Panning for God
As with so much else, Rumi had it right:
When light returns to its source
it takes nothing
of what it has illuminated.It may have shone on a garbage dump, or a garden,
or in the center of a human eye. No matter.It goes, and when it does,
the open plain becomes passionately desolate
wanting it back.
Remember that old song, “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places”? Okay, usually I picture Eddie Murphy as Buckwheat singing it–but I digress. What about the places in which we look for God?
We think of God, generally, as some vast, exalted being. So we’re used to looking for God in vast, or at least seemingly exalted places. Westminster Abbey, the Taj Mahal (the original, not Trump’s abomination), St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Angkor Wat, the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock would probably make most people’s short list; the Hudson River, juke joints, the Chicken Shack, or the local pound, probably not so much. And more’s the pity.
Like the old adage about missing the forest for the trees, sometimes (I think) we miss God precisely because we look too damned hard, and because we already know where God is to be found. The problem is, most of us don’t spend most of our time in exalted or ecstatic states. Come to think of it, I spend most of mine in Jersey, and I’ll tell you from experience that it generally induces neither ecstacy nor exaltation.
Then again, that’s more or less precisely my point. Mies Van Der Rohe, when he said that God was in the details, didn’t specify which ones. Like panning for gold, you’ve got to sift through a lot of dirt, muck, and silt sometimes to unearth something of value; there’s not much payoff if you’re not willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. If you can’t find God in a flea-bitten mutt, can’t see Buddha in a wandering wino, can’t hear Jacob wrestle an angel in a blues singer’s voice, or overlook Muhammad because oy! those clothes… well, I’ve got news for you, you’re not gonna find any of them, or the wider truths they represented, where they’re “supposed” to be.
A conclusion, by way of a true story: I’ve written about my Grandfather, and his–how do we put this nicely?–rather enthusiastic Catholicism before. It also bears mentioning that Grandpa wasn’t too fond of dogs. So it’s appropriate, in some way, that as he left church one day, he stepped in a pretty significant pile of dog poop. “And remember that I am always with you until the end of time.”* Somewhere, Someone was laughing ’til he wet His robes.
*Matthew 28
Tags: dog poop, Religion, Rumi, spirituality