The Deer, the Lion and The Lamb

I’ve been through a lot. My twin brother died the day we were born, My parents checked out, I blew through two marriages, lost an ordained ministry, all my money and have been fired more times than the deYoung’s collection of Ming vases. To that, add a laundry list of enemies, ex-girlfriends and creditors whose sense of passion seems to almost be synonymous.

But it’s easy to laud my successes.

I also once lived for a year (in my 40s) in a shack with no car and had to hobble 2 miles to a minimum wage job with no benefits every day and work for Republicans. To make matters worse, it was November and the shack had no hot water and was situated next door to the two houses I had formerly owned while making great money as a dot.com exec. My ex-wife lived in the second house, I would often be sleepless at 4 a.m. and sit on my shack porch only long enough to see her sneaking her Nazi boyfriend out before the kids woke up.

Still, why do I commend myself?

Okay…here is why. Because 7 years later (no doubt to the day…God has a vicious and cyclical sense of humor) I found myself in utterly the opposite situation.

I live in a fortress, not a shack. I have the world’s best girlfriend and she has no hangups or anger-issues at all. My kids are powerful and sweet; I have $60 in my wallet and creative work everyday. I have new friends and a great pastor. I have a future…and hot water. I have written four books in the last 5 years, all of which I will publish. MY view is panoramic and spectacular every morning as I drink fresh-brewed dark french roast and my commute is 17 feet.

I could go on till you put this down. I’ll stop.

Let’s just stick with last Saturday where I went haywire.

The weather is perfect (as it often is here in paradise). I have everything any man could ever want including sobriety, great work and no effing bosses. I go to sleep when I please and wake up when I’m ready. I eat healthy and well. I have a cat that is better than your cat. My dog lives upstairs with my ex-roommate and I can walk her anytime. I have three finches.

So I sat in the chair and pondered such good fortune. Such a reversal…such grace. Then two deer came grazing (I kid you not) up on the hillside and looked at me.

“That’s a bit of overkill” I said quietly to God. “What’s your point?”

“Augustine.”

“yeah okay. I’ll go with you on that…both generally and even now. I am restless.”

“Restless?”

“Hell yes Lord, I buy flowers at the garden center and hurry to plant them so I can feel at peace in a garden but it never takes…I just want more garden. I never ends…you have no idea…”

God became quiet and the deer looked at me like a fallen vassal. I shrugged.

Pascal

Now Pascal is right and calling his “deal” a “God-shaped vacuum” is as inglorious and inaccurate as calling Dante specifically-scientific. Poetry is way ahead of science and always had been.

It is true there is some type of coldness and mathematics to Pascal’s statement that the “infinite and immutable abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object…that is to say,. only by God Himself.”

But add that to Augustine’s restlessness and your are closer to a heartbeat.

You always have to go to the “next” statement. Do you know what Nietzsche said after he said the infamous “God is dead”?

“…and we have killed him.”

Kinda makes a difference huh? Context is everything.

Pascal says “abyss”…Augustine “restless”…the deer simply asked “do you intend to kill us?”

“Why would I kill you?” I thought to the deer. “I have everything I need. Besides I’ve been marinating nice cuts of cow flesh for two days in a really good sauce.”

They moved off slowly.

Why could I not be happy with all of it?

Think of Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. Worse, think of Mrs. Maslow’s list. It would surely be longer.

I’m not sure I am saying this just right. Let’s say you wake up from a nightmare into a hallmark card with deer grazing on the side of a hill, good food and friends on the way and love and security and your first thought is of your own emptiness and lostness?

Is this the reason that Ernest Becker said that we as modern humans are “drinking and drugging ourselves out of awareness..or we go shopping…which is the same thing”?

Is this why William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, while stodgy and semi-puritanical somehow rings true despite his whitened wig and quasi-asceticism?

What is it about us that is unlike the deer, yet like the deer?

That was my question.

Why are the deer more at ease in their young skin than I am as a human after 50 years? Why do they graze in my garden freely while I try and produce some artifice and wrestle to daily keep some plants alive?

To be sure, the deer is not plagued with Internet access, but then 100 years ago we only wrote notes on paper…and then not all of us. Some of us just sat and thought about what their lives meant and knew that they had limited time. Some embraced their restlessness and questiuoned their emptiness.

Some prayed.

Part two: The Lion.