Food For The Journey

Food For The Journey

I’ve had a few conversations recently that have gotten me to think about something I hadn’t thought about in a little while – hadn’t thought about consciously, that is. And I think that’s what this has to do with – consciousness.

Have you ever looked at some old pictures of family members from generations ago? A picture of your great grandfather when he was younger… a baby picture of your great aunt? Or a painting of someone related to you from before they had photography? Makes you feel something doesn’t it. Makes you feel like you’re somehow connected – granted not super personal, but that you’re able to actually see an ancestor you may not even have known existed. That’s a person you came from, a person connected to you… and a person you are connected to as well – however tenuous the historical linkage may be… in a very real sense, their blood does run through your veins! And their history runs through you. It can be a pretty moving experience when you allow yourself to be there with that idea for a little bit. Makes you wonder what they were like, what their lives might have been like, what was important to them? And what was sacred to them? What were they thinking or feeling as they walked the earth?

Yesterday after a meeting here at church, I was speaking with the pastor over at Kittamaqundi Church. She told me again about a movie she’d seen, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”, the Werner Hertzog (3D) film of the cave found in Chauvet Cave in France back in 1994, with paintings and prints (both hand and foot) dating back to possibly 32,000 years ago. That in itself is amazing. Now, evidently the film isn’t an action-packed thriller, but it brings out not so much something old… as something “ancient”. Here we have something that has been around for what to us may seem like eons. Even our best quality “stuff” doesn’t last more than a few decades. And here we have some remnants of life among our super ancestors dating back to possibly 32,000 years ago. Okay, could be that it was a little later than that – say, 28,000 years ago. At that age, what’s 4 thousand years?! The Great Pyramid of Giza was built around 4,500 years ago! And these cave paintings are at least 6 times older than that!

And the cave paintings present not only a part of life of the people who did the paintings, but I have to imagine, a part of their beliefs (I haven’t seen this movie yet, but I want to- considering what she told me about it). How did they connect, relate, with their god, or gods? And what image or images – mental or otherwise, did they even have of this deity? How did they even conceptualize this?

I don’t necessarily mean how did these people understand their god or gods? I mostly mean, how did their experience of these gods inform their lives. And again, I don’t mean this on an intellectual level! I mean it on a very basic and experiential level – more even on a pre-conscious level.

Our lives seem pretty domesticated. As much as we talk about how we really do not control things in life, we sure do make a good effort; we have climate-controlled work and home, and car. We have controlled the electron enough to make it do stuff for us, we have controlled our lives pretty well with schedules and calendars. We’ve really done a good job domesticating our souls to such a degree that perhaps a case could be made that we’ve even domesticated our Spirits, our God, our souls.

I remember my Old Testament Theology professors talked about the ancient Israelites views of God. Their view of God was one of Power! Remember the scene in the movie "Indiana Jones and the temple of Doom", where they open the Ark of the Covenant? And the spirits/angels come out? THAT'S the kind of power they believed in! God had real power, and if you didn't work either it or God right... you died!

I challenge any liberal minded main-line denominational pastor (don't worry, I are one) to teach THAT kind of God! Not a chance! You ask the average church going person to describe God, and they likely will not describe that kind of God - but more a God of love and grace, and forgiveness. Not necessarily the Ancient-Near-Eastern view!

But there are times, rare times now-a-days I think, where we get a glimmer of that ancient energy, of that ancient way of looking at Life and the Sacred. These moments come, reminding us of something more, something grander… something older we’re most definitely a part of!

Last night at Home Church we were talking about this in a round-about way. And someone brought up a couple of stories – they are anecdotal at this point anecdotal; there are no references, no notes, no studies to them. So- here goes. The first has to do with a lion cage in some national zoo. It seems the lions had lived a lot of their lives in the “Lion Pen”. They had become what some people refer to as “institutionalized”. I’d heard this term when I did Prison Ministry; it refers to the way a person lives – behaviorally it looks like this: no matter what door they walk up to, they’ll stop and wait for someone to open it, they won’t move until someone tells them to, they won’t eat until someone tells them to…etc. Well these lions pretty much did what they were told too. They were for sure wild animals, but wild in the sense that they were not domesticated. They were not wild in the sense that they could do what they by nature are supposed to do.

Evidently unbeknownst to any of the zoo staff, either a deer native to the area, or a gazelle from the gazelle cage that got lose, somehow made a terrible mistake (for the deer) and jumped into the lions’ den. Well, not long after, the poor deer was no longer alive. And when the zoo keepers came back in the next day to take care of the lions, the lions seemed more alert, more alive, more animated, more… well… lion-like!

And another zoo story on the same idea – this time involving an enclosed space with some kind of monkeys in it. They were bored, didn’t really do much. Someone seemed to have the idea of either going to the place where these monkeys were from and recording their “free” cousins, or somehow acquiring a recording of the sounds of the free monkeys in the wild. They set up speakers and started to play the recordings. Well, the caged monkeys heard this, and they came alive again. It seemed something had awakened in them… something of their true nature.

Now, I’m not so much trying to talk about the “true nature” of things as much as the idea of the awakening the ancient. I remember a conversation I’d heard years ago. I was at a conference about ministry in a health care setting over at Holy Cross Hospital, and one of the speakers talked about connecting to something old in us. In his opening comments (if I remember rightly), this Rabbi spoke of a Christian colleague who would say – “whenever we talk, you bring out the ancient in me!”

That’s what I’m talking about. Have you ever felt this part of us has been missing somewhere along the way? How are we like the caged lions, or the penned up monkeys? In what way are out of touch with the ancient parts of us, of our psyches, of our souls? I’m not so much talking about old-ness as being better just because it’s old, or getting back to basics (although there may be something to that- depending on how one uses the term) nor am I talking about giving license to our baser natures.

What’s our “equivalent” of hearing the recordings of our free and ancient ancestors? What makes us “remember” something ancient in us? I’m talking about connecting to that part of us that carries the DNA of our 28,000 year old ancestor, and their view of the world, of the Sacred. I’m talking about that part of us that recognizes the sacred in walking on the earth. Or that can sense the holy in being fully present in the moment.

How do you connect with that ancient part in you? Or do you? Or do you even want to anymore?