The Oar and the Umbrella: From a Dream
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.—Isaiah 43:19
We have left home and are traveling an old, dirt road through the woods. A long caravan of us are traveling: people, pack animals and wagons moving slowly, carrying what belongings we could take with us. We are not going back to the homes from where we came. Those worlds are gone. Nor do we know where we are going.
No one speaks, and the dream is not somber, not joyful, just quiet. Wagon wheels creak, and even the creatures are silent.
Eventually we come to an old village where peasants wear simple, vibrant, earth-toned clothing, as they always have. Then the light in the dream shifts. It becomes gloaming time, and a few of the peasants lead a few of us travelers into another part of the forest. Darkness falls as we come to a glade, and in this circular clearing we can see the night-time sky above the canopy. The villagers have brought us here to show us something, but still, no one speaks.
We look up, and as I gaze at the stars, a new experience emerges. The stars feel exactly like my two older brothers feel to me in waking life. They are not symbolically kin, nor do I poetically imagine them as my brothers. As I gaze upward, a feeling simply descends into me that carries the same knowing, the same resonance, as the bond I share with my brothers.
I begin to weep as a mourner weeps, sobbing from the stomach. Breaking the silence, I tell our peasant guides how I have never felt the stars like this. And yet, I tell them, I know that when I awake this feeling will be gone.
They say nothing, but lead us deeper into the woods until we come to an edge, where the tree line opens to a meadow. There at the transition, an oar is tied to an umbrella. The paddle of the oar is wedged into the ground, and the open umbrella is tied to its upright handle. Beneath the makeshift shelter, a webbed lawn chair sits. The peasants gesture to me to sit down, then leave me by myself.
The woods at my back, I sit awhile, gazing at the stars above the meadow. All is quiet again until the dream erupts with the boom of some violent crash coming from the direction of the village. I get up from the chair and sprint back through the forest, knowing something terrible has happened with the arrival of the rest of our caravan. Abandoning the star shelter, I race toward the crash.
***
The full catastrophe of the Machine Age is upon us, and there is no going back. We live in a between time, and what we knew – or what our ancestors knew – is no more. Those worlds are gone.
A communal sense of place, an intimate relationship with the land where we dwell, a cyclical connection to the holy, have long been demolished by the network of industry industrial complexes. The Machine sits upon the throne of power and within the thrones of our minds. It infects Creation with such extravagance, such intimacy, that no one dwells beyond it. From the political heights to our children’s psyches, from satellites traveling the night sky to GMO mosquitoes, the Machine reigns wherever we look, saturating reality, never far away, its power ever-increasing. Even now, these words between us are conjured by a collective of machines.
The Machine is the myth by which we see. It is the materialist world we encounter through the rods and cones of our eyes. We imagine nature as a living, functional machine. Increasingly, we encounter ourselves this way, too.
In such a time as this, it’s hard to know what to do.
And yet we do know this: Empires dwell within Holy Creation, and despite their best efforts to kill the holy, the holy always remains.
***
This is the context from which I write on this Substack: a traveler between two worlds, walking with many other travelers through the same mythical terrain. In this land are no political yard signs, no solar panels being sold as saviors, no guns being stockpiled, no one preaching we shun our neighbors because of their yard signs. In these woods is just an old dirt road leading away from the familiar and toward what we long for.
Here, people know what they abandon. Here, the dragon has been named, and here and here, here, here and here. In this land, the empire has been unveiled, and it is not a socialist state nor a capitalist state. It is a machine – a machine that cannot be reformed, voted out of office, or overcome. It can only be abandoned. We can only gather our belongings and join the caravan of those walking away from the artifacts of its artificial empire.
In this between world, what we long for speaks to us from somewhere beyond our intellects, even from beyond our imaginations. Here, our ancestors speak, drawing us forward. Here the mystery speaks intimately, like family. Here the Ancient One speaks clearly, its voice present and solid like stars.
Industrial culture can desecrate our experience of the holy, but not this holy voice. It speaks through all of reality, through the heights of the created world as well as through the many small voices of the nearby world.
Holy is the land where we walk, the dirt roads and the mythical roads. Holy is Creation. Holy are we who dwell here, within the desecration, a dimension of Creation.
In silence, we make our way, listening to the many voices of the animate world.
***
At two years old, my daughter in a trembling voice cries out in her dream: Papa Sun, help me! Mama Moon, help me!
I don’t know what she is fearing, nor what she needs help with, only whom she calls upon.
At four, she walks out of the house and not realizing anyone is watching her, says quietly to herself — Huh! I’m a deer! — then prances off into the tall grasses.
What’s a revelation? she asks the other day, now 10 years old.
I look at her, loving her so much.
My son, six, standing on his head on the couch, answers: It’s like that podcast they listen to. “Revelations of modern existence” or “Revelations against modern existence” or something like that.
Adrianne and I have no idea what podcast he is referring to, but his answer is better than ours.
***
Empires come and go and the Ancient One remains, speaking through the many voices of Creation. Shaped by machines from morning to night, from birth to death, these voices are hard to hear. They seem fleeting, like dreams, so I sit beneath the umbrella, trying to hear them.
Within this mythical shelter, within the Empire of the Machine, within this Substack, I won’t seek answers, but will simply gaze upon Holy Creation, or try to. I think many people are sitting here, or they’re in their own shelters, trying to remember the holy land, awaiting for old worlds and new worlds to be born among us, amidst the catastrophe. In these between times, I guess such makeshift shelters are probably everywhere, in a multitude of forms.
Welcome to this one, The Oar and the Umbrella. Please have a seat and rest awhile.