“I once saw a television special about a woman who was saved from falling off a cliff by some supernatural force, which she thought probably consisted of one or more angels. The woman and her fiancé had climbed a steep hillside to watch the sun set over the ocean. As twilight fell, they decided to take a shortcut back to sea level—an extremely short cut, as it turned out. The path they chose went almost straight down, and the rock face proved to be soft and crumbly. By dark, the couple was in serious trouble. The tide was coming in, and they were literally clinging to the fragile cliff by their fingernails. Then, just as the woman’s strength gave out, she felt a strong, warm power lift her up, propping her against the rock. Aided by this mysterious force, she gradually made the climb to the beach, arriving safe and sound about fifteen minutes later.
In the meantime, her fiancé fell off the cliff and died.
After some of the things that happened to me while I was expecting Adam, I have no trouble believing this woman’s story. I am quite ready to accept that Something helped her down that cliff, probably the same Something that got me through the smoke of the high-rise fire in Cambridge. But whatever the Something was, I can’t fathom its motivation. As I watched the television special, I kept imagining what the woman’s fiancé must have thought as he plummeted past his beloved, perhaps even seeing as he went by, the angels who were gently transporting her to solid ground. If I had been in his position, I know what I would have thought. I would have thought ‘So what am I, bat guano?' It would have been the last thing to go through my head, if you don’t count the rocks at the bottom of that cliff. Perhaps the angels had a chance to explain their reasons to the deceased fiancé later, but I, for one, don’t understand.
I get the same feeling when I look back on all the mysterious assistance I received during Adam’s gestation. I don’t know if others from my apartment building had invisible helpers hauling them out of the smoke the day Food Shak burned. I doubt it. No one ever mentioned it. Perhaps, you may say, I was the only one who really needed paranormal assistance—but that logic doesn’t work for me either. How many times a day does some poor hapless human really need a good supernatural protector and fail to get one? People are tortured and killed and raped and pillaged on a daily basis, and if there are angels in the vicinity, they apparently just sit around watching—wringing their ectoplasmic little hands, probably letting nature take its course.
A great deal of human energy, including mine, has been spent trying to figure out why some people get help from angels and some get lobotomized by flying debris from freak wheat-threshing accidents. Religious people always seem to have simple formulas to explain this. If you’re very, very good, says the formulas, you can avoid the gods’ disfavor and court their assistance. If you sacrifice a goat, you will be blessed. If it’s the wrong goat—say, one with a gimpy foot—you will be smitten with a pox. If you join the right church, you will live long and prosper; if you leave it, you are consigned to eternal misery. Believe me, you don’t grow up in Utah without hearing a great deal of this sort of reasoning. But none of the causal connections I have heard preached by any religion fits the facts as I see them. All I can say for sure is whatever supernatural beings are operating around us, they are working from a priority list that is very different from mine.
Strangely enough, I have learned to trust them anyway.”
So that's the thought for today. Reflect and do with it what you like.
1 comment:
Jude- I read Expecting Adam when I was pregnant with Rachel. I really enjoyed it. Martha Beck has a lot of insight and has gained a lot of experience the hard way. Thanks for sharing.
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