September 4, 2007
Snakes
Somebody who knows a lot more than I about this sort of thing says that neurosis has nothing to do with how one behaves or how one suffers. It has nothing to do with the fact that the psyche, the self, is already infused with contradictions. Rather is neurosis primarily the failure of the capacity to attend to the truth about oneself, whatever it may be, with an awareness free of emotionalism — a capacity that the great spiritual masters called sobriety.
All of which reminds me of all sorts of things in our current miasma in church and state, but also reminds me of a story I’ve told here before and will tell again in one way or another. Because it might even be a parable.
A very inebriated woman staggered across the back yard of a suburban residence one balmy autumn afternoon and caught the attention of the older couple who lived there. She looked quite helpless and disoriented. The yard backed up to a steep bluff overlooking the edge of a deep lake. Fearing for her safety, the couple went out to see what they might do. The woman resisted forcefully and said she wanted to kill herself by jumping off the cliff into the lake. They were able to distract her long enough to phone their pastor who lived nearby to come and help.
“Why did you frighten these people?” the parson asked the woman. “Why didn’t you go ahead and jump?”
“Because,” said the woman, “I’d have to walk through all that underbrush by the bluff. There may be snakes. I hate snakes.”
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