My First Thought
We were driving along. It was quiet — no wind, no other cars, so sense of movement, wide grass verges sloping down and away from the road, trees on either side their tops almost lower the our car. The air was clear, and the sky — a penetrating blue, like a film star’s eyes and as magnetic, as absorbing, as captivating. This sky overcame me. It had soaked up the noise — the groundswell of all activity. And so, we cut through this noiseless and still world, as if somehow held beneath the charismatic eye of this bluest of blue skies.
Then, from nowhere, a single maple leaf came tumbling down, its stalk balancing its descent as it twisted rapidly on its axis — falling from the sky.
For a moment it was terrifying. Had there been a breach, I thought? Had the blueness been ruptured? Had this leaf fallen through some fissure, some rent in the surface of the sheltering sky? Was there a world filled with eaves above this blue canopy? Had this single leaf been released as a herald for the oncoming fall of all the others? Was it the first of a downpour? Was I about to be inundated? I could not tell.
It was a single leaf falling from nowhere, dropping through the emptiness of everything which was beneath the canopy of blue. How could this be so? Perhaps a bird had dropped it? Perhaps carrying it up into the sky, waiting fro me to pass, then dropping it, just to cause my confusion, just to set me into a mixed up state? Yes, perhaps a bird had dropped it.
Then I realised, this was not a breach in the fabric of my universe — my sky — this was not some trick being played by a deceitful buzzard. This was nothing of the sort. It was simple. This was a message. This single falling maple leaf was a message — a simple, obvious message.
And what did it say, this message? It said simply that the world was not exactly like we expect it to be, or think we know it to be, or assume it to be. It said that this world does not always yield to our tests, our expectations, our assumptions of reliability. The world is unexpected, it said — new, novel, changing, exciting. That was the message, simply that.
And for a few moments the silence remained — increased — if it is possible for silence to increase — and I was transfixed by this single falling leaf and by simple the message it carried and by the clarity of the message. That was the most powerful aspect of it — the clarity of the message, the simplicity of it, and my sudden innocence in the face of it. And the movement continued but it took me nowhere — the journey was pointless in the face o f it. And the silence thickened — enclosed me — and the leaf became all I could see.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it had gone, and the journey continued and the sounds came back, and we were together again, and I knew something of the world that I did not know before. And what was that? It was that I knew less of the world than before.
And I thought — I want to preach the word and I don’t l know what the word is, and I want to preach it because I don’t know what it is, and by preaching it I might come to know it, either directly or because others come to know it.
And I think of a passage from Catch 22, a few lines that have always meant something to me and I’ve never really known what.
‘Help!’
‘Help who?’
‘Help the bombardier.’
‘I am the bombardier.’
‘Then help him.’
That’s it. That’s the answer. The sequence is not necessary — not needed. The maple leaf — why shouldn’t it come from nowhere? Certainty — why shouldn’t it emerge from confusion? Enlightenment and wisdom — why shouldn’t they occur from not knowing and the not knowing of others? Knowing — why does it have to be a product of coherent information? The word is available for us to preach, for us to be enlightened by, for us to know, for us to understand in the context of novelty, confusion and change. Who are we to resist it?
‘I am a preacher.’
‘What do you preach?’
‘I preach the word.’
‘What is the word?’
‘I don’t know until I preach it, and even then I may not know it.’
And so:
‘It is the best of all words.’
‘What does it tell us?’
‘It tells us that everything is beyond us except the word.’
‘So how can we come to know the word?’
‘Because everything beyond us is also within.’
‘If it is within, why don’t I know it already?’
‘Because you must hear the word from within. And you only hear it when you give it to another — when you preach it or gift it.’
‘And do I know the word now?’
‘Yes, because I sense you knowing it within myself.’