Musings of a Blackbird:
The Search for God
Copyright © 2007. 1,531 words.
I seem to look for the larger meaning and deeper symbol in every pedestrian thing, and I’ve often wondered if that isn’t really just about searching for God. Aren’t we in a constant state of searching for God? And this, you must understand, is coming from someone who deeply embraces empirical evidence and rational thought. Yet my brain refuses to take the biological matter that is our reality, and see it as nothing more than the sum of its parts. I see larger meaning in everything. I suppose it’s because I believe that we are capable of so much more than mere survival and procreation. And on rare and wondrous occasions, especially in art, I have seen the proof of it. And that, I must admit to myself, is really what the search for God is. We all exist in various stages of that search, of course. Many claim to have found God (a claim usually, though not always, accompanied by a profound swagger). Others of us have great doubt. But even great doubt implies a consideration of at least the possibility. Of course, I’m pretty sure my Atheist friends will roll their eyes at that one.
And why are we constantly on this hunt for the divine, anyway? And I don’t mean, why is it important to us? That one’s obvious. We all want to believe we’re connected to something greater than our little world, as we know it. What I mean is, why is the divine so hard to find? The ones who swagger will undoubtedly say, “I didn’t find it hard at all.” But then, you know, consider the swaggering source. Personally, I think it’s because God (whether fact or figment) is an elusive diva, constantly looking to be sought after and seduced, purposely and too-consciously an enigma, stubbornly refusing to be easily understood. And I’m sorry, but I can’t help conjuring old sayings like, “I’m not easy, but I can be bought.”
An early 20th century philosopher once described God as “coy and coquettish, like a fickle little girl.”
Bingo!
It gives God more attention to have us all perpetually scrambling like little ants, generating conversation, debate, even entire wars, over trying to find answers and lay claims. Brilliant ploy!
And also, what is this need we seem to have to insist some sort of personification on God? I mean, Hell, I just did it myself. We simply cannot perceive of God without assigning form, can we? The Judeo-Christian community call God "him"...but with a capital H. All my sacred-feminine-divine-goddess-fringe-culture friends –– sorry, sisters –– call God "her." And the rest of us, who aren't so sure about anything, feel more comfortable calling God neither, therefore resorting to, if not in actual word, then by inference, the always unsettling "it."
We can't help ourselves. The instinct to assign labels is such a rudimentary and basic mode of communication in our human culture, which raises us above the lower, non-verbal Darwinian form. But is that non-verbal reality really a lower form? Or possibly the highest there is, void of language, beyond thought, which is perpetually stained with labels, and pre-conceived notions, and words, and judgments? If we can assign a pronoun to God, then HE has a face, a form, an identity. HE makes our brains work easier.
The existence of God has long been debated, but I feel relatively safe in claiming that most of us believe in some sort of higher truth that is beyond our base daily existence. Where the divide really occurs is in determining whether that higher truth is some esoteric being who is apart and separate from us, who holds dominion over us, and is a lot smarter, stronger, and more benevolent than us. And requires a name...or at least a pronoun. OR if this higher truth is all of these things contained within our own greater selves, our greatest possibilities, our genuine consciousness, our "awakened" states, which is what the word Buddha actually means; and only reachable through self-examination and cultivation, but with the promise that we are all Christ's, all Buddha's; that no deity has got the monopoly on it. This latter one is the tendency toward my own belief, for which my Christian friends will probably have my head. They'll likely claim that "God is greater than us" AND "God is within us" all within the same breath.
Well? Which is it?
And I have personally witnessed the tongue-tied dawning of that seemingly contradictory stance. But lest I come off as some kind of Christian-antagonist, let me say that I, and my Buddhist, and my Atheist, and my Self-realization, and my Jewish, and my Kabbalist, and my Taoist friends, have all found ourselves tongue-tied over the concept of God too.
Frankly, I think God likes it that way: "Keep them all wondering, and debating, even fighting, and therefore, by extension, keeping me alive."
Ah, you elusive diva, you!
Norma Desmond's got nothin' on God.
And then, of course, there I go giving God form again. Giving God words (and English words at that! Because, of course, God HAS to be an Anglophile).
Yet with all of my doubt and confusion and Ameri-centric conditioning, I have to say that there IS something remarkable, difficult, dubious, and extraordinary about seeking out the larger meaning, the larger beauty, in every little pedestrian thing.
Which brings me back to my original point, before the behemoth tangent (or is the tangent the point?). A couple of years ago I had started seeing an oddly large number of dead birds, lying here and there in my daily path. And I remember the deeper-meaning part of me not being able to help but wonder if it wasn't some greater force bearing down on me, telling me to pay attention to something. Of course, the pedestrian part of my thoughts knew, good and well, that it was probably due to the deadly epidemic of West Nile Virus that was floating through my neighborhood at the time. But my brain automatically attached various other images to the notion; only one of them being Hitchcock's classic, which always drudges up concepts of the lower order rising up against the higher order, and blah, blah, film-school blah.
Was I about to be taught some lower-order/higher-order lesson in my observances? And then I recalled the first of the string of birds that I'd come across. I was in my very own yard. I hadn't found the beautiful blackbird dead, but dying. He had simply perched himself on my lawn with what seemed to be a dignified stature. He couldn't fly, and therefore was an easy target for any preying cat.
Even though I knew he was already dying, I remember spinning my frantic wheels trying to shoo away every cat in the neighborhood. But the thing is, this effort wasn't really even about trying to save the cats from contracting the deadly virus. More than anything, and perhaps oddly, I thought it would be so much more dignified for this dear bird to be allowed to die peacefully in his statured perch, than to be mauled and torn apart by fanged feline predators (my own beloved kitty being one of those).
After a fortified (bordering on insane) effort, I did manage to succeed letting him die without his peace being invaded by hungry cats. I came out later to see him in his exact same position, untouched, unclawed, ungouged, with his head and neck merely hung over in graceful death.
My work was done. I had given the poor blackbird his death with dignity, hands clapping off the dust of my labors, my smug self practically sticking a petty tongue out at the circling neighbor cats, as I strode back inside and my position assured in Heaven. Or Nirvana. Or whatever.
Or was it?
What if I had upset a natural design? What if my version and understanding of "dying with dignity" was not the same as this bird's? Suppose his dignity was in being able to let go of fighting for his life, a gift of strength and resolve given to him in the form of his broken wing, letting himself, instead, be the food his predators sought, allowing him nobly to do his part and feel his deeper contribution to the Darwinian Order of the Fittest? And by inserting my good intentions into his dying moment, what if I had taken all of that away?
I discovered very shortly after that my sadness for the fate of that bird was being quickly replaced by sadness over my possible interference with a greater design.
Of course, I'm also perfectly well aware that I am anthropomorphizing, but how does any of us really know the musings (or the capabilities of such) of a blackbird? Hell, we anthropomorphize God.
How does any of us really know whether or not this blackbird is more than form, more than matter, more than a label and a definition?
And ultimately, what did I come away with in all of this? This deeper pondering of everyday, mundane occurrences?
Well, for starters... the search for God is a real bitch! But never without the promise of fantastical adventures.