Spring and the Corona Luna

Monday gratefuls: Ruby, the red Rav4. Filled up. Wearing a masque in public. This time an obvious one. The clerk at the liquor store. The clerk at the Safeway. The guy from the Pho place, bringing our order outside. I gave you some extra! A trip to Evergreen with Seoah and Kate. Sunday zoom. Woolly friends, old friends. Deep story.

If god lived on earth, all his windows would be broken. Yiddish saying.

You can see why. Pogroms in Russia. The holocaust. Virulent anti-semitism throughout European history. But not just Jews. The plague. Earthquakes. Wild fire. Volcanoes erupting. Hurricanes and tornadoes. Pedophiles even among God’s supposed ambassadors. Wealth and status inequalities all over the globe. Racism and sexism.

This is the old, old problem of theodicy. If god is omnipotent, omniscient, how can he (yes, this is the he-god.) let bad things happen? Good question, as it turns out. Some of the most convoluted theological thinking of many bright theologians have never found a satisfactory answer. IMO that’s because there is no satisfactory answer.

Does this mean that god is an intentional doofus when it comes to ruling the universe? No, it simply means that those of us who invented him and his ways, all of the hims and hers of the religious over history, have projected ourselves or our monarchs onto the sky. Turns out we’d be no good if we were omniscient or omnipotent. That’s a relief, at least to me.

There is a more radical approach to the conundrum, one that at first makes no sense. Monism. The universe is one. You can call the one god, if you want. Or, you can call it the one. The implication of monism for the question of theodicy is, well, hard to grasp.

Let’s say you choose to call the one, god. That is, the unique entity that is all stuff together is god. Some do this. Spinoza, for example. Art Green for another. There are flavors to this monism idea, but right now we’ll let those be. If the one is god, then all things, bad and good, are of the one. Volcanoes. Plagues. Hurricanes. Tsunamis. Murders. Rapists. The coronavirus. as well as, of course, love, justice, compassion, warriors, mothers, fathers, nurses and doctors.

I know. It seems like a violation of common sense. How do we get away with attributing the worst and the best to this god, this one? Short answer: we have no choice. This is the god who’s windows would all be broken, isn’t it? I mean, what sorta god…?

We start by recognizing that all of our judgments are just that, our judgments. It’s the human mind that separates events and people and their actions into good and bad. I’m not suggesting that there is no difference between good and bad. I’m just identifying them as artifacts of our minds trying to assess our world in terms of helpful and unhelpful.

Monism requires us to pause a moment and see that goods can become bad and bad things can have good results. Monism forces us to look beyond our blinkered vision, to turn around as we see, to take in the full 360 degree view.

Here’s an ancient parable, told in many cultures, that illustrates this point:

“Once upon a time, there was a farmer in the central region of China. He didn’t have a lot of money and, instead of a tractor, he used an old horse to plow his field.

One afternoon, while working in the field, the horse dropped dead. Everyone in the village said, “Oh, what a horrible thing to happen.” The farmer said simply, “We’ll see.” He was so at peace and so calm, that everyone in the village got together and, admiring his attitude, gave him a new horse as a gift.

Everyone’s reaction now was, “What a lucky man.” And the farmer said, “We’ll see.”

A couple days later, the new horse jumped a fence and ran away. Everyone in the village shook their heads and said, “What a poor fellow!”

The farmer smiled and said, “We’ll see.”

Eventually, the horse found his way home, and everyone again said, “What a fortunate man.”

The farmer said, “We’ll see.”

Later in the year, the farmer’s young boy went out riding on the horse and fell and broke his leg. Everyone in the village said, “What a shame for the poor boy.”

The farmer said, “We’ll see.”

Two days later, the army came into the village to draft new recruits. When they saw that the farmer’s son had a broken leg, they decided not to recruit him.

Everyone said, “What a fortunate young man.”

The farmer smiled again – and said “We’ll see.”

Moral of the story: There’s no use in overreacting to the events and circumstances of our everyday lives. Many times what looks like a setback, may actually be a gift in disguise. And when our hearts are in the right place, all events and circumstances are gifts that we can learn valuable lessons from.

As Fra Giovanni once said:

“Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me… the gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.””

This is a monistic perspective. And, in its vein, I’d ask you to take the rock out of your hand for a moment, quite breaking god’s windows over the coronavirus, and say to yourself, “We’ll see.”