Riddles and Promises

 Lovely smile just received from a McDonald's lass as she handed me my coffee. Makes the day so much brighter.

I've mentioned before that I'm trawling my way through Thomas Mann's "Joseph and His Brothers", which runs to over 1500 pages, small font. Quite a challenge with my eyes. But I am now around page 650 or so. Joseph is now in Egypt and gains his first sight of the pyramids. Very atmospheric writing, evoking their size and substance, their age (even then) Yet mausoleums, monuments to death. Built by thousands to "honour" just one man (or "god") and send him on his way to wherever he was going - or thought he was going. In Mann's book Joseph goes on to contemplating the Sphinx, reflects upon its riddle - a riddle of pure silence. Joseph, knowing of the Holy One whose "silence" is of another dimension, rests in the Promise. This really caught me and has given me pause to think. The Promise - rather than the silence. As Pascal has said, the eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.

They have never really terrified me. Possibly the blessing of a mother (and fathers) love early on - a wanted child. But, whatever, I have been contrasting in my mind, and reflections, between the infinite "riddle" and silence of the Sphinx and the still silent Promise. A Promise variously given - that the Law (of Love) will eventually be written on human hearts and not only on tablets of stone. That there will be a "restoration of all things". And of how so many human beings respond - "I know that my redeemer liveth" as the Good Book says. Know despite so much that seems to challenge such hope, trust and faith.

Tragically, many seem to want the Promise to be only as they can envisage it. They set parameters. Defend them against all comers. "Narrow Gates", "Only Names", excluding all who know of other promises, appropriated in infinite ways - as would be the case with that which is infinite itself. The Source.

Faith to me is everything. In fact, not a means to "salvation" (or whatever we want to call it) but salvation itself. Not a final state of "being" but more infinite freedom. Those who seem unable to dislocate Faith from belief, and thus demand "evidence" before any commitment, can go their own way. But as Dogen says:-

Therefore, if there are fish that would swim or birds that would fly only after investigating the entire ocean or sky, they would find neither path nor place. When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes the actualization of reality (genjōkōan). When we make this path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualized reality (genjōkōan).

Anyway, it has been a tiring week so far, with grandad duties and hospital visits prior to my dear wifes hip replacement operation. For a 74 year old the grind - mental and physical - takes its toll.

Just to finish. One thing I will never fall away from is the conviction that what comes to one will come to all. This is fundamental. Yes, at any one time there are undoubtedly "sheep" and "goats" but Universalism will have the final word - part of the Promise as I know it and live it and experience it.