Like most normal people, I have a gorilla suit in my closet. You never know when it can come in handy. Years ago, for Halloween, our church had a "Trunk or Treat" in the parking lot. Kind of a fun, low-key event where you decorate your vehicle and kids in their costumes come by and collect their treat. So I turn the bed of my truck into a cage, put on my suit and put a bowl on the tailgate to see how many kids are brave enough to reach into the cage to get some candy. Hey, this stuff shouldn't be free.
So I'm there, making a ruckus, shaking the truck, shaking the cage and making the obligatory gorilla grunts, simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying the the kids. Now, this is southeast Texas and even though it's late October, it stays pretty hot and humid and I'm finding that a latex rubber and faux fur mask is pretty sweltering. From time to time, I have to stop and take the mask off to cool down. I'm in full view of the children and the moment that the mask comes off, it's like a light switch goes off in their head, and there suddenly before them is a man in a hairy suit. The magic spell is broken and the kids rapture evaporates. Poof. But here's the funny thing: I put the mask back on and immediately the light comes back on, the magic spell is back in full effect, and the same children are suddenly drawn into it. One moment I'm just a guy in a suit, the next moment it's a real gorilla sitting there in the back of the truck. The kids are just as apprehensive as before to take the candy, even though, not two seconds earlier, they could clearly see and understand that this was all just a charade.
"The enigma of the dream, for example, is at first interpreted [by a child] as in no sense mental: it is external to the dreamer, even though invisible to others. And the memory of the dream is confused with ordinary memories, so that the two worlds are mixed." Joseph Campbell, "The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology"
I wonder if we sometimes are as simple-minded as children when we look at spiritual things. We have an adult world that we grow up into, full of Aristotle's uncompromising logic, that, more often than not, just does not reconcile with the faith implanted in our hearts. Read just about any Biblical story, and you are going to be hard pressed and on the defensive to try to explain this from a rational, scientific point of view. For many people of faith, this puts them in a reactionary, persecuted position.
What if this was all unnecessary? Why have we gotten it into our heads that the things that we feel so deeply within us have to be proven scientifically? Is it possible for us to live, as a child, with the acceptance that there are two distinct worlds: the world the we experience perceptively, concretely, rationally, and the world beyond this? The world that defines a greater, more sublime truth that in the moment of discovery and transmission is immediately made ephemeral. Take for example the concept of eternity. As a tenant of most religions, life is believed to be of an infinite and eternal nature, but how do you reconcile that with anything and everything that we experience in this life? All that we know has an beginning and an end. I submit that our brains are not even wired to comprehend the nature of eternity, like alternate dimension that simply lies outside our perception. At times there can be a glimpse, a parting of the veil, and we can approach this alternate dimension, but the moment that we attempt to express it in any perceptible, concrete form...poof. It's gone.
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