MOTHER NATURE
My mother would never do that. Sidney Poitier recounts"…when I was very small my mother threw me in the ocean and watched without moving as I struggled to survive." Fathers are often portrayed as doing this, but mothers? I never heard that. But what's interesting to me in this moment is that it is Sidney's father who mercifully fished him out, then, handed him back to his mother who threw him back in, again, and again, and again.
"Mother-nature" in Golden-Age American culture is far removed from Mother Nature. Fathers, in our patriarchal vision, are not portrayed with mercy, even though that was the foundation vision of the teacher of Nazareth. That's what is so startling to me in this account. The roles are presented backwards, right?
I don't have to make much effort to recall those risky moments when life was a choice between sink or swim. I think the first time was when I walked out of the house and far down the road to find a pay phone and invite a girl, a friend of my sister's, to a High School dance.
I had agonized for years before making this move. It had come to the point where it just had to be done or I'd never be able to go on living. Nothing rational was involved. Something inside me just pushed very hard and it was done.
Later, during my third rather unsuccessful year in college, I had a momentary vision of escaping from this ill chosen course of schooling by presenting myself to the Draft Board and letting fate take a hand in my future. More and more during the years that followed I'd fall back upon those irrational impulses that have decided my life. I'd come to think of the hand of Providence acting to guide me on a path towards my destiny, the hand of the Father. But now when I look at it I see it as Mother Nature taking hold and throwing me into the maelstrom so that I can learn how to swim. It's only later that the merciful hand of the father shows me how I am guided along the way.
It's Mother Nature that impels us to learn lessons from life. It is the Father's compassion that leads us to understand their significance. We gather meaning from the whisperings of wisdom.
This is how culture explains it to me. That's my picture, not society's. My mother would never have thought of that. Mother Nature would.
"Mother-nature" in Golden-Age American culture is far removed from Mother Nature. Fathers, in our patriarchal vision, are not portrayed with mercy, even though that was the foundation vision of the teacher of Nazareth. That's what is so startling to me in this account. The roles are presented backwards, right?
I don't have to make much effort to recall those risky moments when life was a choice between sink or swim. I think the first time was when I walked out of the house and far down the road to find a pay phone and invite a girl, a friend of my sister's, to a High School dance.
I had agonized for years before making this move. It had come to the point where it just had to be done or I'd never be able to go on living. Nothing rational was involved. Something inside me just pushed very hard and it was done.
Later, during my third rather unsuccessful year in college, I had a momentary vision of escaping from this ill chosen course of schooling by presenting myself to the Draft Board and letting fate take a hand in my future. More and more during the years that followed I'd fall back upon those irrational impulses that have decided my life. I'd come to think of the hand of Providence acting to guide me on a path towards my destiny, the hand of the Father. But now when I look at it I see it as Mother Nature taking hold and throwing me into the maelstrom so that I can learn how to swim. It's only later that the merciful hand of the father shows me how I am guided along the way.
It's Mother Nature that impels us to learn lessons from life. It is the Father's compassion that leads us to understand their significance. We gather meaning from the whisperings of wisdom.
This is how culture explains it to me. That's my picture, not society's. My mother would never have thought of that. Mother Nature would.
Labels: essay
posted by David at 8:03 AM
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