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| Born Into Another Tide Pool, acrylic on canvas, 14" x 10 1/2", Steve Brown 2023 |
The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went
through the iron shed to his shack behind.
It was dark inside. He felt his
way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed,
and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his
loneliness.
--John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939
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We are on the tracks as a train pulls into a station. It’s messy.
Garbage and old shoes. A man in
front of us crosses, wearing a dirty beige shirt, grungy brown slacks and a
backpack. The blue and white diesel
locomotive looms large behind him. On
the left people crowd the platform to go somewhere. Who knows where? They do, of course. Thousands and thousands of lives connected to
these tracks in some way. For a man in a
relatively clean yellow shirt, black pants and sandals the stopped train is a
chance to step out onto the tracks to gather a useful piece of trash. He also has a thin plastic bag and something
new in it. You can almost make out the
writing, but not quite. It appears to be
packaged food. He is not totally
destitute. Yet, whatever is on the
tracks is still valuable enough to him that he steps out to pick it up.
There’s a smaller crowd of people on the other side of the
tracks, and a government official in green uniform walks towards them. They stand unworried about the train or the official. Why do they stand there? Clearly the train is not for them. Who knows?
Other than the fact that there is time.
When there is no work, there is always time. The smog is so thick that the electrical
poles along the track quickly fade to fuzzy while still appearing large
compared to the people in the foreground.
The air visibly has odor and taste.
Grappling
This is one standard moment in Ahmedabad, India, but it could
be any number of moments in oh so many places around the world. Life for most of humanity does not involve
cool, airy shopping malls; tree-lined suburban streets; or even quaint gravel
farm roads lined with lush grass, oak groves, white rail fences, blue ponds,
and big red barns.
There is a God. I
knew that. Then I didn’t. Then I did.
I think I can never deny that knowledge again. I have felt it directly. I’ve been taken to my knees in humble
gratitude by a great power and wept with joy because the spirit was so strong,
obvious and real.
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Now we are on a railway passing bright colored
concrete-block houses—greens and pinks and blues—with corrugated roofs covered
with rugs and tarps line the tracks. Homemade
ladders go from the ground to second-story dwellings, some of which have openings
facing the track. One home is hot pink
with a freshly painted green, screen door.
They must be rich in comparison to those around them.
Grappling
Relative seems to be the word for our world, yet we think in
absolutes. I think in absolutes. Good/Evil.
God/Satan. Pristine/Vandalized. Natural/Urban. First world/Third world. Problems/Solutions.
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Same tracks. Same
city. Delhi. Gone is the concrete block. The good solid angles. Now it’s lumber, stucco, plywood, anything
that can be found. Gone are the
corrugated metal roofs. Now, it’s plywood
loaded with plastic, carpets, anything to keep out the rain. Things slope and slant and sway.
Grappling
These are not outings—the sloping, the slanting, the
swaying, the dripping ceilings, the flooded dirt floors, the rivers along the
tracks, the constant passing trains.
These are lives, thousands of lives, millions of lives—the
sloping, the slanting, the swaying, the dripping ceilings, the flooded dirt
floors, the rivers along the tracks, the constant passing trains.
Still, I believe I have felt God’s voice. Sometimes profoundly. Usually in gentle promptings.
Why? Doesn’t He have
better things to do with his time?
Once, in my darkest hour, drunk, I cursed the God I no
longer believed in over and over for the life he’d given me as I staggered up
Mesa Street in El Paso in the rain as I screamed at passing cars, “I want to
die, I want to die, do you hear me, I want to die!” The next morning, I just had this calm wash
over me as these very real words were planted in my brain: Just go home and start over again.
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There are people under the eaves, people in very small
yards, very small courtyards. Some seem
private. Others seem like places of
commerce, here in the makeshift cities along Delhi’s tracks. They go by so quickly. Yet, people are talking, laughing, exchanging
goods and services. There are families. Children.
They do not seem excessively happy, but neither do they seem to be
drowning in sorrow. I hear
laughter. No wailing. Wailing seems reserved for war and death and
the overly rich when they suddenly lose everything to volatile economics.
Grappling
There have been other times I felt I really needed God, and
he seemed to be nowhere. As hard as I
tried to access him—nothing.
Why that is, I’m not sure.
I assume it is because we are each here to learn, and He is the great
teacher. He knows when we need to
struggle in order to grow, and He knows when He needs to step in and coach us
along. He knows how much we can handle
and how much we cannot. He knows the
difference between when we are acting like spoiled children throwing tantrums, and
when we are sincerely breaking inside—especially when we don’t know the
difference ourselves.
Perhaps.
Why does joy and sorrow seem so vital to feel no matter our
circumstances? We seem to find laughter
and misery equally in penthouses or in slums.
Poverty brings disease and death almost constantly. But children still have laughter. Families still gather. Humanity, except during war, does not seem to
sink to a rabid state of self-survival.
And misery finds its way quite easily into the most
luxurious of estates. Pills and suicide often
seem the pleasure of those who should feel most satisfied.
I wonder if God planned and knows which courses we signed up
for before we came to earth, which lessons, no matter how hard, we must endure,
because we individually (and perhaps collectively) chose them in the
pre-existence?
Or, I wonder, is the world we are born into just a roll of
the dice?
I know there is a God.
I have felt his presence too strongly to ever deny again. Yet, I’ve got to be honest, I look out on a
world with such uneven comfort, choice, and opportunity, and I do wonder how
anybody can need to learn so much they need to go through that. And why them?
Not me? And why can the internet
going down destroy my day while in India children can laugh and smile while
playing on a playground of floating garbage?
How can some families cling together through joy and sorrow housed in
shacks along the railroad tracks (and how can they even know joy under
those conditions?) while in another place, a father shoots himself because he
lost everything in the stock-market?
And why should anyone ever have to go through rape, physical
abuse, or even severe emotional abuse or loneliness, let alone war and starvation? What type of God sets up a world like that?
I can only come up with two answers. Either everything in life is luck (good and
bad), and nothing has meaning—random occurrences based on where you are and who
or what surrounds you. Or, life is a
great big university, and we signed up for the courses we wanted before we
came, and now ultimately every minute is a choice on how to respond to the
curriculum we ourselves chose and continue to choose through our actions. I’ve got to be honest— my logical mind says
the former option is more likely. The
problem is I’ve felt the presence of a God that says otherwise.
That is a problem.
On some level, I think it is actually easier to live in a world where
everything is random. In such a world
there’s no reason to try and understand anything. To do so would be foolish. But to know that there is a grand design,
that there is so much we don’t know, and yet know that is exactly what we
signed up for when we decided to come here and learn—Well, now every moment
matters. We aren’t off the hook for
anything, unless through the mercy and grace of the master Himself. All of the sudden, meaning is everywhere, and nothing
can be taken for granted. Worst of all,
we know we might have exams that we don’t feel confident passing.
Still, I think I prefer a life that has purpose. Although, it really doesn’t matter what I
prefer. I have felt God’s presence. I know he lives. I’m enrolled in purpose whether I like it or
not.
Sometimes though God seems so far away. And I’m
not sure why I’m here. To feel that way
is a luxury though. I’m all too aware I
wasn’t born into a life along the tracks.
What am I going to do knowing that?
Perhaps this book is that—what I’m supposed to do with my
life knowing I wasn’t born in a hut along the tracks. Or perhaps writing it is just ritual to keep
reality from becoming all too real.
Either way, I must write it. I
cannot be one of those people who don't see what they don’t want to see. Through ritual or directly—in some manner, I
must record and deal with the world as it is, and in some way try to
make it a better place.
