Voice

There is a span of time between the moment the mind wills the body awake and the eyes actually open. It can stretch from an instance to something which seems like eternity. She did not know how long it would take. She knew only that it was taking longer than usual. Her mind told her she was awake and yet her body would not move. If she could just move any part of her, her right pointing finger perhaps, then knew she would snap out of it. But still she could not move and she felt a surge of panic. Had she died in her sleep? Did her heart stop? Was she still breathing? She did not know. It seemed her last breath had become nothing more than memory. She waited for the next one to come.

And then she heard it. A voice which told her to relax, to accept whatever comes. If she had died she would now be seeing a great light. That’s what all the literature said. And what she saw was not light but only darkness. And she heard stray sound near to where she lay, a rustle here, a creaking there. And then the voice told her she was getting a Thai massage but the therapist might have gone away after she dozed off.

But she heard more than thought all these. Something inside her was speaking but it was not she herself. She felt for her right pointing finger again. Tried to will it to move even a miniscule distance but it stayed still. And there was only the voice inside her which seemed to have an answer to any question she asked. She sensed this more than knew it with certainty. She sensed as well that she should pick her next question well. The question that finally popped into her head was this: Should she pay allegiance to any church or should she take vows instead to what her old friend, Viking, called: The church of what is happening now, why, and what are we going to do about it?

And this is what the voice said: The great disease of man is the disease of thinking we can possibly know the right answer to that question. The great disease is the fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of choice. Does the concept include the competence to know the correctness of every act of choosing? Or should we rather see each choice as just another throw of the dice? We are only ripples in the cosmic pond. Every choice we make, every act of doing is only to test a possibility, a theory, at best, to test faith. And we can never be fully sure of its outcome. And let us never forget that humans have killed in tens, hundreds and hundreds of thousands for nothing more than these: possibility, theory, at best, tests of faith.

But what other choice do we have? We choose whether to bring our children to church or to arm them so that eventually they will rise up against the evils of the world and by that, possibly to suffer and die. Do we really have to choose between the two? Why can’t we choose both? Are we really choosing between two polar contradictions? Or are they in fact mutually inclusive? How sure are we that this choice is even possible?

Nothing is for certain in this world but this is not sufficient excuse for doing nothing. We must do something if only because to do something is morally and also in the sense of physics much more natural than to do nothing. But there is need to rethink entirely the ethics of doing something.  We do something not because we can foretell the final effect of every act. We do something even while we cannot know this for certain. At best we can only theorize. If we do this, then this problem “might be” resolved. It cannot ever be “will be” resolved. Theory and faith are only the same thing.

And before we throw a bomb at anything that is wrong with the world, we should first determine whether another death, another sadness is worth the cost. Take vows also to the church of love and the making of love. This church comes by any name. Choice is not about which church is right or wrong. All churches are wrong. And yet, all of them are also right or at least have the right to be there. And the only people who might have the right to think otherwise are those who have seen history down to its last painful end. If there is anyone who has done that, he would not be man. He would be it. It would be not just something else other than man. It would only be Something.

And then her finger moved. It was just a tiny little twitch which came after she felt her fingertip touch water. She felt a ripple over an absolutely still and dark pond. She felt the ripple move outwards. Three of them and then her eyes opened. She was awake.