On Suffering, or Winter Roads

Yesterday, I could smell daffodils in the sun, I could close my eyes and see and feel Easter approaching. I know it's out there, even if daffodils don't bloom in Maine until late April and the prints of crow wings grace the snow.

The wind is still cold enough to wear full winter gear: ski jacket, hat, gloves. It was blowing hard from the west and, while walking the dogs along the cove, it caused thin sheets of ice to skitter like fish across the surface, chasing us. Young Jack was alarmed; I was fascinated, having never before heard or seen a phenomenon quite like ice leaping swiftly across itself and the water. As the gusts increased, the crackling and crushing noise grew louder, and we could stand and watch layers of crispy ice advance toward us up the shore.

I have to imagine the same process is happening under our roads here, because the results include ripples, holes, trenches and dips that any good Californian would assume meant "earthquake!" Make economic development note: local business opportunity = full time chiropractor . . .

While making what felt like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride home at night across these roads, I was listening to "Fresh Air" on NPR. Terry Gross was interviewing Bart Ehrman, a professor of religion who has just authored God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer.

Good question, I though, wondering which part might fall from either truck or self before reaching my destination.

But very quickly I found myself disgusted with the naive, simplistic approach this alleged professor of religion was taking. What kind of christianity is this, that so personifies god as a being, a friend and enemy; and then holds this entity responsible for our well being? Unfortunate answer: it's the literalist christianity that holds sway in an american culture that does not count metaphor, mystery, or self-responsibility among its intellectual or emotional legacies.

It is surely not the catholic christianity with which I was raised, which quite clearly taught that suffering is an inevitable part of this amazing garden of eden we call earth; this paradise in which we are responsible for our own actions and consequent suffering. We can hope for grace and forgiveness and strength to bear the difficulties and natural harshness of this world, but god is not a personal friend who, like Michael Clayton in the recent award-winning film of the same name, is gonna fix it all up for us. The "god" and bible stories with which I was raised were clearly metaphors and allegories for love and for, as Buddhists might say, "right action."

Ehrman, who confessed to what I already suspected--that he had grown up in the cult of fundamentalist, "born again" christianity--then went on to dismiss "other religions'" more advanced understandings of suffering--including Buddhism's. Buddhism, of course, directly posits suffering as the inevitable result of the way the human mind engages with the natural world of which it is a seamless part. This would, of course, be far too much self-responsibility for any born again christian to bear.

Little wonder our american political world--a democracy founded on self-responsibility--has itself suffered mightily during the reign of the cult of religious fundamentalism. It's time to move beyond such literalism in our teaching, our art, our politics.

The roads suck and we've got to get them fixed. How the hell are we going to do this?!

"And what, monks, is Right View? It is, monks, the knowledge of suffering, the knowledge of the origin of suffering, the knowledge of the cessation of suffering, and the knowledge of the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering. This is called Right View." -- Mahasatipatthana Sutta: The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness