A crack implies compromised physical strength to the point of catastrophic failure. It involves a structural discontinuity, and may also provide a glimpse into what is on the other side, as in peeping through a crack in a solid fence.
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| LP cover Watered Garden by Cloud |
A long time ago (1976 in fact) we purchased or were given an LP Watered Garden by Cloud, and the track Surely the Lord is in this place has stuck with me all these years. It is, of course, based on Jacob's words on waking from his stairway-to-heaven dream:
Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not... How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
It stuck with me for the unexpected turn of the melody in describing this "dreadful place".
Here is another composer's rendering: Locus Iste which translates as This place was made by God:
OK, you say, it was "only" a dream. But what a dream! In my imagination "the gate of heaven" is like a crack giving a fleeting glimpse into the heavenly realm. There are other similar Biblical instances such as Moses and the burning bush, the three men that "appeared" out of the blue to Abraham:
And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him...
or Gideon's encounter, the angel Gabriel visiting Mary, even the Revelation to John. Not to mention the miracles of Jesus. These encounters (unless you are the sort that simply dismisses them as myth) do not follow the "normal" course of human experience. Perhaps they are all examples of cracks in normality?
If cracks they be, I want to see some cracks with my own eyes. But maybe I'd be blown away by what I saw?
In this indolent day-and-age it is possible for many of us Westerners to live most of our lives within our comfort zone and never (by our choice at least) venture outside it. In this way some folk would never try a rollercoaster even if you paid them. But a modicum of discomfort appears to be a healthy diet. Only by crossing the line of certainty and familiarity can you grow: pain is a signal of learning.
I have noted elsewhere how major changes like retirement or disillusionment with one's former beliefs have jolted me out of comfort leaving me feeling empty, lacking in motivation. I will gather all such changes together and label them one's predicament. Viktor Frankl's classic tells us of the overriding need for meaning in life even if there is believed to be none. Else one's predicament is liable to result in untimely death.
Meaning can be synthesised by demarcating an area (arbitrarily if need be) and then taking ownership over it. Like learning to master even mundane tasks like washing up the dishes or weeding the garden. The area could be material (a plot of land, a building, a machine) or intangible (a skill, a peculiar hobby, a favourite artist, the love and care for another person). It hardly matters: what does matter is that you choose to make it your domain and, as such, you nourish it, excel in it, make it beautiful, even use it to the betterment of others. But all of that not because anyone made you do it, or even suggested you should. Even if it was not your number one choice of activity you chose to do it, and do it you will, to the best of your ability. I will call this area your domain.
Back to where we were. So a predicament has removed meaning from one's life. You side-step and, by concentrating on your domain, you create a degree of meaning. But every so often, figuring there must be more to life, you look outside your domain - you look for a crack in what has become your normality.
I've been refreshing my knowledge of "modern physics" with a view to giving our eldest two students a brief summary as their last science lesson in our home-school here. The story is all about the cracks that started to appear in Newtonian aka classical physics around the turn of the 19th century. Cracks that opened a vista into realms hitherto unimagined: quantum mechanics with its wave-particle duality and uncertainty principle and ever smaller elementary particles making up the Standard Model; Einstein's theories of relativity with its invariant speed of light, mass-energy equivalence and curved space-time; cosmologists, aided by the James Webb telescope, finding an ever expanding universe and ever increasing numbers of galaxies; and biologists with their fossil data insisting that the theory of evolution is so well attested that it should be taught in schools as a fact.
Search for "cracks in the fabric of the universe" and you'll find that some scientists believe there really are cracks although what this knowledge does for us is not entirely clear. These cracks, if they exist at all, are fault lines, artefacts left over from the big bang and are or may be miles long, vanishingly thin, tremendously heavy but as yet invisible to us. I want better than that! Personally I'd be more interested in the sort of cracks that you can first see and then pass through... But what if one of these big bang cracks got too close to planet Earth...?
When ordinary people (like myself) try to make head or tail of all this, they can easily get the wrong end of the stick and fall for conspiracy theories or other nonsenses, but I suggest even the ordinary person has enough discernment to get the gist and recognise a crack when they experience one.
Back to where we were. In this my research it has become even more that usually evident that there are a lot of things I do not know for sure. In fact so prevalent are these things that I decided it is better to start with things that I do know for sure. Sadly I find there are precious few. I used to pare my Christian beliefs to the bare essential "Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tell me so" but I do a double take of even this now-a-days.
So I started a quest for "things I am sure about" and for cracks in all the rest. I recognise I am sadly ill-informed but I desperately want to know what is on the other side of the fence. I want the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill.
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