Markandeya

“Each person is a pilgrim in the dream of god and each slips in predictable and surprising ways. How else could it be? We ride on the breath of god and usually fail to know it until we fall from grace.”

In his book The World Behind the World, Michael Meade tells the story of Markandeya, the first pilgrim, who wandered in the very beginning, as the world was being created. He slipped off the path, fell out of creation and into the void. Despite this inauspicious beginning, all turns out well for Markandeya; where he might have drowned in nothingness, he is scooped up and swallowed by Vishnu, and thus returns to creation. But no one can be the same after a face to face encounter with the void. From there on out, Markandeya lives with the knowledge of it, knowing what it feels like to swim in such uncertainty and blankness. 

The Sunday school teachers most of us grew up with would make a morality tale out of this – Don’t go for a walk or you might fall of the face of the Earth. Stay home where it’s safe. But the old stories tell it a bit differently. The whole point is to go for a walk and fall off the face of the Earth. As Michael Meade would say, the point is to get into the right kind of trouble.

Until recently, I would have said that the thing I enjoyed most about my neighborhood was that I felt safe going for walks by myself. There are always lots of people out, the streets are well lit, and it’s a good neighborhood, all in all. I’ve been walking here for over 8 years, and it wasn’t until recently that I fell off the face of the Earth a bit, getting robbed just a few blocks from home by some kids with a gun. There isn’t a lesson to be taken from this. It isn’t about not going for walks, or not doing so by myself, or not in this neighborhood. In any neighborhood, in any company, one can fall out of the familiar world and into a frightening void where kids have guns and know how to point them at people with confidence. It isn’t much of a trick to stop walking. It is a much better trick to live with knowledge of the void without leaving a piece of oneself drowning in it. 

Recently I spoke with  friend in the military who told me about how it felt when he had to point a loaded gun at another person, wondering if he would be required to shoot. He had stumbled into the same void I had, albeit from the opposite end of the gun barrel. I recognized his description of it all too well. I recognized too the symptoms of perhaps a bit of ongoing drowning on my part, a feeling of less than full awareness, a certain powerlessness or tiredness that creeps in all too easily.

In Michael Meade’s telling of the story, Markandeya walks differently after his fall. Knowledge of the thin veil that  separates creation from the void carries with it the possibility of a great and powerful awareness, but it also opens the door on emptiness and despair. For now, I’m still learning to walk with this new knowledge, this new balance.

Many Lives

The Nurse had surgery a few days ago for a torn ACL. Though I was in town staying with him the weekend before his surgery, I had to leave to go back to work just before the big event. He had plenty of help. The Deacon was in town with his family, and numerous friends and family live nearby. It wasn’t that he needed me to be there. But I wanted to be there. It was tough to leave. 

As is the case for many of us, my friends and family are spread out all over the country. In a way it’s nice; no matter where I go there’s a good chance I know someone who doesn’t live that far away. But I also find myself pulled in many directions at once. Even the Photographer’s house is enough of a drive to make it tough to spend time together most weeknights, when I get home at 6 or 7 and he gets up for work at 5 the next morning.

Coming back from a trip to visit family recently, I felt the familiar sad exhaustion that comes from trying to live many different lives within this one small lifetime – a life centered on my family, another focused on careers (I have more than one, a difficulty in and of itself), another fed by learning and adventure. It’s a wonderful thing to have such resources, such magnificent choices. But I haven’t yet found a way to live this one life, and live it well.