How often we find ourselves living on the cusp, balancing past and future on the fulcrum of the present. At its worst, this balancing act suspends regret on one side of life's equation, with fear on the other. Preoccupation over things that we can do next to nothing about leaves little room for present possibility. We also live on the cusp when weighing a decision that we need to make. On such occasions (when we find ourselves choosing between jobs, say, or prospective partners), however poignant our predicament may be, it does have the decided advantage of being obvious. We have until Friday to make a decision, or-in the case of relationships-should we continue to procrastinate, others will eventually make the decision for us. Our lives rest more precariously on the cusp of existential paralysis. We know we need to do something to jump-start or redirect our lives, but lack clarity as to what that might be or how we might begin to work a change. Life then lives us, not we it. Finally, we may know precisely what it is that we must do to change our lives for the better, yet somehow cannot act on this knowledge. At such times, the cusp becomes a blade. Unable to take positive action to free ourselves from the pain we feel, to escape it the only thing we can do is to numb our consciousness. And then the present disappears.
"Cusp" is an old astrological term. Having been born "on the cusp" between Virgo and Libra, I know it well. Had I been born but hours earlier, I would clearly be a Virgo: pure, rigid, disciplined, left-brained, "an impeccable life player." Arriving on life's doorstep a few hours later than I did, I would be an obvious Libra: artistic, open, creative, right-brained, "the holy fool, seeking all that is harmonious." If astrology were the state religion, I wouldn't be on the cusp; I'd be on the rack. You know those daily forecasts that run in the paper. Next time you read one, try putting the Virgo and Libra forecasts together. If Virgo reads, "This is the day you've been waiting for, so go for it-love, money, everything- don't miss a single opportunity to make a new connection," Libra is sure to say, "Take the day off, better yet don't even get out of bed; you might break your leg on the way to the bathroom."
Living on this particular cusp, I at least enjoy the benefit of never having been tempted to take astrology seriously. Yet the cusp metaphor remains a good one. Balancing a plate of radically different options is difficult but can prove bracing. It reminds us of how important our choices are. No matter what we choose, nothing good comes without the risk of failure or disappointment. And almost nothing good comes without pain.
Pain gets a bad rap these days. We are living in the age of the pleasure principle. But even as pain is our body's way of telling us that it's doing everything possible to help make us well again, the same thing holds true for our soul. For instance, the pain of a bad conscience reminds us that we have done something wrong. Having a bad conscience doesn't mean that you are a bad person. It means that you are a basically good person who has committed a sin and doesn't know what to do about it. On the other hand, to be stuck on the cusp while postponing pain by muting its symptoms has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It signifies a life lived according to the principle of avoidance. For this, the best metaphor I know is limbo.
In old-time theology, Limbo was a special precinct of Hell reserved for innocents. Translated into our daily lives, it is where basically good people take themselves, not to freeze or burn, just to exist without escape until its spell is broken or they die.
o Limbo is not going out, because you aren't sure that you'll have a good time.
o Limbo is not speaking out when injustice is done, because your afraid that no one will listen.
o Limbo is holding out for the wheel of fate to spin in your direction.
o Limbo is dropping out the moment that life gets difficult, when the going gets too interesting for you.
o Limbo is for people who postpone decisions, who want to ensure that they'll never be wrong.
o Limbo is where we remain every day we determine that we will change our lives beginning tomorrow.
Limbo has its advantages of course. For one thing-at least until the recognition of where we are and who we have become finally catches up with us-there is little sharp pain in Limbo, only the dull throb of regret, uncertainty and fear. We can elevate these things to the status of pain, but none compares with the honest pain of those who open themselves to the full array of experience that life has to offer. For instance, nothing can break an armored heart, no act of betrayal or crushing blow of loss. When a loved one dies, the grief we feel is equal to our love. When we have loved deeply and well, the pain of loss is almost unbearable. When our heart is a prison, we may languish but in a sad, strange way we remain completely safe.
This reminds me of an essay the novelist Walker Percy's, both a Freudian and a Christian, wrote entitled "The Message in the Bottle." "Suppose that a man is a castaway on an island. He is, moreover, a special sort of castaway. He has lost his memory in the shipwreck and has no recollection of where he came from or who he is. All he knows is that one day he finds himself cast up on the beach." The man makes friends, keeps up with "island news," finds useful work, passes his days one after the next. "Yet all is not well with him" (Percy continues.) "Something is wrong. For with all the knowledge he achieves, all his art and philosophy, all the island news he pays attention to, something is missing. What is it? He does not know. He might say that he was homesick except that the island is his home and he has spent his life making himself at home there. He knows only that his sickness cannot be cured by island knowledge or by island news." This continues until one day the unself-knowing castaway finds a bottle cast up on the shore. Awakening him from amnesia, in it is a message bringing news from his true home.
As the poet William Vaughn laments:
Man hath still either toys, or Care,
He hath no root, nor to one place is ty'd,
But ever restless and Irregular
About this Earth doth run and ride,
He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where.
He says it is so far that he hath quite forgot how to go there.
So how do we find our way? Where is the message in the bottle, and what does lesson does it impart? Plato speaks of "jewels of the soul" that we perceive "through a glass dimly" as the most valuable prizes on our human treasure hunt. St. Paul may have had this passage in mind when he wrote that, "Now we see through a glass darkly, then face to face." Jesus suggests something akin to this in his parables of the Kingdom. As recorded in the Gospel of Thomas , Jesus tells his disciples that, "the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty." He goes on to add this promise: "Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."
If Jesus is right, we appear to be born with a homing instinct, a capacity for self-transcendence that can lead to salvation or enlightenment. In his aptly titled "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," William Wordsworth expresses this faith as well as anyone:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
The question remains, is God our home here on earth or only in heaven? Are we castaways on an island, marooned far from our soul's true residence? Is human life merely a scavenger hunt for treasure hidden in earth's field, which we gather only to store up for eternity? Or is our treasure where our heart is, as Jesus teaches? And, if our hearts are in the right place, can we therefore escape Limbo here and now?
Of one thing I am certain: nothing back in the past or out there in the future will be of any earthly use in our spiritual search. All regret and fear do is to keep us locked in Limbo. As for nostalgia and expectation, both are fickle; in our every present need they betray our heart's desire. This is part, at least, of the message in the bottle. The only passage out of Limbo is a direct one.
Think about it this way. Nostalgia is that form of sentimentality which focuses on the past. We conjure up images of life as it once was, or as we wish to remember it, and pine away for the good old days. This is a highly selective process. We distill and embellish our memory. The result is a kind of fantasy, purified of imperfections, even of reality. We long for what never really was, regret its passing, and rue the present for its absence. Expectation is no less misleading. One friend defines expectation as "premeditated resentment." We measure some future reality against our expectations for it and are disappointed the moment it arrives.
Recognizing that I shall never escape their allures, I have developed and occasionally remember to practice a couple of tricks to satisfy my appetite for nostalgia and expectation without permitting them to rob from the present the one gift that is surely mine to receive. The first I call "nostalgia for the present." Today is that "good old day." I look wistfully at that which is mine this very instant to savor and to save. As Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius writes in his meditations, "Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours." We can practice the same slight of mind on our expectations by "looking forward to the present." Take something you already have and then imagine that you want it right now. Too often we only think to desire what we lack. Yet nothing is sweeter than to want what we already have.
So imagine that today is tomorrow and also yesterday. Instead of pining over a past that is no more or longing for a future that may never be, we are freed to greet the present with a wistful and anticipatory welcome. This has nothing to do with living for today, in wanton disregard for consequences that might follow on self-indulgent or thoughtless behavior. Rather, it is a matter of living in today, being fully present, awake and alive. "It is a passion beyond all possessiveness," writes essayist, Peter Marin, "a fierce love of the world and a fierce joy in the transience of things made beautiful by their impermanence. I would not trade this day for heaven, no matter what name we call it by. Or rather, I think that if there is a heaven, it is something like this, a pleasure taken in life, this gift of one's comrades at rest momentarily under the trees, and the taste of satisfaction, and the promise of grace, alive in one's hands and mouth."
This is the secret to remembering who we are. Wherever we may have been before we were born or may go after we die, in between, during the span of days represented by that little dash between dates on our tombstone, we hold the key to God's home in our pocket. Right here and right now. The key to spring the lock of Limbo. The key to our hearts. Amen. I love you. May God bless us all. Copyright AllSouls 2001.