Thursday, February 6, 2014

What man, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave (the) ninety nine… and go after the one…?  Luke 15:4, as quoted in Amish Shunned:  American Experience, PBS.

Great Author's Friend:  And so I felt, deeply in my inner mind, in a way I could not control.  I went to the city--not knowing one from another really--looking for the one lost sheep.  It had always been that way.  Just that it took years to realize.  It wasn't about a job, or a career, never about that.  But just looking for that one, as if calling out.

The one had gone in a crazy way, lost abilities to forgive, suggested that you yourself were the crazy one.  That one lost sheep was me, known more intimately, just as it was about anyone else, a loved one, a family member, one cared about.  Sometimes you love by strictness, sometimes, yes, by some form of shunning, in an attempt to discipline, and sometimes, yes, by falling, by being cast into exile, all of it at a deeper subconscious level.

Perhaps in your search you find that many people are lost, incredibly, widely, vastly, living in the worldly society, swept into a vortex.  The one seemed symptomatic of the whole, and the whole, of the one.  You go and try to find them too, and bring them back.  You find a place on a stony pass, looking, seeking to intercept.

Sometimes all that seems to happen is that you get stuck, pulled into the vortex.  (This is blasphemy against modern society's illusions of security.)  A holding pattern, if one were to measure it by time.  Years go by.  You went looking for the one you could not forget, and then you begin to realize that all, just about, are lost, lost out of trying to belong.   A heavy weight.  If they were not lost, as if you needed any more proof, why then would they come to you, the shepherd searching, if they too were not lost, unless if they too by coincidence had at least some need, small or large, of being looked for, tended, being called back, called back in a higher language whereas all they can say basically in their materialist language is, 'bah.'

But it was all a lost place, with people talking much, talking so much, as if to prove something, the subtlety of their wit and understanding, their control over everything.  Busy busy busy.  And many of them were the elites of the modern worldly society, still busy, very busy, continuing to be elites, to play their roles as had come to them.  Hypnotized.  Polite they were, and hard working and surely disciplined, but lost too because of attitude of materialism in a way that really could not be denied.  Great people, enjoyable to spend time in the presence of, but always a cold tightness about them, a plastic seal.  The hermetic seal was fine for them, as long as they were content and the great perpetual all-encompassing lie that extended all through known logical society that the masses too belonged to, until, either suddenly or through long years of hidden angst and psychological torment they would realize that it was all not okay and in fact the opposite.  (It would all be fine as long as the world known in their science cooperated.)  They sensed they would be eventually like Lear out on the heath with the fool in the blast, and they simply gambled against it as long as they could, finding such things most of the time highly unlikely--how could such happen with such a driveway in front of such a house?  Vaguely, they would sense, it could all come apart widespread and suddenly, but because there were reassuring things like the Fed or the stock market or tall buildings and airplanes and news covering everything from here to there they would live complacently every day tending to their own business.

As a sensitive young person you realized this, piecemeal, vaguely, distantly, obscurely.  You weren't a shrink with degrees and platitudes on the wall, you didn't have anything beyond a bachelor's degree, you didn't have any particular skill, but on a deeper level you sensed something.   Following on that, there could never be an intent to go and seize something grand like Wall Street or the publishing house or the newsroom or the operating room or the state assembly or the courthouse…  You knew something that layeth beyond particular skill, something inherent in a human being derived from inner dignity.  You wanted to save people, even if just by your presence or by a quiet contrary opinion.

(This happens to be the same subliminal impulse behind The Catcher in the Rye.  One limited take on what can only be done through some sort of fictional address, if it's still to remain polite.)

By the great grace of God, human society still works.  And so you waited.  You stood in a public place and waited to save who you could, grant them a small measure of real Christian unselfish love even if they in their selfishness could not see beyond the moment, beyond the plane of immediate existence.  Maybe you had to get lost yourself, like the movie shown at Christmastime, in order to get people to find themselves.

And maybe too, like the one, you failed them quite often, suffering the same hypnotism.  You were dragged down into the same misery of belonging to commercial society, sell sell sell, much like over serving the drunkard paid to do it.  The same real world trap as anyone else.  Had you thought you were immune, mystically separate?  You too had the feeling of no way out, no way back, no good thing or place to go work hard tending the land.  You'd worked hard enough to suffer real tiredness, but on the worldly level what good did it do?  What had you achieved?  Was there any career path?  Was the experience worth telling about in detail?  Just a bartender, just the fool you end up with out on the heath when your kingdom falls.  None of it makes any sense.

What a realization it must have been for him, Jesus, his kingdom not of this earth.  That would cause some pause on one of us, wouldn't it?  Make you wonder about a lot.  What good could you do other beings, but the simplest stuff?  Indeed, would one then seem faithless, as if not believing anything can be done in this world?  (No.)  Would it make it all like Judas Iscariot, caught up in worldliness, "I've got it figured out, how I'm making my next buck;  but I don't know about you…"


The one lost sheep, I know, is a metaphor.  That anything, any phenomenon, be boiled down into one…  The one would be an archetype.  Not that we can ignore our impressions about an individual… Maybe some times it is one, clearly one, burned into the psyche somehow, or does that perception reveal the presence of ego?  Is the one ultimately a stand-in for all, once viewed maturely?  Obviously the one has emotional import to the shepherd, leave it at that.

For me, personally, it's taken a lot of clarification, a lot of time.  In a lot of ways I've never really liked the city.  I always felt it a lonely place, in great contrast with my brother, who's thrived here.  I always felt deprived from interacting with nature in the way I'd want to.  And I always felt it was full of people who were distracted, often taken with false personalities, acts, as if they were trying to hide.  I know that sounds clichéd, overly dramatic, bigoted, narrow minded, unrealistic, contrary to the laws of the modern economy, and even ungrateful to my home.  Maybe the fact that I am a bartender contributes to my sense of isolation, my unease, the sense of not belonging.  Why did I come to the city?  To try to fit in, I suppose, so that I'd look good, worthy in the eyes of the lost sheep, as if a career would happen in such a place where I felt so awkward and unsettled.  So my work here has been of soothing those who also find their souls here in the city, such a place, in need of something more in tune with nature.  Was it my fault for feeling that way?  Was it my fault for missing nature and animals and a sense of land around me?  Was it my fault being ill at ease "in the dominant culture"( to use the words of an Amish interloper?)  Or maybe I just get enough of it doing what I do for walk, then having to retreat, in order to deal with the odd hours and so forth.

But you're never going to bring back the one lost sheep unless you claim your own authority, comfortable with the shepherd within, as we live in a society in which we have to renounce a lot of our deeper morality in order to fit in, which isn't healthy.  Cleverness valued over neighborliness… Affectation and arrogance over brotherly love…  And so it is on the street, so it is in the culture, the values, the distortion of the importance of things due to the cult of self-importance…  I've always needed room to think.  And because of the way I think, because of the things I express, society relegates me to be the humble servant, not the high nor the mighty nor the respected, not the first in line, the proud, the one with the big car and the powerful job, the big money making CEO engine of the great economic engine…  Feeling the pressure to be such, it's easy to treat people as if they, not you, were fools.




When we will we find ourselves so surrounded by walls of commercialism and hype and fake sweet hypnotic voices and pulsing bursts from monitor and speaker that we finally getting disgusted with pervasive materialism…?  Comcast On Demand.  Step right up.






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