Ark (Part One)

Old English ærc, from Latin arca ‘chest’.

 

The Hebrew word for ark is “TEVAH“=תבה - “perhaps of foreign derivation”. This word is only used twice in the Bible and apparently means both “ark” (which in turn means some kind of box or container) and “word”. Here is an interesting source for this, also here and here. (Subnote: at what point does a word cease to be of foreign derivation and become naturalized? After all the story of the Ark is by definition one of the “root” stories of the Hebrews - of the world…)

“By having thus read the books of the Platonists, and having been taught by them to search for the incorporeal Truth, I saw how thy invisible things are understood through the things that are made. And, even when I was thrown back, I still sensed what it was that the dullness of my soul would not allow me to contemplate. I was assured that thou wast, and wast infinite, though not diffused in finite space or infinity; that thou truly art, who art ever the same, varying neither in part nor motion; and that all things are from thee, as is proved by this sure cause alone: that they exist.” (St. Augustine, Confessions Chapter XX)

 
“In my youth I thought archeology was but a quest for the ark. In middle age I scorned such childish notions. Now that I am old enough to know better, I begin again to wonder…” (Anon.)

In this life one learns not to place one's full weight on any single source: to do so were to prove it could not carry the full weight of truth. Yet we may perhaps cross the abyss leaping lightly from one to the next and so on - for each contains enough substance to provide some support.

The Archaeologist

My premise in this essay is that we humans live our lives as archaeologists, forever sifting through our contextual sands in search of evidence.

The fact that men do search does not seem to be in question. It is a point of pride among us. But what exactly are we looking for? This basic ignorance underlies each question that has been asked throughout the ages: by scientists and debunkers; by poets and sages; by that piece of us that longs and seeks - though often smothered and sometimes extinguished by our choices and the exigencies of life.

It has been reasoned that since we seek there must be something to be found. As thirst implies water. But it appears that the object of some such treasure seekers is to prove that there is no treasure: that the trove of found objects through the ages is but mere happenstance - as the bones of dinosaurs are viewed: excretions of the same blind and inchoate chance that thrust us into the world. Can chance produce such instances of fear and wonder? Are we just a peak in the waveform of white noise which describes the universe as we know it? Or is there music being played; the strains of which our wandering ears catch, and we struggle to place the intricate and half-remembered melody.

When I imagine the archeological dig of my premise I am seeing a landscape such as one might find in science fiction - in Egypt perhaps. There are hints of Stargate (or at least the archetype that Stargate struggles to incarnate). A hot wind blowing; a sandy pit; a blackened but definitely metallic substructure being uncovered - I call this The Artifact. It is thickly engraved with winged beings and archaic symbols. Touching it, there is that sense of incredible mass one gets when exploring a cave and a sudden awareness breaks in of the vast column of rock uneasily resting only inches above our head, pressing down inexorably. The Artifact is harder than any substance we have yet known. What little we see appears to be the creation of some alien intelligence; yet the more sand we push away the more we sense that The Artifact, far from being a solitary trace of this civilization, appears to underpin all of our current reality. Unpleasant, somewhat unsettling thoughts arise from this discovery. Yes, there may be excitement - but dread is perhaps more natural: we would rather it was not so. There is a sense in which the equations of our neatly calculated world have fallen apart, shattered by the impact of this discovery. And of course the winds are always blowing, the sands always collapsing in and around our excavation: making the most solid thing in the universe once glimpsed seem without substance, a mirage veiled behind the trickling ribbons of sand. I have a certain sympathy at this point with the believers of the flat earth theory. There is something woefully handmade and half finished about their domed models of the universe: as if we lived in a science fair project. We bat our wings against the glass but cannot escape. We long for the purity of unsullied chance - for the far reaches of an infinitely expanding possibility where no-one meddles in our affairs. And how we fear the contrary! 

(Mark Sargent views a model of the Flat Earth)

(Truth is that either way we have largely been left free, left to our own limited devices - by lizard men and Gods alike.)

The discoveries thus made, being of the intangible type, resist being pinned to cork boards, categorized and boxed for future examination, or put on display under glass - nested and warmed by the measured lamps of scientific enquiry. But humankind has, as long as history has been recorded, attempted to preserve these discoveries. They are hinted at in ancient writings; boldly affirmed in dogmatic doctrines; fragments are cried aloud on street corners; harsh whispered in secret incantations known only to the initiate; scattered in myriad dead sea scrolls, papyrus pamphlets, intractable tracts, tomes of intolerable weight: leaflets scattered out like starlings into the world. Who shall believe our report? For there are so many reports, and none quite agree.

In fact our search (on whom the ending of the age has come) often has such regurgitated evidence as its subject matter rather than the object itself - such is our fundamental need to build on the shoulders of those who have gone before: the subject matter being too large for any one man to grasp. So there is built up a Kowloon Walled City of evidence over time, with the kind of complexity which limits a man to be an expert in only one field: the impossibility of holistic knowledge absolutely decreeing imbalances of one sort or another in everyone’s understanding.

I should mention in passing that in all of human history there has been just one such man: who did not stand on men’s shoulders but in the source itself. At the age of twelve he already baffled the sages of his time with his understanding of what they had spent their whole lives studying. “The Lord of the Sabbath is here.”

It is interesting to find, as I leaf through some of the evidence uncovered and recorded by those long gone (Plato, St Augustine and others of their ilk), a strong impression that these men lived and discovered and died mere days ago. Their writings are not ancient, dried up and difficult to understand as I feared they would be when I first began to read. There is an immediacy to their discourse and understanding - a very real sense in which for all our champing at the bit and straining at the harness we have not pulled the cart of understanding any further down the road - even though we have this idea in our modern world of being somehow at the forefront of a long proud history of pioneers, mystics, scientists, engineers, poets and so on: all steadfastly marching onwards. Is it disheartening to realise that in some absolute sense we are making “absolutely” no progress?

For progress must be measured with reference to something. And against what do we measure our own?

In the book “A Canticle for Leibowitz” (Walter M. Miller) there is a theme in which religion functions as an ark. Civilizations rise and then collapse into dark ages, eventually to rise again in new peaks which are likewise fated to fall. Through each dark age, monastic communities carry mankind’s store of knowledge through each flood of darkness: science is sheltered by the arcana of religion. This story is a both a description of humanity’s past and a prophecy of its future based on some empirical understanding of the way reality works rather than (from what I can tell) a belief in the Catholic religion itself. An ark will still work whether or not you believe that divine providence inspired the making of it. But without such belief you are unlikely to end up on the inside. (Am I missing the point of the author here? If so I am missing it deliberately.)

Thus, civilizations rise and fall - but outside the turmoil of these terrible waters the adamant truth lies like alien treasure, besetting us before and behind; the walls of an ark which provide shelter but only for those who choose it as shelter. 

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” (Rom 9:33)

Wonko the Sane

In Douglas Adam’s marvelous book “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish” we read of Wonko the Sane who, convinced the world was crazy, built an asylum to put it in - the outside of which was his house:

“Here,” said Wonko the Sane, “we are outside the Asylum.” He pointed again at the rough brickwork, the pointing, and the gutters. “Go through that door” — he pointed at the first door through which they had originally entered — “and you go into the Asylum. I’ve tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there’s very little one can do. I never go in there myself. If I ever am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and I shy away.”  (So Long & Thanks for all the Fish, Douglas Adams)

I’m including this reference because it came to mind when thinking through this Ark idea: the concept that the Ark - The Artifact - is actually larger and more real than the seas it defends us from. It is an inside-out idea, like Wonko’s.

“Underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27)

 

The Venn Diagram

Believers - various shades of Christian as well as those from other faiths - often have this way of looking at themselves as separate from the rest of the world. This becomes logically problematic since an impossible Venn Diagram springs up: a central circle titled “Truth” together with countless little circles floating around each claiming the relationship “Of the Truth, but NOT of this world” where “this world” is defined by being “anything other than this bubble” and therefore attempts to exclude all the other little bubbles. If you put this into practice it will immediately become clear that in order for it to be logically true each small bubble must only contain a part of the central truth. The impossibility arises from each sub-bubble's claim to contain MORE than just a part - and indeed to deny that the other bubbles contain truth at all.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life” (1 John 1:1)

“Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” (Acts 17:23)

However silly this imaginary Venn Diagram may be, the truth is that if you once experience this - put your hand just once on the alien surface of The Artifact - a complete inversion, a turning inside out, of your understanding will assuredly take place, somewhat like the moment I referred to previously of exploring a cave when a sudden comprehension of gravity comes crashing in. Your understanding of “the world as I see it” - a carefully curated model built up lovingly through the impressionable years of childhood; poorly spring cleaned by the shallow doubts of adolescence; furnished & made habitable by the physical necessities and cognitive biases of middle age - is blown apart. You become convinced that this life as we see it is just the tip of the iceberg and that “the real thing” is ever so much larger and more real and more important.

“Of the Rock that begat you you are unmindful, and have forgotten God that formed you." (Deut 32:18)

We appear to do two things after any such revelation. The first is to judge others that appear not to have experienced the truth we have seen. The second is to forget. Perhaps the reason for the first is that we fear the second? The clarity of understanding has a half life, as each ark has had through history. Noah emerges and gets drunk. Moses, deliverer of nations, rises and falls through his history as each subsequent touch carries him forward - his face luminous - and then recedes. We see clearly, then look away and forget. 

Monasteries form and then become only form. Luther makes his heroic stand: he can do no other - but ends his life doing that other which he once knew to be wrong. (For completeness, a sub-part of "thing one" would be an attempt to proselytize. Judgement may be suspended until this fails!) A friend suggested:

I think this stems from our natural in-built fight for dominance. In lesser species would-be-dominant males fight to the death. 

I'd like to think that this is the very antithesis of true Christianity. But didn't Jesus himself level judgement on those who didn't agree with or acknowledge him? 

And, besides, in any walk one has to muster sufficient enthusiasm to carry out any notable task - you have to believe in yourself. And if others stand in your way it means a fight, even if the fight is an internal struggle.

I agree with much of this, but feel compelled to comment on the figure of Jesus as mentioned here because it ties into the central point of this essay. Far from being one who fought for a half remembered revelation (and perhaps fought BECAUSE it was half remembered!), he WAS the revelation, incarnate. He was - and is - of the very substance of this alien artifact. 

Ultimate reality brings ultimate judgement.

The Elephant

I am reminded of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. In this, each man was able to describe only what they could grasp of the elephant, reporting wildly different aspects and arguing that each alone had the truth of it.

In our most truthful moments we may admit to each other that we are as blind men: let us also be assured that there is an elephant in the room.