Holding On To the Ticket

Dostoyevsky's notes for Chapter 5
of The Brothers Karamazov

It's been nearly a month since I finished reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  The novel has been on my mental to-read list for a long time, and I worked through its nearly 800 pages with determination.  I must admit that I let out at least a tiny sigh of relief when I reached the end, eager to move on to lighter fare.  But passages, images and themes from the book keep coming to my mind unbidden, sitting here and then there, trying out the rooms like a mental goldilocks.  Here is one.

I cannot sum up The Brothers Karamazov in this short post -- at least not in any manner that could do it justice.  The short of it is that there are three brothers, Dmitri (28), Ivan (24), and Alyosha (20).  All three share a father (Fyodor Pavlovich), but Dmitri is from Fyodor's first marriage, and Ivan and Alyosha are from his second marriage.  Both mothers are dead, Fyodor is a "scoundrel" (to use a word Dostoyevsky uses repeatedly throughout the book), and none of his sons really love him.  In fact, at least two of them (Dmitri and Ivan) would like to see him dead.  Dmitri, the oldest, is much like his father -- a sensualist and a scoundrel.  Ivan is an intelligent atheist.  And Alyosha (the "cherub") is a novice monk who believes fervently in God, but is not without chinks in the armor of his faith.  To make a very long story short (without spoiling all the twists and turns), someone murders the father, Fyodor, and Dmitri is arrested and tried for the crime.  I won't tell you how the book ends, because that's really not the point of this post (and you should slog through it yourself, in any event!).        

Plot aside, the book is about free will, God, faith, doubt, reason, sin, virtue, truth, deceit, guilt, love, and so much more.  But it is especially about suffering.  In one particulary gripping chapter (Book 5, Chapter 4 "Rebellion"), Ivan talks/rants to younger brother Alyosha about the inequity of the suffering in the world, speaking of the "tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its center."  (I like the way that sounds, don't you?  Can't you just picture it like a soggy loaf of bread?)  Ivan laments:  "Surely I haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else."  (Talk about metaphor.) 

He then asks his monk-brother:  "Do you understand why this infamy [suffering] must be and is permitted?  Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil.  Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much?"  Rejecting the world that God has created because it is built on a foundation of suffering, Ivan proclaims:  "Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it.  And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest many I am bound to give it back as soon as possible.  And that I am doing.  It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."

I am no atheist.  But, like Ivan, I too struggle to understand incomprehensible suffering -- in the world, in my circle of friends and acquaintances, and in my very own life.  Like Ivan, I can't help but think that the suffering costs too much -- at least when it sacrifices the innocent on the altar of another's sin.  Or when it hits, lottery-style in a randomness that confounds all understanding.  But, unlike Ivan, I can see the joy too -- a joy that is (despite what he says) sweetened and strengthened by opposition.  Perhaps what Ivan couldn't (or chose not to) believe, is this: 

"Joy and sorrow are inseparable.  Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed."  [Gibran, The Prophet]

That knowledge doesn't excuse the suffering, I suppose. But it at least grants me the perspective to hold on to my entrance ticket.

Let's Have a Party

The teachers stretched and formed the children into lines on a crisp October morning at Windsor Elementary.  It was 1978, and it was my sixth birthday.  The lines would not hold, forms morphing like cloud shapes in the sky.  Assembly day, and we could hardly contain our excitement.  It actually doesn't take much to enliven a group of elementary school-age children, as you may know.  Our honored assembly speaker was a cookbook author, and none of us knew how to cook.  But we didn't care.  The assembly was a break in the routine, and that was enough.  What's more, there would be a lottery, and one lucky child (among hundreds) would actually win a signed copy of the speaker's cookbook, "Let's Have a Party"!  

The mass of children that would not stay lined floated  towards the multi-purpose room like a storm cloud.  For some reason that is entirely inexplicable to me now, I was praying.  I was praying with all the fervent faith of a first grader that I would be the lucky child to win the lottery.  It WAS my birthday after all, I bargained.  I do not remember all I promised in return for God's grace on this particular request, but I'm sure I probably promised to be a better girl.  Nor do I recall why in the world I cared to have the cookbook.  At the age of six, I certainly wasn't planning many parties, let alone themed dinner party menus like those contained in the book (including the intriguing "For Lovers Only," "Ladies Lit Luncheon," and "Morning Reveille," among others).

But as you may be guessing, my prayer was answered, and my name was drawn.  I won the cookbook.  God existed.  And I've never forgotten it.  In all seriousness, the question is why?  Why are some prayers answered and others (so much more important than cookbooks) not?  Maybe you've wondered that yourself.

I recently had lunch with a dear friend, and we found ourselves on the topic of why oh why do such horrible things happen to good people?  Senseless, inexplicable horrors. A friend's husband wakes up, has a massive heart attack, and dies -- in his mid-thirties.  Another friend's marriage ends, a casualty of faithlessness.  Yet another friend moves to another state to accept her dream job, only to be forcibly tied up and raped by an intruder just hours after moving into her new home.  All of this (and more) happened just in the past few months.  It's difficult to conjure up a palatable explanation.

My lunch companion lamented that she fears she's losing her faith -- that her prayers aren't heard.  I don't have a good answer.  I'd give back the cookbook in exchange for more important requests, if I could.  But I keep praying and asked her to keep praying too.                  

Wednesday's Word -- Endure

{Yes, I know it's not Wednesday, but I've been traveling for work, so I'm behind . . . .}

I still have Shantaram on my mind, and so far I'm still enjoying it.  I don't think this gives anything away in case you want to read it yourself, but there is a memorable part where the main character describes his visit to the Den of the Standing Babas.  These babas are holy men who have taken a vow to never sit down, I suppose in the belief that this act will bring them closer to God.

According to the book, these standing babas do everything standing up -- eating, studying, and even sleeping (for this they use a special harness to assure that they stay standing).  These men (as far as I can tell, women aren't permitted to be standing babas) believe that if they suffer enough pain in this life they will become one with God.  My natural question was how they can stand it (pun intended)?  The book describes a process that involves first massively painful swelling with jutting veins and ulcers.  After some time, the swelling goes away and is replaced by legs that are stick thin and hard.  Perhaps not surprisingly, part of the answer of how they "stand" it is that (at least according to the book) they all smoke kashmiri hash and subsist in a non-stop drugged-haze.

(In case you're interested, you can check out this interview:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojeR1fOKv_A)

So, the word I'm thinking about (at least one of them) is "endure."

Endure

Endure means "to harden; to toughen; to make hardy."  To endure is "to bear with patience; to suffer without opposition or without sinking under pressure or affliction; to bear up under; to put up with; to tolerate; to bear up under adversity; to hold out."  It comes from the Indo-European root deru-, which means hard.  (For example, the word tree also comes from the same root.  Makes sense, doesn't it?)  

As you've probably noticed, the quote at the top of my blog page is this:  "Endurance is more than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance; it is not only acceptance of the things allotted to us, it is . . . magnifying what is allotted to us."  

Sometimes the things allotted to us make it hard to stand.  But the thing that strikes me is that standing isn't enough.  What's even more difficult is continuing to press forward when you'd rather just hold still, shifting the weight of your burdens from leg to leg.  I wonder if there's such a thing as the walking babas?        

Believing vs. Knowing

I often pass my daily commute time listening to books.  My current listen is Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts.  I'm still in the early portions of the book (so don't rely on this as a recommendation or anything), but the language and metaphors are quite beautiful thus far.  As I started the commute home this afternoon, my mind was pondering a conversation I'd just had with a friend about his lack of belief in God, and the continuum from hope to belief to knowledge.  And ultimately, the question of whether you can ever really "know" that there is a God as opposed to believing it to be so.  (In my view, a belief can be a conviction strong enough to carry you through life and ward off the darts of doubt.  But perhaps it's just semantics.)  

Anyway, I turned on my iPod to listen to Shantaram, and (although the book hasn't really involved religion or spirituality up to this point) I was somewhat amazed to hear this exchange between the protagonist (a man who has escaped from a maximum security prison in Australia and is now living in the slums of Bombay, as a doctor of the poor of sorts) and a mafia leader (who is something of a Robin Hood and spiritual paragon to the poor of the city).

"You are a Christian fellow?" he asked.

"No.  I don't believe in God."

"There is no believing in God," he declared, smiling again.  "We either know God or we do not."

"Well," I laughed, I certainly don't know God, and frankly I'm inclined to believe that God is impossible to believe in, at least most of the notions of God that I've come across."

"Of course, naturally God is impossible.  That is the first proof that he exists."

I was so floored by the coincidence of it that I turned off the story and drove the rest of the way home in silence, pondering the impossibility (and magnificence) of God.  

Isn't life funny like that?  If you're paying attention, there are so many connections between the seemingly unrelated parts of the parts that make up our days. 

Send My Roots Rain

Here's a poem that's been on my mind over the past several days:

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leaved how thick! laced they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes

Them; birds build--but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

 ~Gerard Manley Hopkins 1918

Now for a little translation.  Hopkins was a Jesuit priest, and he sometimes used his poetry to complain to God.  This is one of those complaints, like a pleading prayer you might offer in a time of despair.  Hopkins' use of language and imagery is amazing, but the simple gist of what he says is this:  Why do good things happen to bad people?  And why is my life (despite all my good efforts) such a struggle?  

That's a refrain we all sing from time to time.  And sometimes it's tempting to wallow in self-pity, and perhaps even question God's role in it all.  Hopkins takes it a bit further, saying:  I know you're my friend, but with a friend like you, who needs enemies?  ("Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost defeat, thwart me?")  Hopkins ends the poem by describing himself as "time's eunuch," pleading with God to send his roots rain.  In other words, I'm not producing anything here, so please end this drought!     

Can you relate?  I know I have "send my roots rain" moments.  Living in the desert as I do, the metaphor hits home.  I remember moving here over a decade ago.  It was the first weekend in July,  and as my husband and I stood outside the Phoenix airport, waiting for a shuttle in 120 degree temperatures, I wondered what we had done.  We confined ourselves like prisoners in our tiny air conditioned apartment, waiting for the moving truck to deliver our life.  Even then, for months after, we rarely ventured out in daylight.  The Arizona heat was overwhelming, and I recall looking at the plants in that baking July heat and thinking that they all looked so hostile and angry!  As if they were saying, I just dare you to touch me.  I will poke you, scrape you, inflict whatever harm I can.     

The years have passed, and I have come to see the beauty in this landscape.  It truly is amazing that those angry plants can live on so little water and, given even a little of what they need (send my roots rain!), will explode in an array of blooming colors that leaves me awe-struck with the beauty of it all.  We are enjoying a rainy season in Arizona now, and even the angriest plants look cheerful.  The rough, scraggly-brown foothills around us are blanketed in green, and wildflowers of all varieties are just biding their time, waiting to emerge to put on a show -- along the freeway, in the open desert, untended, unexpected, delightful.

Just think what you could be with a little rain for your roots.

Bereft

Bereft

Where had I heard this wind before

Change like this to a deeper roar?

What would it take my standing there for,

Holding open a restive door,

Looking downhill to a frothy shore?

Summer was past and day was past.

Somber clouds in the west were massed.

Out in the porch's sagging floor

Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,

Blindly struck at my knee and missed.

Something sinister in the tone

Told me my secret must be known:

Word I was in the house alone,

Somehow must have gotten abroad,

Word I was in my life alone,

Word I had no one left but God.

~Robert Frost

This struck me as the perfect poem for a night like this.  No, it's not autumn, but the wind is roaring, and I have been standing at the door.  Not looking downhill to a frothy shore, but looking down my walk at a spring storm (well, I suppose it's still winter, but I do live in Arizona, after all).  The day is past, and somber clouds are massed.  The leaves are blowing, and there is indeed something sinister in it all.  

Husband is out of town, and I am in the house alone.  I have my children here, but they can hardly protect me.  This was driven home for me, because I have been standing at my "restive" (stubbornly resisting control) door, dealing with two aggressive and persistent door-to-door salesmen.  My next-door neighbor is a policeman, and he and another neighbor came over to make sure I was okay.  I can't say how much I appreciated it.  I probably shouldn't have answered the door; I actually thought it was a neighbor from across the street and I didn't look out the window before answering.  My only protection was the cell phone in my hand.  All the time, with the wind roaring in the background.  

I love how the last lines of this poem sound:  "Word I was in the house alone, / Somehow must have gotten abroad, / Word I was in my life alone, / Word I had no one left but God."  I like the reminder that those lines give me.  That even when I feel "bereft" (lacking something needed, wanted, or expected), I still have God.  It's a good reminder for all of us!