THE THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY

A picture of Tim and Jorris, which must have been taken by Eavan since he was the only other one there, brings up some thoughts I’ve been trying to reach -- you might say I’ve been trying to ice-fish for them. There’s Tim’s big solid back and over to the right of him small Jorris, totally absorbed in the perch they’re pulling out from beneath the ice through that hole between them. The entire left side of the photo is ice, implying an empty sheet of frozen surface stretching away.

What this illustrates for me is my personal theological diagram, which is not a cross like the Christians, but rather a vast circle with a tiny dot in the middle of it. What it means to me is that there are two places of access to the numinous (sacred significance). One is the absolute extreme of human experience, the edge out there next to madness and unconsciousness, and the other is the very center, which Tillich, Eliade, Campbell and so on suggest has a vertical dimension both going up into transcendence and down into depth psychology. A schematic like this helps me keep order among some ideas that are not always easy to put into words because they are feelings more than verbalizable concepts.

In his life Tim has acted out my diagram, moving back and forth between actual wilderness, edges of society, beaches in nearly unpopulated places, alternated with the centres of great cities: San Francisco, Paris, Naples, Florence. (He is the least suburban of men!) Yet he has not been afraid to explore the core of human experience in the most fleshly and obvious way: drugs, prostitution, and the medical context where, ironically, the modern world allows more intimacy from a nurse or physical therapist than from a doctor who looks at one’s chart. Tim’s intimacy with others has sometimes been that of a parent, holding and cleaning his own child as she grew up, and now doing the same for the sons of others while they kick drugs or work through trauma.

The first book of his that I read, “The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping,” is exactly this schema: a boy fighting to stay centered in the midst of the ultimate wilderness of death. It is not about paralysis but rather about exploration and that salvific sharing with someone who can withstand despair. Some Christians and others will say that the way God saves us is by being with us and participating with us in every experience, even if we are trapped under rubble in debris from an earthquake and dying in agony. Humans can sometimes do this as well, but in modern American culture we have assigned the duty to low status people of color so that it has acquired a political, nearly Marxist valence. The doctor stands aloof; the janitor has warmth.

There is an exception. For people who have money, intimacy and understanding can be bought in two ways: psychotherapy and sex workers. Tim has said that men who have major status, lots of money and willingness to pay for someone’s body, often want only to talk, to be close to someone who is not judgmental or who has status.

Sex work doesn’t have the status of psychotherapy (unless the therapist is a social worker running a group for violators of social norms of behavior, like anger management training -- that's low status) but sex work has the advantage of removing the taboo on physical contact, which is why it is much more dangerous. For Tim, who has worked often with animals and has had dance training, physical contact (sexual or not) can communicate as much information as talking.

The real work of a human being is not to stay in that deep central place where identity is assembled out of brain parts and sense memories, nor yet to risk insanity out on the edge of existence whether a sheet of ice or the chemical derangement of drugs, but rather in the travel back and forth between the centre and the edge, particularly if that travel can be accompanied or communicated to other humans, stand-ins for God if you will. Dogs will also serve. Maybe even Equus. Best of all is a community of voyagers, each on his own journey, yet willing to accompany in an “expedition.”

This is art. Art, my old philosophy of religion professor Paul Schilpp used to say, is “an expression of relationship between one’s self (centre dot) and the universe (edge).” And I grumbled that simple expression is not enough -- one must communicate. The form of art, of course, can be anything: sounds, found objects, gestures, color, video and so on. Many societies weave art into everything, the most common daily pursuits and objects, but our modern American society, because of the constant craving for status, needs to have art in a frame, in a gallery, on a stage -- at a distance, defined and priced. Except that the underclass is quick to provide graffiti, art always escaping in its feral way.

Once in the Seventies when boundaries were loose and people were crossing them, I went to a movie, sort of an edgy one, in a theatre that had divided itself into viewing areas. This movie was being shown in what had been the old theatre’s stage, behind the big roll-down asbestos fire curtain. There were no seats in rows, just an assortment of second-hand living room furniture -- big squashy, lumpy sofas and armchairs. It was very dark, no aisle-marking lights. I stood just inside the door, confused and blind. A hand reached out to take my wrist and a soft voice coaxed, “Sit with me, sister.” It was a young black man, non-threatening, guiding me to a seat on a sofa next to him. We watched the movie together, quietly discussing what we saw. For me this has been an abiding image of an artist or therapist. (I suppose I could make something of the transition from live stage actors to movies.)

Adventures between the inner core of identity and the strangest “sheltering sky” risks in the unknown desert are often full of monsters: rage, despair, insanity, amputations, infections and mutilations. As all the myths and sagas have told us down the ages, they can either be destruction or empowerment. One never knows. It’s important not to hole up for long. Keep moving, either because of being drawn to the edge of the world or because of returning like Odysseus to restore order at home. Then draw us a map, show us photos of where you were.