bursting with mindless energy, above the wind wantonly slapping waves together, dancing facade to the horrors beneath. Strength came across to me, like an arrow, tinged with a certain firmness, steel-like. She put her mask and snorkel in place, and nodded to me. I followed suit, imitating, and I decided I would just watch her legs and fins and just go right behind her, like a little duck across the road. Pride was all gone, and I just wanted to get to that island. She threaded her way through the jellyfish, and feeling safe behind her, I began to look around again and realized that they were, after all, ten feet apart and they were kind of interesting up close. They even looked pretty dumb. 

I remember to this day the feel of the first island rock I grabbed, that rough yet slimy feel, that strange juxtaposition between the solid and the fluid; I climbed up expertly and only then did I notice that my mom, sitting beside me on the rocks, was breathing hard in relieved fear. "Oh, that was scary, " she breathed, as my sister came up with the predictable, "What happened?" 

"I'm sorry, Mommy, I just got scared. I am sorry I scared you."

"That's ok. Look, here's Dad; you can go back in the boat."

Later, many years later, when I had my own little children, my mom and I remembered this together; I don't remember the circumstances of the sharing, but I do remember what she said: "I was so scared; here I was with this six-year-old in the middle of the ocean and I couldn't carry you; I wasn't strong enough. I knew I couldn't save you. So I just started praying; I knew then to tell you that you could make it; I suddenly got the strength of will to hold it together for us both."

I then told her it was really about jellyfish, and we laughed. I told her it was really about jellyfish, and we looked at each other again, across the years, across life, and we could see one another again, both young again, without masks, in the air, close to shore, out of the depths.

He is Given

 

A whisper runs, dances gently, twirls in undulating arabesques, lifting my hair ever so slightly; it is the early, early morning, or late, late night---I am not sure which. As the scene before me gently reveals itself in the remaining starlight and the coming dawn, heralded by sleepy murmurings of birds, I discern in the dark two male voices, also murmuring, two grey forms huddled over a growing pile of branches set upon a cairn of rocks. I can only hear the voices as part of the landscape, much like the gentle noise of wind and bird; I cannot understand even where the words begin and end; the speech is fluid, undulating, arabesque, like rhythm unadulterated by instrument. The human forms are busy, in their fluid way: the more solid, bent shape stays at the center like a navel of the world, this little world of rock and dust and brave vegetation arranged in a circle around the cairn, the sage-like tree-scrubs bending toward the center, toward the solid man who is also bowed. The more lithe man-shape is moving deftly through the trees, almost like a horse in rope-training moves in response to the trainer at the center; he brings back choice pieces of branch and breaks off smaller branches from the larger pieces and places the wood, in response to the murmuring from the other, on the cairn, always on the cairn, piece by piece, murmur by murmur. 

The man at the center is revealed as he looks up from the cairn and toward the Eastern edge of the visible world, and reflected in his face, I see the light has been steadily, gently, inexorably, growing almost unnoticed. The wind stops and there is absolute silence; at this, the man's expression fractures ever so slightly, and I see that he has deep crevasses around his eyes; I cannot see his cheeks or mouth because of the head cloth and his luxuriant, flowing, white beard. Only his eyes and the wreckage of life around them, a wreckage that grows more apparent, deeper, as the seconds pass and the light grows and the silence weighs in on us. Even the young form stops and turns toward the East, toward the silence. My eyes invariably return to the eyes of the old man by the cairn, and I see that they are full of fire, burning still, a fire of desire. He stays like this for a long, long time, as the light grows, and we other two, I and the boy, we wait upon his eyes, upon that desire and the silence it draws in. My heart and mind argue as I think I see, in the relationship between his eyes and the Silence, Another. The reality becomes overpowering and I know there were never only two of them here; there were three. I see this Other in the old man's eyes, I feel this Other in the whisper, the growing pressure of the Silence, but this One impoverishes my ability to categorize, or perhaps I understand the poverty for the first time. I dare not move, but I feel I must kneel, so I do so as slowly as possible; I feel the tired, silky dust and the little rocks mixed in as they dig into my skin. The old man and the young one do not know I am there watching with a heart pressed in from all sides and a mind stretched to the breaking point. I leave my fruitlessly searching reason and return to contemplation of what is passing before me. 

The fire in the old man's eyes begins to fade in the face of the growing glow on the eastern horizon; as if this is a signal, he suddenly turns and attends to the pile of sticks; I hear a scraping and at this, the boy breaks also from his vigil in the trees and rushes to the center. I hear a murmuring, but the sounds have, almost imperceptibly, lost the elegant, arabesque-rhythm; they sound broken, like a record that has been warped and tries yet to sing. Singing is over, it seems; there are things which must be said, things that break the instrument with which they must be sung. 

As the small fire holds its own on one side of the cairn, so near--ever so near--to the protrusions of the larger pile with its flat bed of dry weeds and grass on top--the boy finally, as the sounds of speech die, holds out his hands to be bound. The Silence presses in again on us all, birds and silent predators slinking, ground animals in their tunnels, the tiniest insect arrested in mindless flight; I feel myself most akin to those insects, arrested, convicted, and I see myself as I really am, almost--not quite--but almost by nature convicted, almost made bound over, already condemned, condemned in the blood, from the very beginning, from beyond my beginnings; I see it as certainly as any sum demonstrated, an inexorable rock of reality. I am, in a sense, helpless, helpless as the boy whose hands are now bound, the boy who has now gone silent except for the groaning, cackling, whining branches protesting as he climbs with the old man's help; I can see now they are father and son because the old man's hands are shaking as he helps his son, a shaking that seems backwards, somehow: anti-shaking, hands not used to shaking, a shaking that should not be, but is, nonetheless. 

A massive, last groaning and creaking as the boy lays down; my head also down as the knife reveals itself in all its man-carved efficiency. 

In all that Silence, a whispering wind, undulating, arabesque: the Lord is in the Silence and the Whisper and the Light rushing suddenly across the dark blue-grey mountains, breaking suddenly free of the edges of the eastern horizon, rushing like a youth of a thousand summers, an unconquerable joy and life, dancing and leaping toward the cairn and the bound boy and the broken old man with the knife; the Light rolls itself in the surprised chattering of the birds in the trees, making each leathery, thirsty beak and leaf sparkle with morning dew, the salvation of the desert; He, Light, rolls and rounds in one spot among the trees, in perfect line with the Sun at the eastern end of the world, and a bleating is heard from the blinding, shimmering, exploding spot; Jason's golden fleece suddenly has meaning, its true meaning for me, a living fleece, golden with the Light, almost, it seems, one with that Light. 

The sticks groan again as the boy descends and the ram is taken, with unnecessary firmness by the boy, because it does not fight as he expects. It lays in his arms as a lamb would in the shepherd's arms; the boy looks at his father and something I share in but do not fully understand fills me: wonder, relief, yet shame and grief, grief and wonder mixed in the face of a burning, light-filled love that knows no death, no bounds, yet will resolve itself into creature, into death, for the boy, for the man, for me. 

The ram makes no sound except that which it cannot help, the gurgling of the throat as the blood pours forth in response to the stone blade, as the heart desperately pumps harder to keep life alive. Eons, eras, pass before the gurgling stops and I can stop my uncontrolled reaction of swallowing in mixed horror, disgust, shame. Silence returns mercifully and presses in, making it hard to breathe. My head is still down; I have only looked with my ears: the crackling of fire makes my eyes snap toward the drama in the center, an ancient instinct of self-preservation within me at the sound of fire, at the sound of nature being destroyed, and I pull my heart away from my instincts so that I can understand the scene and not simply flee with my strung-out nerves. 

As the fire caresses the carcass, dead now, no longer golden except where the flames eagerly lick hair and flesh, the sun looks across, growing in strength, and the birds begin singing, as if on cue from the maestro of the east; they cry out, not in the normal cacophony, but in one, minor note; as this note progresses, another note, from the sky, wafts down from a flock of the lords of the sky approaching, what I see as eagles or hawks, perhaps even vulture-types drawn to the carcass yet kept by the fire in the sky---this other note, firmly in the major key, takes over the minor birds and draws their note into a lovely harmony that turns sorrow away. 

He has been given. He will always be given.