i’m not really in the mood to write just now, but i have been thinking about some ideas and have so few oportunities to post i thought i ought to take advantage. This post is coming to you courtesy of one Roxanne Hai whose has generously contributed her old IBMThinkpad to the iBook Survivors Support Network. i’m none too comfortable working on a PC, but i’m grateful not to be using a pen to scribble random thoughts on napkins. Needless to say, the Russian was ineffective. i still have some hope for hack fixes, but in the meantime it’s me and the Monster and the cafe (the Monster just beeped at me – do you think it wants something?). Unfortunately it won’t speak with our wireless at home, but i’m hoping to get it an implant that might enhance it’s capacity for love.
So, in the absence of electronic diversion, i retured to my old habit of sitting around and reading a lot. i had forgotten how satisfying such occupation is. Not only do you feel like you’re doing something productive, even if you’re reading the most meanigless fluff, but the stories last like 20 times as long as any movie! This means that, not only is the yearning for more put off for days instead of a mere 2 hours, but the extra time it takes to read each book means that the availability of books you haven’t read is bound to exceed the availability of movies you haven’t seen by, well, a heck of a lot. Even here in Israel where English-language books are only sold in exchange for your first-born child, i’ve managed to come accross enough to keep me entertained for months. But of course, spending all this time reading brings me back to the old question – will Harry Potter lead me to hell just as easily as Buffy? [see "Buffy the Vampire Slayer will lead me to hell" and "The Trappings of Fiction"] i believe the answer, my friends, lies at the intersection of an understanding i came to several months ago and the natural human ability to engage with things like literature, film, and even people with intention and scope broader than that of the immediate object of our attention.
[note: i like the way the Monster has separate buttons for deleting things in front of and behind the cursor]
So. The understanding, first, i think. i’d like to mention here that this understanding is somewhat metaphorical – as, i have found, are many of my understandings these days – and should not be expanded beyond the scope of its applicability. It began with something i heard in a talk about the material world being a facsimile of the spiritual world. Oh! The Monster can run Ocean! “The world of matter is an outer expression or facsimile of the inner kingdom of spirit.” (Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 270) Upon learning this, i considered and internalized it literally, as has become my habit with the Writings. Unlike those of previous Dispensations, i think, for the large part, we can do that with the Baha’i Scriptures, though it is important not to limit the term “literal” to material manifestation. So if we think of this literally, or at least if i do, what we get is that the spiritual world is reality – something we all know – and this world is a sort of copy of that world – a reissuing of the original, but without many of the qualities that distinguish the actual thing (think color, dimension, etc.). Simplified for the purpose of conveying essential information.
i thought about this in the context of God’s having created us – us, the Universe, and all of material existence – so that we could know Him. God loved us, wanted us to know Him, knew we couldn’t do that directly, so he made the Universe, in this understanding, as a sort of metaphor for the spiritual world and everything in it – souls, God, the Holy Spirit, love, etc. – which we see all over the Holy Scriptures of every age. It is not by coincidence that we can make the Sun represent God, the warmth and light the Holy Spirit, the rays the Manifestations, and the earth the body. God made all of those things to represent the spiritual world so that we could understand Him and it to some degree. By that token, i think it stands to reason that a great many of the things we have created within that creation would serve the same purpose. Particularly those things that are created from a space of healthy spirit, which i think many would agree seem to be inspired by some permutation of divinity.
This is getting long. So my point is that, approached from the appropriate space of learning about God, the universe, and everything, anything that exists in this world should carry with it some avenue to knowing God better. The particular example that spawned this monologue was Harry Potter. i was thinking about how much time i have spent reading those books i don’t know how many times and trying to assess whether all that time should be put in the ‘wasted’ category or whether i might have gleaned something useful from those hours. Okay, days. It was then that i realized (much to my relief) that indeed, there were some basic concepts that people like me are only able to glean from fiction.
A good example would be the idea of a king or lord. Having grown up in a ‘democratic’ society where one is much more likely to belittle than revere the head of state, the idea of a powerful, respected ruler, more capable of holding such a position than those under him, has always been a bit out of my reach. Consequently, when i have prayed, to say “my King” has never really meant anything clear to me. Reading fiction where such kings exist helps me conceptualize that particular attribute of God. Consider the following quote from a prayer of Baha’u'llah (do you like my Ruhi sentence structure?):
“Thou before Whose wisdom the wise falleth short and faileth, before Whose knowledge the learned confesseth his ignorance, before Whose might the strong waxeth weak, before Whose wealth the rich testifieth to his poverty, before Whose light the enlightened is lost in darkness, toward the shrine of Whose knowledge turneth the essence of all understanding and around the sanctuary of Whose presence circle the souls of all mankind.” (Baha’i Prayers, p. 120)
In a society where all men are created equal and in which we spend a great deal of our time and energy affirming to ourselves and asserting to others that we are, in fact, equal if not superior to every other human being on the planet, i’ve never really had the expereince of relating to someone as ‘one of the wise’ or ‘the strong’ or ‘the enlightened’. Western society has pretty much eliminated such societal positions as elders, shamans, wise men, etc. Even those who are considered well-informed can, for the most part, only be said to be so within a limited discipline. But – and bear with me here – when i think of, for example, Dumbledore, who is written exactly for the purpose of filling that role, i have someone to imagine waxing weak, confessing ignorance, and being lost in darkness. In literature, the archetypes whose essential qualities pale so sharply when placed in the light of God’s omnipotence are given form and tangibility that my limited ‘real world’ experience has no space for.
It is for this reason that i would argue that, far from taking us away from reality, fiction – i think probably movies included – can, just like everything else in the universe, help us to know and worship God, if that’s what we’re up to, which is, after all, the point. i get the feeling that, if the material world is a facsimile of the spiritual, fiction is just as much a part of that facsimile as anything else and we can, if we are seeing as we are meant to, see in these things the attributes of God as clearly as in any other part of creation. This is not to say that my tendency to watch Buffy or read Harry Potter instead of saying my obligatory prayers is therefore justifiable. Only that, where before it might have seemed that i was sacrificing moving forward for moving backward, i think now that, in fact, i’m sacrificing moving forward in an preferable and dignified manner for moving forward a bit more clumsily, with less direction, and possibly at great peril. But moving forward nevertheless. Such is the generosity of God.
